28 minute read
Black Smoke
Top: Justin Phillips (left) interviews Adrian Miller on stage at the Club. Below: Scenes from the after-program feast. (Photos by Sarah Gonzalez/SMG Foto.)
FOR THE FIRST IN-PERSON CLUB
program since the pandemic struck, we heard about the African American roots and craft of barbecue in America. From the June 28, 2021, program “Black Smoke: African Americans and the United States of Barbecue,” part of our Food Lit series, underwritten by the Bernard Osher Foundation ADRIAN MILLER, Writer; Certified Barbecue Judge; Attorney; Author, Black Smoke: African Americans and the United States of Barbecue In Conversation with JUSTIN PHILLIPS, Columnist, San Francisco Chronicle JUSTIN PHILLIPS: Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to today’s program with Inforum and The Commonwealth Club. This is the first in-studio audience in 15 months. Today, I’m honored to be in conversation with food writer, James Beard Award winner, attorney and certified barbecue judge, Adrian Miller. In honor of the Fourth of July, we’re here to explore an inherently American tradition, southern barbecue. The history of barbecue is a smoke-filled story of Black perseverance, culinary innovation and entrepreneurship. It’s also, like many things, a misunderstood story. We are here to learn about the real history of barbecue in America and the critical role that African Americans have played in that story.
Now, let’s rock and roll. Before you became Adrian Miller as the food world knows you, you were in the world of politics,
doing work with the Clinton administration? Am I right? ADRIAN MILLER: Yes. PHILLIPS: So I wanted to ask which is harder, being in a room where you have to develop policies that affect millions of people, or telling one person the history of barbecue? MILLER: Oh, man. I think it’s telling one person the history of barbecue. PHILLIPS: Why is that? MILLER: A lot of people don’t really pay attention until you get to the end result of policy, but barbecue people come in with their own preconceived notions of what it is and how to do it right, so part of the fun is arguing about barbecue. A lot of people really don’t know the true history of barbecue, but they are dead set on what they think it is. PHILLIPS: Everyone has that point where they wanted to break through and learn more about a topic. For you, it was when you read Southern Food: At Home, on the Road, in History by John Egerton. The author believed that there “had yet to be written a true tribute to Black achievement in the American culinary scene.” Do you think that gap has been filled? And how far do we have to go until you feel like we’re at a good place? MILLER: I think we’ve made a lot of progress on that in the last 15 years. So when I first started looking at the subject, there wasn’t really much written in fact. What launched this journey was unemployment.
I was in between the Clinton administration and at that time in my life, I wanted to be the senator from Colorado. So I was trying to get back to Colorado and start my political career, but the job market was really slow. In the depth of my depravity, I said, “I should read something.” That’s what got me to Egerton’s book. There wasn’t much written, and when I reached out to food writers, when I decided to start this journey, a lot of the food writers told me, “Hey, look, there’s not much on African Americans. This country is racist. You’re just not going to find that much stuff.” Now, the people I talked to hadn’t really heard of this thing called the internet, and with the internet, I quickly had enough information to write five books.
Jessica B. Harris was certainly the pioneer, kind of, in this field. So her book and then that High on the Hog series, and then other people like Michael Twitty, Toni TiptonMartin. Michael Twitty is interesting, because he’s talking about antebellum food ways as well as he’s Black, gay, and Jewish, so he’s talking about the connections of all of those things. Toni Tipton-Martin has certainly written a lot. There’s a lot more food writing happening, but we still have a ways to go, because there’s so many stories that remain untold. PHILLIPS: So your first full-time job was at Luther’s barbecue in Aurora, Colorado.
—ADRIAN MILLER
Left: Following the program in the Taube Family Auditorium, attendees headed to the rooftop Kaiser Permanente Terrace for some delicious berbecue from Oakland’s legendary Horn Barbecue. (Photo by John Zipperer.) Above (l to r): Justin Phillips, KGO-TV morning anchor Kumasi M. Aaron, and Commonwealth Club Board of Governors member Brenda Wright. (Photo by Sarah Gonzalez/SMG Foto.)
