[gentle music playing]
[music continues]
[man] We are on the shores of Sullivan's Island,
right here on the beach.
This would've been the first stopping point for the enslaved
when they came through the ports of Charleston.
This was the entry point for a lot of our ancestors.
Upwards of 40 to 60% of all enslaved Africans
came through the ports of Charleston.
It looks just like the landscape in parts of West Africa where they came from.
So, almost, they thought it was a cruel joke.
They were brought back to where they were taken from.
[Stephen] I imagine that when our ancestors got here,
they thought the voyage was over.
Naw, man, it was just beginning.
[theme song playing]
[man] ♪ Got my letter ♪
[all] ♪ Oh, yeah ♪
[all grunt]
[man] ♪ Got my letter ♪
[all] ♪ Oh, yeah ♪
[all grunt]
[man] ♪ Got my letter ♪
[all] ♪ Oh, yeah ♪
♪ The people keep a-comin' And the train done gone ♪
[all grunt]
♪ John was a writer ♪
♪ Oh, yeah ♪
[all grunt]
♪ John was a writer ♪
♪ Oh, yeah ♪
[all grunt]
[man] ♪ John was a writer ♪
[all] ♪ Oh, yeah ♪
♪ The people keep a-comin' And the train done gone ♪
[all grunt]
[gentle music playing]
[Stephen] Charleston, South Carolina.
There is an ancient beauty here.
A mythical charm to this seacoast.
This fertile land they call the Lowcountry.
And yet, I've always felt an undeniable heaviness here.
A darkness just below the surface.
[slow blues playing]
This was the capital of the nation's slave trade.
We arrived here, shackled, by the hundreds of thousands,
and stood on the auction blocks of the city's old slave mart
to be scattered across the South.
[indistinct haggling]
[Stephen] But those that remained in South Carolina
were enslaved on plantations
that generated the initial wealth of this country…
not with cotton, but with rice…
at one point exporting over 100 million pounds of it a year.
[man] Charleston became, as a result of the slave trade…
per capita, the wealthiest city in early America.
[Stephen] I've known culinary historian Michael Twitty a few years now,
and I'm always impressed by his ability to cut to the truth of our history
by simply talking about food.
Africans who are here are a combination of people
who've been rice growers for thousands of years,
and when rice becomes the invested crop,
there are all these trees and swampland
that have to be moved around.
More land was moved to create the landscape of the rice plantations
than was moved in the making of the pyramids in Egypt.
[Stephen] Wow.
The scar of these plantations can be seen from space.
[Stephen] Hmm.
And it shows you the massive amount of labor it took
just to make these rice plantations possible.
[gentle music playing]
[Michael] Despite the fact that we were in hell,
we were suffering, that we were being worked to death…
somehow, in all of that nonsense,
we created a cuisine.
[music continues]
So when you eat the cooking that
I try to pull together from the fragments of our history,
I want you to understand that you are in the presence of your ancestors…
[Stephen] Mm-hmm.
…and that our job is to pass those traditions on,
so that they, like the soul, never die.
So, we're going to prepare one of many one-pot meals.
[stirring, rhythmic music plays]
-[Stephen] Got rice. -[Michael] The number-one ingredient.
[Stephen] And the next crucial component?
[Michael] Okra.
Okra's everywhere in the Afro-Atlantic world.
[Stephen] Mm-hmm.
-[Michael] Everybody has okra. -[Stephen] Quintessentially African.
[Michael] Quintessentially African.
-[Stephen] Got some lard. -[sizzling]
About two-thirds of the onions.
[Stephen] Two-thirds.
[Michael] All the tomato.
[Stephen] Okay, so all the tomatoes are going in.
[Michael] Yes.
[Stephen] Spoonful of salt.
Hot pepper, the most important ingredient.
We were the hot pepper people.
-[Stephen] We brought it. -[Michael] That's right.
[Stephen] Parsley.
[Michael] One more pinch of rosemary, we're good.
Gonna put our crab in next.
-[Stephen] Okay. Now the crab's going in? -[Michael] Yep, all of it.
Is this also typical
of how enslaved people would have been preparing food like this?
During the warmer parts of the year, absolutely.
