I’m not convinced there’s racism here. I’m 64 years old, and I have never seen BBQ accredited to Blacks prior to this. Is that racism or is it reality?
Don’t forget, there are people out there that claim Blacks built this nation too. Is it also racist not to accept that?
“I’m not convinced there’s racism here. I’m 64 years old, and I have never seen BBQ accredited to Blacks prior to this. Is that racism or is it reality?”
I grew up in NC, and my understanding is their eastern BBQ was associated with tobacco. Flue cured tobacco was cured in tobacco barns that had a small fire built outside in a small pit and the “flue” drew the heat and smoke into the barn (through a small channel dug in the ground that led to the floor of the curing barn) , then out the top.
Fires had to be kept burning all night, so it cost nothing more in labor to smoke a hog at the same time. Farmers/share croppers tended the fires, some were black, some were white.
Was this the origin of pit cooked BBQ? Probably not, but great BBQ can be found everywhere in Tobacco country.
I'm just guessing here, but much of Southern cuisine is often attributed to blacks, in no small part because black women were the cooks on large plantations that ran the cultural life of early America in the South. Fried chicken is very frequently attributed to African cooking patterns. Early American barbecue methods were originally done outdoors in a pit; something that is more likely to have arisen in hot Southern climates and to have had its antecedents in primitive, no-tech African cooking using hot coals and heated stones buried with the meat overnight, or spit roasting over open flames with tree limbs as the only available technology.
Black BBQ has a long and unique history, born of poverty and necessity.