You were working as a dishwasher, cleaning tables, and that played a part in your development and interest in barbecue. As a dishwasher and a busser, is there anything that is a cardinal sin to leave unfinished on your plate at a barbecue restaurant? MILLER: For me, it’s the barbecue spare rib, because that’s my touchstone, that’s my go-to thing. Cooking is an act of love, right? When somebody cooks for you, they’re saying they care about your survival. It’s sustenance. Even if the food is straight-nasty, the act of doing that is meaningful. If you’re not feeling it, just give it to somebody else so they could savor that. PHILLIPS: So basically clean your plate. MILLER: Yeah, clean your plate. PHILLIPS: You’re an official barbecue judge, but you also admit your shortcomings when it comes to barbecue. Is that a crucial element to being able to understand what makes barbecue special? MILLER: Great barbecue comes through the trial and error process. You’ve got to put in the time, make those mistakes, and learn from it. At this point in my journey, I’m much better at eating barbecue than cooking it, but I endeavor. PHILLIPS: Should we or should we not be using the term pitmasters? What’s the phrase that you would like to use? MILLER: I like the term barbecuer, and I use that intentionally in the book to stay away from that idea of pitmaster, but one thing to understand is that pitmaster is a very recent term, relatively speaking. Barbecue has been around several centuries. Pitmaster really didn’t come into the language until the 1950s or so. Daniel Vaughn, the barbecue editor of Texas Monthly magazine, is the one who dug that up.
Back in the day, say in the 1900s, 1800s, they would call them superintendents, so you were superintending a barbecue. Later, it became barbecue man, because most of them were men. Then it was barbecue king. Everybody was calling themselves barbecue king because self-promotion is a huge part of barbecue. I prefer barbecuer. PHILLIPS: I want to touch on that painful, racist part of barbecue. You talked about in the book how barbecue talent among slaves was a point of plantation-owner pride, right? But also at this time plantation owners would whip slaves. Jim Crow era lynchings were called, “negro barbecues.” Also during Jim Crow, white restaurant owners objectified the Black barbecue style by forcing cooks to the margins and using caricatures like Aunt Jemima.
Eating around the country in small towns, there are a ton of barbecue spots and soul food restaurants where the owners might lean into this kind of stereotype at some point. Not to say they’re behaving this way, but they don’t mind being called big mama or something like that. Being able to take control of a narrative like that, is that empowerment by using the character for our
economic advantage, or do you not want to see that kind of style or brand of restaurant? What do you think? MILLER: I’m about reclaiming things, because I think by reclaiming it, we can take the sting out of certain things. This is not necessarily barbecue, but the way that fried chicken and watermelon have become so toxic, I definitely want us to reclaim that, because it’s some of the most delicious stuff on the planet. There’s a lot of reasons why those stereotypes cause harm, but to give just a little bit of context, I believe that barbecue is made possible by enslaved labor, because old school barbecue was very labor intensive. You had to dig a trench, a couple feet wide, a couple feet deep. You had to fill that trench with hardwood burning coals. Animals had to be slaughtered and processed and butterflied, poles stuck on them and then somebody had to flip that through the cooking and somebody had to replenish the coals in the fire. It just goes on and on. Then, after all that work was done, enslaved African Americans were asked to entertain. It was a Black experience from beginning to end.
Old-school barbecue was scalable. So in the early 1800s, you’re reading about barbecues for 10,000 to 20,000 people. You don’t hear about fried chicken dinners for 10,000, because the logistics are impossible, but it’s possible with barbecue and slave labor. By the time you get to the 1830s or so, you’re getting newspaper articles saying, “legitimate barbecue needs to have a negro man or colored man”—the language of the time—”do X, Y, or Z.” We’re part of the recipe. PHILLIPS: It’s so interesting that you brought up the idea of consuming chicken or watermelon in a public space where it’s not predominantly Black. I don’t feel selfconscious if I’m eating barbecue in a space that isn’t filled with people that look like us. Is it a communal aspect? Why is barbecue different? MILLER: If you go back and look at the literature of the 1870s and ‘80s when these stereotypes were getting power, catfish and barbecue were all part of it. Some of the most
Top: Justin Phillips (left) interviews Horn Barbecue owners Matt and Nina Horn on the rooftop terrace. Below: Food served up by Horn Barbecue. Facing Page: Board of Governors member Brenda White introduced the program. (Photos by Sarah Gonzalez/SMG Foto.)