-[Stephen] Right. -[Michael] Broth time!
[Stephen] All right.
[Michael] And the rice, please.
-[Stephen] All right. -[Michael] There we go.
Know how to taste it properly?
How you taste it?
Not from the spoon, how?
Aha! How'd you know that?
[Stephen] I don't know. How did you know?
-'Cause my mama taught me so. -[Stephen] Yeah.
Because when I went to West Africa…
-Mm-hmm. -[Michael] Check.
-That's how they do it. -Mm-hmm.
So isn't it fascinating that both of us learned.
-Mm-hmm. -We saw that.
[Stephen] Mm-hmm.
But somebody had to do that motor function from generation to generation
-for us to know that's what you do. -[Stephen] Mm-hmm.
You got smacked if you put the spoon in your mouth.
[Michael] Put your mouth on the spoon. Exactly.
Exactly right.
-Thank you so much. -Okay.
We're gonna put the top back on it.
[Stephen] Okay.
[Michael] There you go. Perfect.
And we gonna let it do.
In my work,
it's all about what the enslaved cooked and what they ate.
I think that's important for people to realize
that their material lives and their food lives
had nothing to do with what people called them,
who they thought they were.
-They thought they were worthy… -[Stephen] Mm-hmm.
…of a decent meal…
of a meal prepared from wife to husband, husband to wife,
father to children, grandmother to grandchild.
They thought they were worth their humanity.
[Stephen] Brother Twitty, seems like we're just about there, right?
[Michael] Yeah, man.
-[Stephen] So the pot-- -See how your first okra soup comes out…
[Stephen] Uh-oh, that's a lot of pressure.
…on the open fire, brother.
[Stephen] That's a lot of pressure.
Oh, that's a nice boil.
-[Michael] There you go, look at that. -[Stephen] Okay, I like that.
It smells amazing.
-All right, I'm gonna to try the new-- -[Michael] Real tight.
[Stephen] Real tight. New method.
Hmm.
Wow, that is delicious.
[Michael] So, what do you taste?
Mostly what I taste is, um, the tomato and onion interplay.
-[Michael] Mm-hmm. -Mmm.
-[Michael] Makes its own gravy. -Mm-hmm.
[Michael] And then the okra's not too overpowering, is it?
-Okra's in the background. -[Michael] Right.
[Stephen] It's really nice.
[soft music playing]
-Wow. -Mm-hmm.
-This is… -Told you so.
…a spiritual experience.
[gentle blues playing]
[Michael] We call our food soul food.
We are the only people…
who named our cuisine after something invisible
that you could feel, like love and God.
Something completely transcendental.
It's about a connection between us and our dead,
and us and those who are waiting to be born.
[soft music playing]
[Stephen] I think a lot about how the economic legacy of the South
is tied to the land that Black folks cultivated.
And for generations, our expertise defined this region for a singular crop,
Carolina Gold.
[man] When you fly into Charleston, everything you see is rice field.
So many rices were here before Carolina Gold showed up,
but no one was good at farming rice here until Africans showed up.
[Stephen] Glenn Roberts is like a godfather in the food world,
and his company, Anson Mills,
is largely responsible for returning Carolina Gold to our tables
when it had all but disappeared.
[Stephen] So, this is the famed Carolina Gold rice.
[Glenn] It is.
What's an important thing for us to know about this rice?
[Glenn] This is the rice people wake up to.
This is the rice they go home to.
There are more early recipes
from our antebellum colonial era for Carolina Gold rice
than any other strict staple in the canon of American history.
It's the first long-grain of the Americas that's important to world commerce,
and became desired in Indonesia and Asia,
and even pierced the black curtain of Japan, it was so famous.
[rhythmic music playing]
[Stephen] So, where did the rice disappear to?
A combination of a lot of things, but it boils down to this.
African expertise to grow the rice disappeared.
Slavery is over, they didn't have a business model to go to,
and it just blew up in everyone's face.
It's staggering to realize
that Charleston had a nearly 80% decrease in rice production after the Civil War.
So, how long have you been cultivating this rice?
[Glenn] Twenty-one years!
The reason to get into this for me was to pay homage to my mother.
