To Taste Freedom: Five Foods that Liberate Us
Honoring the Juneteenth Season through Ancestral Nourishment.
Dear Beloveds,
This Juneteenth, I invite you to not just reflect but to feast.
Feast with your hands, your Ancestors, your whole being.
Feast in a way that reflects the past, holds the present, and nourishes the dreams of a liberated future.
For us, food is not merely sustenance. It’s memory. It’s resistance. It’s medicine. It's a legacy of soul passed down across bloodlines, borders, and broken systems. It has speaks when we cannot, held us when we were barred from thriving, and gathered us together when oppressive systems worked to tear us apart.
These five foods, humble and sacred, familiar and powerful, hold stories of our people. Through them, we remember who we were before we were stolen. Who we became in the midst of terror. Who we continue to be in joy, in grief, in gathering, and in grace.
Watermelon: Sweetness They Tried to Shame
Before the chains. Before the ships. Before the caricatures. There was wild watermelon, thriving in the Kalahari Desert, cultivated lovingly along the banks of the Nile, sliced open at celebrations to honor life, fertility, and abundance. Watermelon wasn’t just a fruit in Africa; it was a symbol of joy and sustenance, a cooling blessing under a hot sun, a community staple.
During slavery, it was grown in hidden plots by our Ancestors, shared in moments of respite. It offered sweetness amid bitterness, hydration amid heat and hunger. After Emancipation, many newly freed Black farmers grew watermelon as one of their first cash crops, proof of their independence and self-reliance. But white supremacy weaponized this joy, turning watermelon into a tool of ridicule through racist propaganda.
Still, we eat. Still, we savor.
Every time we crack open a watermelon today, especially when we share it on a sun-drenched lawn, sticky-fingered and laughing…we reclaim our joy. We resurrect our dignity. We say: You cannot take this sweetness from us. Watermelon is not shame; it is a seed of freedom.
Vanilla Ice Cream & Butter Pecan
Vanilla may seem simple, but it carries centuries of stolen labor, suppressed genius, and quiet defiance. The story begins in the Motherland, in Madagascar, where the vanilla orchid was notoriously difficult to pollinate, until an enslaved child, Edmond Albius, discovered the hand-pollination technique still used today. His brilliance transformed vanilla into a global commodity, but like so many of our Ancestors, his name was buried while others profited.
In the kitchens of the American South, it was Black hands that churned vanilla ice cream for enslavers, carefully crafted, never tasted. And even after Emancipation, vanilla remained a forbidden sweetness. Under Jim Crow, many white establishments barred Black people from ordering vanilla ice cream altogether. It wasn’t just discrimination but humiliation wrapped in dessert. This white-colored treat becoming a line we weren’t allowed to cross.
But we made a new flavor.
In response to being denied access to vanilla ice cream, our community innovated butter pecan, a rich, caramel-hued, nut-studded dessert made in dignity and intention. Butter pecan became a taste of home, of identity, of adaptation. A new classic was born not out of preference, but necessity and one that still lives at the heart of our culture.
Today, whether we enjoy vanilla, butter pecan, or both, we do so with full knowledge of the story in every scoop, sweetening our legacy with every bite. What was once denied is now reclaimed. What was once used to exclude is now ours to savor, freely, fully, with pride.
Okra: The Seed We Carried
Okra is an ancestral offering. A seed of memory braided into our hair, tucked into our pockets, carried across the Atlantic with the Black body. It is one of the oldest and most enduring foodways of the African Diaspora, grown, cooked, and revered on both sides of the ocean.
In West Africa, okra thickens stews and soups, binding spices and vegetables together with silk and flavor. Once on plantations, it became a foundation of gumbo, a dish that blended African, Indigenous, and European ingredients into something uniquely ours. To eat okra was to remember: who we were, where we came from, and what still lives inside us.
After emancipation, okra remained a staple in Black Southern kitchens. It grown in backyards, shared between neighbors, and showing up at Sunday suppers and summer cookouts. Today, its slimy texture is still a subject of debate (for my partner, it is a no) but it’s precisely that richness, that complexity, that makes okra sacred. It doesn’t water itself down to be palatable. It shows up whole.
Okra is a story of resilience wrapped in a pod.
Cornbread: The Alchemy of Survival
Cornbread is a recipe of resilience born from collision, molded by necessity, and perfected by Black hands. Long before wheat became dominant, cornmeal was the flour of the people. Indigenous nations introduced it to the enslaved, and together with African preparation styles, a new food tradition emerged.
On plantations, enslaved people were given rations of cornmeal and scraps. From these remnants, they created sustenance - grits, hoecakes, and cornbread cooked over open flames in cast iron skillets. These meals were simple, often the only reliable nourishment during brutal work days.
After enslavement, cornbread came with us. To family reunions, juke joints, jails, protest camps. It showed up, dressed up or down, crumbled in greens, sweetened with molasses, or sliced thick and served with stew.
Every bite of cornbread is a moment of reverence. A reminder that we have always made something out of nothing. We have always fed each other. We have always survived, and thriving, on what we’ve been told isn’t enough.
Collard Greens: The Sacred Stew of Our Ancestors
Collards are more than greens. They are gospel. They are grief. They are prayer in plant form. Brought into African American foodways through a blend of African knowledge and Southern adaptation, collards became central to our soul food. While whites discarded the leafy tops and kept the hearts, families simmered those so-called scraps into homely meals. With the addition of smoked turkey necks or salt pork, onions and vinegar, we turned bitterness into fortune.
In enslavement, greens were slow food in a fast-paced nightmare. They could be tended between tasks, stirred in snatched moments, shared at day’s end. The broth they left behind, “pot liquor” was so nourishing it became a cure-all, especially for the young and the sick. Elders encouraging it as medicine, and passing the knowledge on.
Today, collards still anchor the Black table, on holidays, and especially on Sundays. Cooking them, a ritual. Stirring them, a sermon. Every pot of greens is an altar, a medicinal, a liberational rite.
These foods are not just symbols. They are evidence. That we have always lived with intention. That we have always crafted beauty and brilliance out of what we were given. That we know how to make a meal a communal miracle.
This Juneteenth, don’t just grill. Don’t just post. Gather your people. Set the table. Speak the family and collective names. Taste the freedom.
Grandma Rose’s Watermelon & Orange Salad
From “Saturday Magic: A Hoodoo Story”
INGREDIENTS
A watermelon (yellow or red)
Cucumber
A few oranges
Small red onion
Juice of half a lime
Honey
Cinnamon
Mint
DIRECTIONS
• Dice the cucumber into small cubes.
• Chop the watermelon.
• Peel and slice oranges into bite-size chunks.
• Thinly slice the onion.
• Mix the fruit and onion together in a large bowl.
• Squeeze half of the lime on top of the mixture.
• Swirl a little bit of honey on top.
• Toss with a big spoon.
• Sprinkle on cinnamon.
• Add the mint and toss again.
• Season to taste.
• Make it your own and enjoy!
Download the Printable Recipe Card
Share it. Print it. Offer it. Bless someone’s table with it.
May your Juneteenth be filled with flavor, fire, and becoming collectively freeer than the day before.
With liberation and love,
Nyasha W
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