racist stuff is about barbecue, but we don’t hold the same stigma for barbecue now. If you were to have a scale, I think the tonnage of crap about fried chicken and watermelon just far exceeds barbecue. PHILLIPS: When author John Grisham asked you what’s the difference between Black and white barbecue, your response was simply Black barbecue tastes better, right? I respect that. It also made me spit out my coffee when I was reading it. What can be said about the visual, the aesthetic qualities of Black barbecue that makes it different from white barbecue? MILLER: I knew this was going to be hard to write this chapter and prove my point, but I just think after you’ve eaten a lot of barbecue made by African Americans, there’s a certain visual aspect—you’re expecting to see char, the meat is not as butchered. For instance, spare ribs. In a Black joint, you’re not going to see St. Louis cut ribs that often. The ribs are ovular in their shape and so the St. Louis cut is taking off the tips and just trying to create a more rectangular uniform look.
Black joints, you’re going to see the rib tip attached. You might even see that flap on the back of ribs. It’s just less butchering and more fat. Also, highly seasoned and definitely, without a doubt, sauce. There’s this emerging conventional wisdom that barbecue should be un-sauced. I’m going to go out on a limb and say most Black people would say, “Says who?” I’ve been to Black barbecue joints where you get your plate and it’s an ocean of sauce with little islands of meat poking.
The sauce is the calling card. I got an email today from some guy. He’s just like, “I loved your book. My dad ran a barbecue joint in Ithaca, New York. He’s been gone for 30 years but people still talk about the sauce.” They’re not talking about the meat, they’re talking about the sauce. PHILLIPS: So my family lived in Jackson, Mississippi, for a little while, and there’s this place called . . . oh, man, I think it was like E&L Barbecue. Little hole-in-the-wall place. I remember they would do the rib tips and give you a bowl of it. You would have to be like, “Is there meat in there?” It used to just be the sauce, just about it. MILLER: There are a lot of old school barbecue joints that would just give you sauce and bread, and part of that was for poor customers who couldn’t afford to have the meat. That shows you how important sauce is. PHILLIPS: Is there such a thing as consistency in the creation of a barbecue? Or is it the fallible nature of the exercise that makes it so unique? Do you almost not want it to be perfect, and that’s what makes it perfect? MILLER: Are we talking about in African American context or just in general? PHILLIPS: Let’s say the African American context. MILLER: I think that everybody has a signature. Often, African American barbecue is going to be messier. I think about a lot of spots that are celebrated, they’re white owned. The meat comes out. It’s perfectly manicured. It’s social media ready, right? In a lot of Black joints, it’s going to be chopped up with white bread and sauce on it, maybe all wrapped together with fries and brownies. I think it’s the imperfect part of it—this is this person’s signature, and I’m going to gobble it up. PHILLIPS: We definitely have those places that are like, “It was cool on Tuesday. It wasn’t that great on Friday, but I’m going to go back on Saturday.” MILLER: Right, or you call and ask who’s cooking. PHILLIPS: Your book does an amazing job with so many things, but one of them is highlighting the influence of Black women in barbecue in this country. I want to give you the space right now to talk about that. MILLER: Barbecue is often presented as an all-boys club, right? The masculinity is just dripping. In my own family, my late mother was the griller-in-chief. It’s only later in life that my dad really took over the barbecue duties. In my book, I give a lot of profiles of people who I think really evoke the themes of a chapter, and one of the most fascinating people I came across was a woman named Mary John, but her birth name was Marie Jean because she was born when Arkansas was French territory.
In 1840s Pine Bluff, Arkansas, there is a newspaper account of her superintending a barbecue. She ends up buying her freedom, stays in Arkansas, runs a highly regarded restaurant. When she dies, the white newspaper eulogizes her. A Black woman telling dudes what to do in 1840s Arkansas, that just shows you how deep Black women run in barbecue.