She missed this rice. She grew up with it.
She pounded this rice herself.
I realized when my mom was passing
that I wanted to give her back what she had in her childhood.
That's really why I did this.
And do you have complicated feelings
as a white man being involved in this trade?
[Glenn] Totally.
You don't wanna be, uh, the white-privilege person,
uh,
monetizing something that isn't yours.
I'd chosen what I'd call a reparations pathway for what we do,
which is, we don't monetize the seed.
We give it away to anyone who asks that's justified to get it.
And what allows you to be able to do that
is the fact that you are selling to all of your accounts all over…
-[Glenn] Worldwide. -…the world.
-Mm-hmm. -And the revenues that come from that
allow you to be able to give the seeds away to different communities.
So, Glenn, do you think that this Carolina Gold rice
is the legacy of slavery?
It wouldn't be here without slavery.
That's something that we tend to gloss over a lot.
-Mm-hmm. -[Glenn] It's inescapable.
Every time you turn around in Charleston, it's rice everything.
This represents the horrors of slavery.
[soft, brooding music playing]
[Stephen] Charleston has a reputation for culinary greatness.
But I couldn't help but notice
that in a city that still profits from the era of slavery,
few of the downtown restaurants are Black-owned,
and history has been slow to recognize
just where "Southern cooking" came from in the first place.
[BJ] As a chef, I saw, in my city,
there was no representation of our culture.
But I saw our culture all through these menus and restaurants in Charleston.
Everybody loves the food of Charleston, but where is that rooted in?
The Gullah.
[Stephen] Out of the common experience of slavery in South Carolina
emerged a new people known as the Gullah.
And chef BJ Dennis is leading a movement
to ensure their culinary contributions do not go unrecognized.
Private chef and caterer by day, BJ,
or as I like to call him, Brother BJ,
has been hosting pop-up dinners all over the country
that have made him the poster child for Gullah cooking.
And if I wanted to get to the heart of the conversation about Gullah cuisine,
I had to leave the city of Charleston for the magic of the Sea Islands.
[gently rousing music playing]
When we talk about Gullah people,
who are we talking about?
We are talking about folks who lived on the Sea Islands of the Lowcountry,
who were free and enslaved.
Who, through isolation, we--
Our ancestors were able to hold on to, um,
more of their Africanisms, their African roots,
than any other African American culture in the country.
What was the reason that Gullah people were isolated?
Truth be told, I mean, these islands, back in the day, were not easy.
-Mm-hmm. -Malaria ran rampant.
And a lot of Europeans, in the summertime, would go up to the mountains
or further upstate to escape the diseases.
Um, we were more immune to malaria, things like that, coming from West Africa.
And so for us, that isolation was great
because you were able to hold on to your roots and culture.
The isolation was great back then,
but now, families don't want to be on these islands.
Things have become expensive.
There's golf courses and resorts all around us these days, right?
But how do we continue to preserve?
And to me, it's by not forgetting.
This is not no dying, vanishing culture.
We still here, we're still thriving, we're still pushing.
[gentle guitar music playing]
[Stephen] BJ took me to St. Helena Island,
where I met his mentors, Bill and Sara Green,
the owners of Gullah Grub.
[BJ] Mr. Bill Green. His wife, Sara.
They're the people I used to look up to.
Mr. Green I'd watch on TV.
He was unapologetic Gullah.
Now we gonna get ready for the fried chicken.
We gonna do some pan-fried chicken the old-fashioned way.
The way my grandmama used to make 'em.
That's the way we gon' make 'em today.
[BJ] He was one of the first people I knew
that was cooking food that resonated to me because it was our heritage.
[Bill] And then you add your shrimp.
I can show you how to do it the Gullah-style way.
Most people just make all kind of roux and all kinds of different things.
I'mma show you how to make the flavor stay in the gravy!
[Sara] I would say Gullah cooking is cooking, first of all, with love.
And cooking in season.
Everything that you eat, you eat it according to the season.
[Stephen] So, what are we gonna eat today?
Oh, we gonna have some red rice,
uh, some mullet fish,
cornbread, and some string beans.
I'll tell you a little story about that,
because that's how I win my wife over.
