City Of Fort Worth: Library's Juneteenth Program Brings A Taste Of Africa To Texas

Press release from City of Fort Worth:

June 07, 2021

Join award-winning culinary historian Michael W. Twitty to discuss the African roots of Texas cooking and how those traditions continue to flavor Juneteenth celebrations. The Fort Worth Public Library is featuring Twitty in “Africa to Texas: A Juneteenth Journey” on June 14.

“Our traditions are a way of knowing ourselves,” Twitty said. “We feel these food traditions deep in our bones and we can’t shake them from our plates. It’s enjoyable and sobering to know where they come from and why they remain so dear to us.”

The Zoom presentation will guide attendees through the foodways of enslaved Afro-Texans with Twitty’s unique insight and research into the African American culinary traditions of the historic South. Juneteenth is a holiday that originated in Galveston and celebrates the emancipation of slaves.

“It’s important to show the strains of African American culture that went into Texas,” Twitty said. “It was a complex braid of cultures not only drawn from across the antebellum American South, but from Africa and through the Caribbean as well, and each one of those cultures made an impact on the food culture.”

One of Twitty’s most interesting finds about Texas is centered on Brazoria County, which is just south of the Houston metro area on the Gulf Coast. The county had the largest number of people who reported being born in Africa or who had parents or grandparents born in Africa on the 1870 census.

“It’s a great place to ask what were the links to West and Central Africa,” Twitty said.

Twitty also promises a special takeaway for attendees of “Africa to Texas: A Juneteenth Journey.”

“We will have a new appreciation for Texas barbecue!”

Twitty is an accomplished author who has appeared on Bizarre Foods America with Andrew Zimmern, Many Rivers to Cross with Henry Louis Gates, Taste the Nation with Top Chef’s Padma Lakshmi and Michelle Obama’s Waffles and Mochi show on Netflix. His book, The Cooking Gene, won the 2018 James Beard Award, making him the first Black author to do so. Twitty blogs at Afroculinaria.com.

Registration for the one-hour Zoom session at 7 p.m. June 14 is available online. 

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This press release was produced by City of Fort Worth. The views expressed here are the author’s own.