Even if a place is not run by a Black woman, a lot of these men who are running spots will tell you, “Oh, yeah. This is my grandmother’s sauce recipe” or “My mother taught me to do it.” Sometimes the restaurants are named after women. I just wanted to really make that point that Black women have been in the barbecue game. Like I say, sisters have been “grilling” it for themselves for a long time. PHILLIPS: So your mom ran the show during barbecues. Can you talk about that a little bit? Does she have a specialty? MILLER: We were more of a ribs, chicken and hot link kind of family. Then we would have other stuff for kids. Hamburgers, bratwurst, and all that kind of stuff. My grandmother had her own sauce recipe, which I found while going through my mom’s stuff. I found this handwritten recipe, which was really cool. I’m letting out some secrets here, but a lot of people just doctor commercial sauces and call it their sauce. I have fond memories of my mom taking
Open Pit barbecue [sauce], cutting a lemon, and putting it in there with other spices. It was pretty slamming. PHILLIPS: The pandemic took a heavy toll on Black businesses in this country. Early on, 40 percent were either closing or on the brink of closing. Then we had a year of social unrest and people calling for racial justice. Black Lives Matter, which has been doing work for years, got an even bigger stage right now.
Out here in the Bay Area, we had a moment where people were called to go support Black businesses and they saw an uptick in support, but it didn’t last that long for many of them. Do you think this moment is going to have a lasting impact, this desire for people to do something positive? We have good people, well-intended people out here in the Bay Area that aren’t Black that want to support these businesses. Do you think that’s going to last? And can that, coupled with a post-pandemic desire to be in communal spaces, be a benefit for Black businesses? MILLER: Oh, definitely. I think one reason is that the attention is still being paid. Typically in the past, we’ve had communal moments around grief or tragedy and usually the energy lasts for a couple months, and it dissipates. I haven’t really seen that. We’re more than a year out, and there are still people reading the books and asking the questions. What I’m finding is a lot of people outside the Black community are wondering, “What can we do next?” and are looking for practical suggestions on next steps. I think we have to be vigilant and keep telling people ways to support Black businesses at this time. We have to keep that fire burning.
I’m going to say something that’s going to sound in-conflict, but one of my favorite Black-owned barbecue joints in Denver did close because of the pandemic, but I think it’s because they had a big space that relied a lot on in-person dining. I think a lot of Blackowned barbecue joints are take-out, so I’m thinking that maybe they’re doing all right. PHILLIPS: Especially down South, those are a lot of little take-out, stop-in-real-quick joints. That’s a very good point. MILLER: Another side of that reflects injustice, because Black entrepreneurs often don’t get enough capital so that they can invest and have a sit-down place. So they’re doing the best they can with the resources they have. PHILLIPS: Let alone afford a liquor license, which out here is secondary market. They’re crazy expensive. You make the argument in this book about barbecue techniques and how they didn’t migrate from the Caribbean as European colonists moved north. There’s also a suggestion that America’s barbecue is more homegrown, borrowed from Native Americans. In the book you talk about how they used rotating spits, raised platforms, shallow pits, and vertical holes to cook their wild game.
At the same time, you say there’s little evidence to support the theory that American barbecue can trace its roots to West Africa. That was something fellow food writer and historian Michael Twitty couldn’t endorse. He was like, “I just can’t. I don’t know if I can get down with that thinking.”
Have you been getting pushback from other people within your writer community, who look like you, about this? Because you dropped a lot of knowledge and I imagine that some other Black writers would be like, “I don’t know about that.” MILLER: Actually, the most criticism I’ve gotten in that realm has been from other African Americans. Look, trust me. I wanted to prove, without a doubt, that barbecue was West African in origin. I wanted to do this and say, “Wakanda Forever,” but I’m in a literary tradition, so I look at sources. Right now, the available sources do not suggest that.