-[Stephen] Okay. -Over the mullet fish. [laughs]
Oh, yeah? What's the secret? Tell us the secret.
The secret about how I season the fish and cook it with love and kindness in it,
and when she bite into 'em, she said,
"Oh, I ain't had no fish like this in a long time."
-[Stephen] Sara, is that a true story? -It is a true story.
I had to have two servings of it for him to win my heart over.
-[Bill laughs] -Just to make sure.
"Damn," I said, "This man can cook!"
[all laughing]
[Bill] All right, gentlemen. Mullet fish!
All right.
Mullet fish and rice!
Mmm.
Delicious.
So good.
[Bill] Mullet fish…
We used to have the old gentleman
that come around with a mule and a cart,
with a big tub of mullet fish on the back end.
And he used to come through the neighborhood, singing the song,
♪ Mullet fish, mullet fish man ♪
♪ Mullet fish, five cent a pound Bring your pan ♪
♪ Mullet fish man ♪
Next thing you know, you sitting down on your porch,
you could smell mullet a mile away.
Everybody cooking mullet fish every different way.
I can't stop talking about the mullet fish.
I better try to start eating some of this mullet fish
because it tastes so good.
-[Stephen] What do we have here? -[Bill] Oh, we got some okra gumbo.
This be in the Gullah people diet all through the week.
You'll always find one or two houses that have
what they call either okra gumbo or okra soup.
-The okra's so good. -[Bill] Mm-hmm.
This type of food, Gullah food, you can feel 'em when you eat it.
That's the good thing about Gullah style cooking.
You can feel the food going in. You know you got something go in your body.
One bowl will carry you a long way.
I think even if you don't like okra in this culture…
-[Stephen] Mmm. -…you still gotta know how to cook it.
Because it's one of the main things we eat.
One of the main vegetables that's in our diet.
Who taught you how to cook gumbo?
Oh, man, you know I grew up…
My grandfather, he planted a little bit of everything, but he mainly planted okra.
My grandmother made a mean okra soup.
But I just grew up watching it. My mother makes it.
So, are y'all proud of Brother BJ here?
Yup. Seeing him trying to keep the culture and everything going is a blessing.
One of the greatest things for me is for people I looked up to as a youth
to tell me that I'm on the right track.
It truly motivates me to continue to do what I need to do.
[soft music playing]
[congregation singing]
♪ Come by here, Lord Come by here ♪
♪ Lord, we need you to Kumbaya ♪
♪ Well, Lord, We need you to Kumbaya ♪
♪ Lord, we need you to come by here ♪
[woman] ♪ Oh, Lord come by here ♪
♪ Oh, come by here, Lord ♪
[man] ♪ Come by here ♪
[woman] ♪ Come by here, Lord ♪
[man] ♪ Lord, come by here ♪
[woman] ♪ Come by here, Lord ♪
[man] ♪ Come by here ♪
[all] ♪ Oh, Lord, come by here ♪
[man 1] This Gullah just did this jump here.
Just came in when we were brought over.
-[man 2] Right! -[man 1] This is it.
Now you got Gullah Festival
and everybody else trying to learn about it.
Huh? And you had it all the time, but you just didn't know what you had
because they made you feel as though you were inferior.
But that's the best thing to happen to you.
You're closer to your culture than anybody else.
-[man 2] That's right. -[Smalls] I thank God for that.
I thank God for the prayer house.
I thank God for the teachers that we got,
and I'm proud of where I came from.
Come, Holy Spirit, heavenly endowed with thy power.
Come put a flame with sacred love in these cold hearts of ours.
Look how we grab our heavy load!
From of this earth,
our souls will neither fly nor go to reach eternal joy.
We pray, Heavenly Father, for this plantation, Heavenly Father.
These are not our beds. We ask in thy holy name. Everybody say…
[all] Amen.
[gentle music playing]
[Stephen] As I continued to immerse myself in the Gullah culture,
I landed on one of the most remote of the Sea Islands.
Daufuskie Island is only accessible by boat,
and I joined Brother BJ as he prepared a traditional whole-hog roast
at the home of Miss Sallie Ann Robinson.
