Invite Only’s First Cookout: A Juneteenth Fish Fry
While doing research for my first pop-up dinner, I came across this excellent piece about the history of Juneteenth and why it’s so significant. It isn’t just commemorating the day, it’s honoring a history that was repeatedly whitewashed and taken from us. America has tried to take Juneteenth away from Black folks since Jim Crow, so the fact that it exists and we celebrate it today is an act of defiance in and of itself.
And that is what is in the spirit of Juneteenth: Celebrating the liberty and freedom of being a whole person, of being able to be connected to your past, but also about fighting for that liberty and freedom and its preservation for the future. It’s a reminder to not only be active against the oppressive systems that would tell us we are lesser, but to be joyous and shine bright despite them.
On June 19 this year, I started a new endeavor called I.O. — Invite Only: A pop-up dinner series that is centered on Black food history and traditions, as well as political education and activism. To celebrate the spirit of Juneteenth, I decided the first meal would be a fish fry.
Fishing and seafood were key parts of daily life in Western African cultures, and that transferred over to enslaved life in America as well. For thousands of years these people relied on seafood to sustain their bodies and celebrate special occasions. After being stripped of everything, including nutrition, this was a way to hold on to their culture and have something to eat they actually enjoyed.
Slaves worked at least 10–12 hours a day, often more, for 6 days a week. According to James Beard-winning food author Adrian Miller, “the work schedule on the plantation would slow down by noon on Saturday, so enslaved people had the rest of that day to do what they wanted.” Oftentimes, they would go fishing at a nearby river, bringing back their catch as a treat. Plantation owners didn’t mind them keeping the fish because it was a meal they didn’t have to provide. In some instances, such as with catfish, the fish had a reputation of being “trashy” or not worth eating. The fish would be fried outside over a fire, and would bring folks together. I like to imagine this was something they looked forward to: a moment they were able to be themselves again.
In the years after Emancipation, during the Great Migration, Black folks spread this tradition across the country and began opening cheap fried fish shacks and restaurants. Fish Fry’s began to be used as fundraisers for churches in the Black community, historically pillars of activism and mutual aid in Black communities across the country. Miller theorized that as Black folks began to move into cities, the tradition moved to Friday as a result of Catholic influence on cities. Catholics ate fish on Fridays, and fish markets began to have sales on Fridays, so it would be cheaper to fund a fish fry. But no matter where you go in this country, the Fish Fry is a staple of community, coming together, and more often than not family reunions amongst Black people. The only thing that changes is the sides.
Now we won’t talk about Fried Fish and Spaghetti here, nor do I intend to discuss it ever again. We’re here to talk about the perfect companion to all fried fish: Red Horse Bread.
Red horse bread is one of those southern food items that’s origin has been mythologized into several tall legends. There’s the one about the nuns who made “corn croquettes” and they made their way over to the States. There’s the one about confederate soldiers making some red horse bread and tossing it to their dogs to keep them quiet. There’s the obligatory racist one about the mammy of the house cooking and the children would be crying and the dogs would be barking. She cooked up some red horse bread and gave it to the children and dogs telling them to “Hush babies. Hush puppies.”
Hush puppies are what we know them as. Cornmeal, flour, milk, egg, and not much else dropped into some hot oil. But thanks to the work of food historian Robert Moss, we know its origin is much more interesting. Romeo “Romy” Govan was a former slave who settled in a shack along the Edisto River in South Carolina. He kept the house and the yard swept and clean, and would host fish fries that gathered influential politicians and businessmen. He became renown for his excellent cooking and storytelling, but was specifically praised for his “red horse bread.” Red horse was actually a common type of fish in the nearby river, and his red horse bread was just “cornmeal with water, salt, and egg and dropped by spoonfuls into hot lard.” A hush puppy by any other name.
Despite the recognition from papers and members of high society for his talents, Romy was still a Black man in America, and a former slave at that. He and his wife, Sylvia, were both illiterate. The same papers that would claim his red horse bread was, “so delicious, that I beg lovers of the finny tribe to try some,” would also call him “dusky” and a “darkey.” Romy and Sylvia didn’t own the shack or the land they were living on as late as 1900 according to public records. And yet, by saving his earnings from his famous fish fries, Romy was able to buy the shack and the surrounding land. By the time he died in 1915, he had an estate of over 100 acres that he left to his wife.
I think its important we remember this story and that we honor people like Romeo Govan, especially on Juneteenth. To celebrate our ancestors who were freed, and with their liberty and their skills, tried to gain even more liberty for themselves and future generations. But Juneteenth isn’t just about the celebration of Black Liberation, it’s about what we all lose when that liberty is taken away: Artists, cooks, musicians, politicians, teachers, writers, leaders — we lose history. Not just the history that exists, but the history that could have been, too.
Black people still aren’t free in America. To quote W.E.B. DuBois, “The slave went free; stood a brief moment in the sun; then moved back again toward slavery.” Instead of chattel slavery and plantation owners, we have mass incarceration and police officers. Roughly 13% of the U.S. population is Black, yet 40% of America’s incarcerated population is Black people. The Stanford Open Policing Project discovered that police generally pull over Black drivers more than white drivers for traffic stops, in some cities 3–4 times more. Between 2004 and 2012, the New York Police Department made 4.4 million stops under the city’s stop-and-frisk policy: Over 80% of those stops were Black and Latinx people. Companies like Amazon, Whole Foods, Starbucks, Victoria’s Secret, Sprint, Wendy’s, and more all have used prison labor to avoid paying fair wages for their production labor.
I don’t think it’s necessary, right now, to go into detail about police beating, murdering, and terrorizing Black citizens… but if you can’t see it by now, I wouldn’t be able to help you anyway.
The system of policing in this country is not broken. In fact, it is working exactly as intended. Incarcerated people are often not counted in various studies and population statistics, so they might as well not exist. Beyond that, felons aren’t allowed to vote, and can have difficulty getting jobs, which can further skew data. All of this makes it easier to obscure the answers to important questions, like what resources people need and who gets them.
So when we talk about Black Liberation, we are also talking defunding and abolishing the police. That isn’t a metaphor, or a euphemism, or a slogan. It literally means that in order for people to be liberated we need to divest from policing and invest in education, public health, community aid, and other social programs.
With that in mind, I’m choosing to use the proceeds from I.O.’s first pop-up dinner to support Black Lives Matter DC and BYP100 DC’s campaign to Defund the Metro Police Department. I chose this campaign not only because I truly and strongly support their mission, but also because BLM DC and BYP100 DC are the organizations that brought me into activism work and furthering my own political education. I encourage you to educate yourself further on the movement to defund the police, and to get involved, by visiting defundmpd.org, specifically their “Abolition Reader,” which is an excellent compilation of resources for understanding abolition.
Thank you again to all who participated in the first dinner for Invite Only, and to all who expressed interest. In the future, I will have this done before you eat your food, so you can appreciate your meals even more. If you weren’t able to get a plate, I hope this gives you a better understanding of what the project is about as a whole. But beyond that, I hope you’re all well, and safe, and that you never stop fighting for a better future.