There’s a couple reasons why. First of all, Europeans were in West Africa at least a century before they got to America. There’s no documentation of this type of cooking. What we do know is when Europeans showed up in the Caribbean and they saw this type of cooking, they talked about this as if it’s something they’ve never seen before. They write about it and make illustrations about it. These illustrations cause a sensation in Europe, and they had the same kind of view of Africans before. So I’m curious as to why that didn’t happen.
The second thing is West Africans don’t even cook like that today. If you look at West African barbecue, it’s more street food, skewers with chunks of meat, highly seasoned. This whole-animal cooking that evolves in the South, it doesn’t show up. Barbecue history is so hazy, and problematic. There’s a good criticism to say, “Well, you’re relying on Europeans for this.” Of the three major players in this, Native Americans, West Africans and Europeans, the Europeans are the only ones that have a literary tradition.
Everybody else is oral history, so it’s hard to figure out what’s going on. I relied on what Europeans said they saw. It’s problematic because looking at the sources, they weren’t always good at the descriptions and there are a lot of times they had an agenda. The earliest barbecue scenes were just fish on a raised platform in the Caribbean, and on that platform were fish and vegetables, and iguanas.
When the Europeans with an agenda started writing about barbecue a couple decades later, because they’re bent on conquest and dehumanizing the indigenous people in Caribbean, all of a sudden human limbs start showing up on the barbecue grill. It’s problematic, but there were several techniques that were seen in the American South, and pit barbecue is different from cooking on that raised platform. So, to me, something else was going on.
It just looked like Europeans saw something that Native Americans were doing in Virginia, modified, added their quick grilling techniques, and then enslaved Africans got in the mix later. That puts us on the road to something we call Southern barbecue. All the people that have called me out, like, “You’re not a real brother man. You’re saying that Africans didn’t . . .” All right. Look, here are the receipts. This is how I reach the conclusion. Nobody has said I’m wrong. They haven’t proved it. PHILLIPS: You had a desire to prove something that Black people have held true for a long time, but you also were open to evidence showing different. How important is that when it comes to being a food historian? I feel like a lot of people might just try to validate something that they already know, but you have to be way more open than that, right? And probably susceptible to being disappointed sometimes. MILLER: Food tells a story, but I’m on a journey for truth, and I don’t think that the
—ADRIAN MILLER
Above: Davey D provided the music for the rooftop BBQ dinner following the program. Left and below: Attendees enjoyed fresh barbecue, book signing, and conversation. (Photo by Sarah Gonzalez/SMG Foto.)
fact that somebody else created something means that it’s not wholly part of my culture and that we didn’t do a lot to develop this thing that we all love today. I don’t think those are mutually exclusive, but I’m on a journey for truth. PHILLIPS: In 2013, you wrote a book that won a James Beard Award. For people that aren’t in the food world, it’s sometimes kind of hard to explain what a James Beard Award is. How did you explain that to people, and what did that award do for your career? MILLER: I told people it’s just like winning an Oscar for film or a Grammy for music, and then people are like, “Oh, okay.” I don’t think the James Beard Award means as much to writers as it does to chefs and restaurants, because I didn’t see an immediate explosion in attention. It’s been a slow build. The biggest explosion of attention in my career was actually the “High on the Hog” appearance [on Netflix], but it gave me street cred and led to other things. It was thrilling, because I never expected that award. I had practiced two things, my acceptance speech and then my fake, “Oh, I’m so happy you won instead of me,” when they zoom in on you. I thought it was going to be the latter, because it was my first book. PHILLIPS: Can you talk about the research that goes into this? MILLER: I’ve only had a few strokes of genius in my life, and I had one in this case. When I started researching the soul food book, I just grabbed all the information I could about everything, and I included barbecue. The first book took about 12 years, because I had a day job. So it was a side hustle.
I was a grad student spending evenings and weekends working on it. I read 3,500 oral histories of formerly enslaved people looking for all references for food. I read thousands of newspaper articles and magazines. Some go back to the 1300s and are word-searchable. I talked to hundreds of people. Then, because I care so much about my craft, I’ve decided to eat my way through the country.
Since I’m a soul food scholar, I call people who help me out research assistants. I’m always on the lookout for research assistants.
