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Earlier this year, Bobby J. Smith II visited Comanche Crossing, which sits along the coast of Lake Mexia in Texas, with his father.
It was the first time in more than 60 years that his dad had set foot in the park where he and his family participated in huge, annual Juneteenth cookouts alongside countless other Black families from the area.
The mysterious drownings of three Black teens in the lake during the 1981 cookout have since cast a shadow over the annual event. But that didn’t make the return any less memorable for Smith’s dad. As he traversed the grounds, he fondly recalled the way he and his peers would run around and play while “watching the adults dance and just be free.” And then came a flood of memories about the food: “barbecue ribs, chicken, brisket, blood sausage, raccoon, armadillo, fried chicken, potato salad, beans and yellow meat watermelon …”
A scholar of African American food culture, Smith came away from the visit seeing the annual holiday in a whole new light.
In the smoked meats his father’s family spent hours preparing, Smith could see the enslaved people who used to slaughter hogs for families of their own. In the massive bowls of potato salad his father described, Smith could see the agricultural knowledge passed down from generations of slaves to their descendants.
“The mouthwatering spreads laid out each year” do “more than nourish Black Texans,” he writes. They celebrate “the way food was wielded as a tool of resistance and a symbol of freedom during and after slavery.”
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