[upbeat music playing]
Miss Sallie, you… We got this right here.
Okay, I'll just give you a hole here.
[Stephen] Miss Sallie Ann is a chef and cookbook author,
and is better known as the Gullah Diva.
[Sallie Ann] There we go.
I'm sixth generation, born native.
We didn't know any more than living off the land.
Gardening…
And we would go to the ocean and get bundles of shrimp and fish and crabs.
[Stephen] Wow.
[Sallie Ann] We went to the woods and seeked out the wild games.
We just had a good life.
So, I'm gonna put these pig feet in here.
-[Stephen] Beautiful. -[Sallie Ann] I start and I clean 'em up.
And they ready for some good cooking.
And I'm going to put some peas in there once this meat boils.
We gonna have some peas and pig feet.
Are you familiar with the phrase "high on the hog"?
Oh, yeah.
Going back to back in the slavery days.
Hog was a big deal.
Folks on the plantation would kill it for they master,
but all they got was the parts of the hog,
like the feet and the tail and the intestine,
and they'd turn these actual meaningless-to-the-master parts
into great meals for their family.
And now it's kind of coming back into fashion as a delicacy.
People would say, "Throw away. We throw these away."
Well, you throw them over here,
and then I'll make something like this, and then they want it.
[Stephen] So, what comes next?
Well, we gonna let that cook for a good 30, 40 minutes,
and then I'll wash them peas and throw them in there.
[Stephen] Right in.
[Sallie Ann] Today, I'm doing the field peas.
[Stephen] Do you add more seasonings or anything like that?
No. Right now, no. I'm gonna wait 'til the peas get in,
-then dice a little onion in it. -[Stephen] Then we'll be in business.
-[Sallie Ann] We'll be in business. Yeah. -[Stephen] All right.
Ahh! That aroma. [laughs]
[BJ] Y'all ready?
I'm gonna take it out, and just come my way.
One, two, three.
All right.
Lift.
Lift up. [grunts]
[Stephen] What are you putting on there?
[BJ] This is just some red pepper, some dried ginger, and garlic in there.
So, what makes this tradition so special?
Um…
You know, honestly, this was really just done once a year,
typically during the winter, typically for the whole community.
So, all the families. And there are probably multiple hogs,
broken down.
-Some would be salted for ham… -[Stephen] Mm-hmm.
…some would be smoked, some would be made into sausage.
It was a community thing.
This is an animal that, honestly, was not eaten every day,
-like you see now. -[Stephen] Yeah.
This was to feed the community.
Usually done in the winter, for your survival through the winter.
It was a annual thing.
[Stephen] So, who taught you how to do this?
-[BJ chuckles] -[Stephen] You taught yourself?
-Watched the elders. -Yeah?
-See Miss Sallie Ann right there? -[Stephen] Yeah.
[BJ] Having conversations with elders
and older folks like-- Miss Sallie ain't no elder, though.
-[Sallie Ann] No. -I ain't gonna put that on her yet.
-Kids have to be a part of the process… -[Stephen] Mm-hmm.
so as they get older,
they would know what to do and how to feed they family.
-[BJ] This animal gives us life. -[Stephen] Mm-hmm.
You pay respects to taking a life of a animal.
-[Stephen] Definitely. -Make sure you don't mess it up.
So, you have to watch this all night?
-[Sallie Ann] Oh, yeah. -[BJ] No sleep gang tonight, baba.
-No sleep? -[Sallie Ann laughing]
No sleep gang tonight, baba.
-[Stephen] We drinking beer or coffee? -[exhales]
It ain't too hot, so beer won't dehydrate us.
-Okay. -If it was hot, I'd tell you water, brah.
-Yeah. -Yeah.
-[Sallie Ann laughing] -I don't want you pass out out here, man.
[gentle music playing]
We're waiting for these coals to cool off 'cause you don't want 'em too hot.
Yep.
-Right here. -[man] Yes, sir.
[BJ] Yeah.
You're welcome to come back, baba.
-[Stephen] Come back? -Play with fire.
You can come back right 'bout two, three, four.
Come out here day clean. We'll be right here.
[music continues]
[BJ] I'm gonna start sliding charcoal in.
