00:00Why do you think African Americans have such a spiritual and emotional connection to food
00:05and the culture that surrounds it? Brief answer, because for many years, we didn't have enough.
00:12I think it also goes back to a kind of, and this is a gross generalization, which we all know we
00:19shouldn't do when we come to Black people. I think we are inherently a spiritual people.
00:25And I think that that spirituality reflects itself in food and in our looking at food and in our ways
00:36of preparing it, serving it, eating it, and all of the rest. When we sang that song, when we painted
00:43that painting, when we've done all these creative things, it's not done until we eat.
00:50Dr. J and I are continuing our journey to uncover the stories of African Americans.
00:58We are implementing something that Black people have a right to, and that's a right to eat.
01:03Through the food we grow.
01:04Who we are is our connection to land.
01:07Prepare.
01:08This is a little bit of everything.
01:10And commune over.
01:11Oh, wow.
01:11Food is that thing that can create home wherever you go.
01:15I like to hope that food can bring us together.
01:17The best part is the last three words.
01:20Pass hot sauce.
01:22Being as though we have such a vast history in this country, even after post-emancipation,
01:27how did you identify what stories and dishes you wanted to highlight this season?
01:33I think that really as much as anything, we were trying to tell a story about movement,
01:40about migration.
01:41And that story in particular, especially after emancipation, where the first season left
01:48off, brings us to places like Louisiana, to places like Chicago, to places like Atlanta,
01:55as cities that can function as a microcosm for this 20th century Black American story.
02:03And of course, there's food stories everywhere.
02:07There's history.
02:08So I think we sort of worked backwards from there, identifying what cities best embodied
02:15this particular version that we were telling.
02:18So Dr. Jessica, can you tell me, do you think that our relationship, African-Americans,
02:25the relationship with food changed from the time during slavery to the time post?
02:31Like, do you think our relationship changed at all?
02:33I think it did.
02:34I think it has always been a communal thing, a celebratory thing, a familial thing for us.
02:45I think that post-emancipation, as we moved and spread and became more affluent, many of
02:55those things continued, but also our diet changed.
03:01I think that as we, in the Great Migration, moved all over the country, we ended up with
03:12regionalisms and different kinds of regionalisms, eating other things, doing other things.
03:17But I think basically food as a connector of family, community, and as a representation
03:26of hearth and home has remained a constant.
03:30So Steven, this next question is for you, my brother.
03:33What has been the most fulfilling thing in working on High on the Home for you?
03:39I think simply that it's been a dream for Black foodways and Black culinary history to be used
03:49as a way to understand our own history.
03:54And that so many, especially Black people, have come to me and expressed to me how much
04:01this work means to them.
04:03And I can't express to you or to them how much that means to me.
04:08Dr. Jessica, now that's the same question for you.
04:11What has fulfilled you the most in working on this amazing docuseries?
04:14Well, thank you for the amazing docuseries part.
04:18I think the thing that has just moved me extraordinarily is, you know, this is something I've been working
04:27on since literally I was at Essence.
04:30I was the travel editor of Essence in the mid-70s.
04:34And so watching it come to, in some kind of ways, fruition, seeing it go out into the world
04:44to the 190 countries that are going to be, you know, able to watch this docuseries, it's
04:53like unbelievable.
04:55It's extraordinary.
04:56I've had friends call from as far as New Zealand, Brazil, certainly France, the continent
05:05itself, and say how much the first series meant to them and how it enabled them to have
05:12conversations with their own elders about their traditional foods.
05:17It's not just African-American friends.
05:19Apparently, it has elicited conversation among the Maori in New Zealand about their traditional
05:27foods, Afro-Brazilians about theirs, and so on and so forth.
05:32So it has just been an extraordinary moment in my life.
05:36I feel very blessed to have been able to experience it.
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