Status Updates From American Soul: The Black Hi...

Today, critics note that sugar production in the US continues to reflect the system of exploitation that underpinned its founding. Prison labor is still used in Louisiana to grow sugarcane.

FBI reports documented forced labor in Louisiana sugar production. In the 1980s, there was a congressional investigation into exploitation of West Indian sugar workers.

Black enslaved laborers replaced African yams with indigenous cassava, utilizing knowledge from Indigenous peoples regarding its preparation to make new food traditions. Black peoples, often women tasked with food preparation for the plantation, took imported ingredients like plantains, grown to feed enslaved laborers, and turned them into staples of local cuisine.

“… progression of southern cuisine in which the ‘wall of culinary segregation gradually disintegrated over the centuries as signature ingredients of the African diaspora stealthily made their way into white kitchens and onto white tables’”