I think we good. Now it's just a waiting game.
[soft music playing]
[inhales and exhales deeply]
[man] ♪ Whoa, leaves ♪
♪ Adam in the garden picking up leaves ♪
♪ Oh, Adam ♪
-[women] ♪ Picking up leaves ♪ -[man] ♪ Oh, poor Adam ♪
-♪ Picking up leaves ♪ -♪ Oh, brother ♪
-♪ Picking up leaves ♪ -♪ Oh, Adam ♪
-♪ Picking up leaves ♪ -♪ Yeah ♪
-♪ Picking up leaves ♪ -♪ Oh, Adam ♪
-♪ Picking up leaves ♪ -♪ Yeah, Adam ♪
-♪ Picking up leaves ♪ -♪ Yes, Adam ♪
-♪ Picking up leaves ♪ -♪ Adam in the garden ♪
-♪ Picking up leaves ♪ -♪ Adam and Eve ♪
-♪ Picking up leaves ♪ -♪ God called Adam ♪
-♪ Picking up leaves ♪ -♪ Adam answered ♪
-♪ Picking up leaves ♪ -♪ Oh ♪
-♪ Picking up leaves ♪ -♪ Oh, Adam ♪
[Stephen] It's hard not to feel the impact of BJ's commitment,
and his influence has spread outside of the Gullah community.
Out in Apex, North Carolina,
I met his friend Gabrielle Eitienne,
who has been exploring her own cultural roots through food.
[Gabrielle] I started researching the Sea Islands,
and then learning about the work that BJ was doing in South Carolina.
And I remember coming home,
and my grandfather had some collard seeds hanging under his shed,
and I was like, "What is that, Pop?"
And he was like, "That's how you get your collard seeds. I'm drying them out."
"Say that again, please, sir. What is that you say?"
And all the research I was doing
was aligning with what I was learning from my grandfather.
So, you packed up from New York and came back home, huh?
Yeah, essentially.
I packed my things in a minivan
and got up the road.
It felt like it was ordained.
What did your grandpa say when you came back home?
[laughs]
[Gabrielle] He was like, "I didn't think I'd see you here
until you were walking around with a cane."
[laughing] Which is kinda, like…
hilarious.
[soothing music playing]
[Gabrielle] A part of the way that I'm sharing
some of these lessons from my elders
is to host community dinners.
These dinners are focused on the cultivation and preservation
of Black food tradition.
This food feeds our community all around us.
We still have grocery stores,
but that's not the same as being able to come over and pick from the salad patch
or getting your collards from someone you know.
I've been able to rethink how we can still continue to access, like, fresh food.
I feel like I've just started getting warmed up
-to some of the possibility of this space… -[Stephen] Of course.
…and what it could mean for our community,
which is a historically Black community.
[Stephen] Gabrielle's commitment to the land
her family has lived on for generations was admirable,
but come to find out, her whole setup was in jeopardy.
So, what is happening with the land?
The Department of Transportation is building out a highway,
and so what is now a two-lane road, it'll be a seven-lane expressway.
And so it's supposed to cut through the garden,
like right across there.
Then on the other side, it's gonna displace my uncle Andrew, my uncle Lynn.
Um, all my relatives on that side
and some further down on our side also will have to move.
And there's no, like, option. They don't give you an option to stay.
So, basically, eminent domain is what we're talking about.
Yeah. Exactly.
And what is that like for your family?
A lot of the conversations are hard because
people in their seventies and eighties don't want to move
from the homes that they've known for a long time.
Uncle Andrew is the one who plants this garden with me.
And so, like, to put him in another place,
it just-- It repositions so much. It changes so much.
What's crazy is my uncle talks about
how this land wouldn't even bear grass at one point.
It was really, like, the undesired place to live.
And that's how, you know, Black folks got it.
It was only sold to Black people at one time.
And so, now that we got it, and we've grown it, and we've nurtured it,
and we've given it ourselves…
now, you know…
-[Stephen] It's time to go. -Now it's time to go.
[gentle music playing]
[Gabrielle] As we're re-imagining this land and this space
and what it means to us,
we are also going to continue to cultivate food
and joy and laughter and creativity on this land.
Because continuing those things, even with the given circumstances,
feels like resistance to me.
[man] Heavenly Father, we are so grateful and thankful for Gabrielle
and for all she does, Lord,
to unite people in the community around the food, around the table,
because around the table, that's where a lot of stories are created
and legacies are made.
And we are so grateful and thankful for opening up this home,
this farm that has a lot of history, a lot of legacy,
and we just ask that you bless this meal for the nourishing of our bodies. Amen.
-Ase. -Amen.
[Gabrielle] Beautiful! Thank you, guys!
[Stephen] Thank you.
[Gabrielle] It feels so good to be surrounded by all this love.
-I have some poulet rouge hens… -[Stephen] Amazing.
…that I cooked over the coals and brined for two days
with love and cinnamon and cumin and smoked paprika,
and then I dressed 'em in a strawberry wine glaze shallot.
I have some dried field peas and white beans,
turnip salad, red onion and shiitake mushrooms…
and a hickory-smoked beet cornbread.
This beautiful cabbage, we charred and dressed them
in a dressing that I made from pear preserves,
and red wine vinegar and white pepper and benne seed.
And I think that's it,
so enjoy and dig in.
-[woman] This particular variety-- -[Gabrielle] Yeah?
[guests chattering]
-[Gabrielle] I don't know. -[chatter continues]
-So good. -[Gabrielle] I love y'all.
-Y'all so dramatic. -No.
[Gabrielle laughs]
No, this is our restraint.
[man] Your turnip greens have transported me back in time.
They are the closest, in terms of taste,
that I've had since childhood,
of greens cooked this way.
They have a richness of taste that
I didn't realize that I was missing until just now.
I'm really interested in, like, you as kind of,
a guardian of this legacy of celebration
and convening in this house.
-What we're doing now, you know? -Hello. And here's to the crew.
-Oh, my God! -Hey.
[man] You made it!
-[Stephen] Wow. -[all laughing]
-All right. Y'all be good. -[Stephen] That's all we get?
[Gabrielle] That's all we get? You're not gonna chat for a minute?
Y'all be good.
[Stephen] No.
-[Gabrielle] You don't want no chicken? -Y'all be good.
Thank you, Uncle Andrew.
-This means so much. -All right.
[Stephen] Thank you, Uncle Andrew.
-This is what I'm talking about. -This is what I'm talking about, too.
-Well, talk about it. Really. -This is it.
This just feels so, like…
To have dropped off, like, the wine we made together, it's like…
-[voice breaking] I'm sorry. -No, it's okay.
[gentle music playing]
[sighs]
So, the reason, um…
communing in these spaces is important…
um… is, like, just for this.
My, um…
My uncle that just dropped this off, a lot of you already know that, um…
he's being forcibly removed from his home.
-Mmm. -[Gabrielle] Through eminent domain.
[woman] Mm.
[man] It sounds so benign.
-[Stephen] Right? -[man] And it's so otherwise.
Yeah.
Um…
We've been packing his stuff…
-Mmm. -…for, like, the past month.
I mean, this is the last week that he's actually in his home.
[woman] Mmm.
[Gabrielle] And he wouldn't say it,
but his heart is really heavy right now,
and he's really feeling the impact of that and what that means for him.
So for him to still come through and bring me this…
[tearfully] …is really
something I can't…
Um…
Him and my grandfather have inspired the work that I'm doing right now.
They've been teaching me… [sighs]
…so much about what they know about our food tradition.
And the way that I like to think, like, I'm woke and I'm, like,
I know, like, Black people and our needs and, you know, I know our history.
Like, coming home and being with them, I've learned so much about our history
through the food that we're eating and we're growing,
and through communion like this.
It just shows you, like, why this is important.
They can never take away what you learned underneath those pines.
That can never be taken from you,
and we need you to hold on to that.
To that knowledge and to that feeling and to that drive, you know?
Mm-hmm.
That's yours now.
[soft music playing]
[birds chirping]
[rhythmic music playing]
[Stephen] What are we making? What is this?
So, today we're just making a classic barbecue house dish of South Carolina.
Head hash.
I've chopped up everything you can imagine that comes off the head.
-Okay. -Right here.
And I got a little bit left to cut.
Can you do me a favor, grab that barbecue sauce?
Oh, yeah. I'll be right back.
So we boil the head in this broth right here.
So…
It's typically half head broth, half barbecue sauce.
[Stephen] Okay.
All we do is let it simmer down, like a stew.
[Stephen] Yeah.
Serve over rice.
[Stephen] So, what is the history of this dish?
The theory is the enslaved were always given the inferior parts,
and they made do with those inferior parts,
but when we came from West Africa,
you know, when we did hunt animals, every part was already used,
so they already had the knowledge of using the offcuts.
So, what's in this barbecue sauce?
This is a mustard-based sauce, with a tomato base in it.
-Okay. -[BJ] This goes right in here.
Okay. You know, in North Carolina, we like vinegar,
-but I'm not hatin' on you. -You be hatin' the dish?
-[laughs] I'm trying not to. -[Stephen] Not today.
And you're gonna cook this back down again?
Yeah. We're gonna put this back on the burner.
Nice.
[Gabrielle] Okay.
So, this is just the whole-- Everything from the head?
-Everything. -The tongue. The eyes? Everything.
-You name it. -I need to know.
You see that right there?
-Whatever's not in there is in here. -Yeah, whatever was there.
[BJ] So, I throw that barbecue sauce in it.
Oh, yeah.
-I'll grab a spoon. Do you need these? -No, you can grab that.
-Okay. -And you can go right over here, man…
-[Stephen] Okay. -…and get this on the burner.
[Stephen] How long are you gonna cook this?
[BJ] About 30 minutes. Let it simmer. Let it start bubblin'.
Sauce smells good.
This where the party at? [laughs]
[BJ] Now we invite the community to come join.
[Sallie Ann] The community. Come join us.
Hey. Hey, sweetie, how you doin'?
[guest] Hey, hey.
Hey, hey. How's everybody?
[upbeat music playing]
[BJ] Yeah.
All right. Beaut.
That's gonna be… Yeah, right there.
-Pull it out. Yeah. -Pull the wire all the way out.
All right, that's cool.
[guests chattering]
-[BJ] She just want to go up to it, and-- -[Gabrielle] She ready now.
[music continues]
Now I'm gonna treat myself to some cracklin'.
-[Sallie Ann laughs] Yes. -[Gabrielle] Okay.
-Mmm! Y'all hear it across the table? -[Sallie Ann] Yeah!
[Gabrielle] I definitely heard it.
That's how you know.
-[Sallie Ann] Yep, it's right. -[Gabrielle] Save some for me.
-My uncle Andrew made this wine. -[Sallie Ann] All right.
[Gabrielle] This is plum wine.
We'll raise a toast to our ancestors, elders…
[Sallie Ann] Ancestors, yes.
…past, present, future.
[Gabrielle] Absolutely.
-Cheers. -[Gabrielle] Cheers.
-Nice. -[BJ] That's good.
So good.
-[Gabrielle] So good with the pig. -[BJ] Really balanced.
[all] ♪ Hey, oh, riding on ♪
-[woman] ♪ Riding there ♪ -[all] ♪ Yeah ♪
-♪ Riding there ♪ -♪ Yeah ♪
-♪ Riding there ♪ -♪ Hey, oh, riding on ♪
-♪ But I feel fine ♪ -♪ Yeah ♪
-♪ I feel fine ♪ -♪ Yeah ♪
-♪ I feel fine ♪ -♪ Hey, oh, riding, riding on ♪
-♪ I feel fine ♪ -♪ Yeah ♪
-♪ I feel fine ♪ -♪ Hey, oh, riding, riding on ♪
-♪ Two white horses ♪ -♪ Yeah ♪
-♪ Two white horses ♪ -♪ Hey, oh, riding, riding on ♪
[song fading atmospherically]
[somber orchestral music playing]
[Stephen] The stories of our ancestors don't just begin and end in the South.
Slavery was flourishing in the North.
New York was the backbone of an emerging nation.
And while our founding fathers were penning the Constitution in Philadelphia,
it would be their enslaved chefs
who would establish the palate for a new democracy.
[somber music continues]