The second book took four years. This one took about three, because I had that solid foundation of that research before that I could draw upon. I didn’t have to start from scratch. PHILLIPS: You’re not just going into a city and picking around . . . or are you? What goes into that journey across the country? I imagine that there’s some kind of formula to it? MILLER: I’m always jealous of these people that just drive around, because I’m too broke to do that. PHILLIPS: You can’t waste money. MILLER: Yeah. I had to focus my trips. So I said, “Okay. Where am I likely to get the great barbecue stories?” I didn’t get to everywhere I wanted to, because the pandemic cut that short. My strategy was this: I have a really good social media following. So I would just put it out there. “Hey, I’m thinking about going to this place. Where should I eat?” So that’s the first cut. The second cut is I actually reached out to the food writers in certain cities and asked them for their spots.
Now, sadly they weren’t up on a lot of the Black joints, believe it or not. I didn’t get a lot, but when I did get it, it was a gold mine. I actually did look at things like Yelp and Trip Advisor, not because I really believe what the people are writing there, but I thought if a place was heavily commented upon, it’s a place I probably should check out. And then if I could, I always left a couple of days because it’s just when you get into a place, you find out about all those joints.
Left: Justin Phillips chats with the Horns. This page: Adrian Miller on stage in the Club’s Taube Family Auditorium. (Photos by Sarah Gonzalez/ SMG Foto.)
Red Soda on Juneteenth
Red Drinks are often consumed on Juneteenth and other celebrations as a way to commemorate the blood shed by ancestors. Adrian Miller points to two ceremonial West African red drinks as origins: Kola nut tea, from the same plant that gives us Coca-Cola, and Hibiscus tea, from the flower of the same name. Hibiscus tea spread to the Caribbean, where it’s made with ginger and widely known as agua de jamaica (jamiacan water).
In the United States, Red Kool-Aid became a popular go-to red drink as early as the 1920s, partly due to its accessibility as a cheaper alternative to soda pop. In Texas, Big Red strawberry soda still has a hold on the region, while cities further north may cling to strawberry Fanta or Faygo.
Red is also a prominent symbol across many African cultures and appears on the flags of more than 40 countries on the continent. The Pan African flag, adopted in 1921 to represent Black people across the diaspora, features red to symbolize the common ancestry of Black people, and the blood shed in the fight for liberation. —Corey Rose
PHILLIPS: Has social media hurt Black businesses or helped Black businesses? Some of these places, the food can be amazing, but it might not be photogenic. MILLER: I think it’s a double-edged sword. The Black businesses that have figured this piece out, they’re doing well and they’re thriving. I think the downside of it is what you just said. A lot of Black barbecue is messy, and so it’s not “Instagramable.” It’s having real consequences for these Black businesses, because with the ascendancy of, say, Central Texas Barbecue, focused on brisket. Now people are walking into Black joints across the country that are traditionally pork-based, and they’re asking, “where’s the brisket?”
And if it’s not on the menu, they’re walking out because they’ve gotten the message— that’s what great barbecue is. So now these Black barbecuers are responding in two different ways. Some are like, “All right. This is what I do.” Others are like, “Oh, man. I can’t lose these customers. Let me start making brisket.” There’s a lot of mediocre brisket being made.
My tagline about a lot of stuff is, “there’s room to cook out for everyone” so stop saying, “this is the only way to do it,” let’s start talking about, “Well, this is how I do it, but there’s other ways that people do it.” PHILLIPS: What do you want people to take away from this book? MILLER: I would say that Black Smoke is a celebration of African American barbecue culture. It’s a restoration of African Americans to the barbecue narrative, because in a lot of barbecue media, African Americans are pushed to the sidelines, or left out entirely. It’s a pushback on the idea that barbecue media has fallen deeply, madly, softly, tenderly in love with white dudes who barbecue. The last thing I want is, if you get invited to a Black barbecue, don’t show up with raisins in your coleslaw or your potato salad. PHILLIPS: Is there a Bay Area type of barbecue or is it the homogenization of a bunch of things? MILLER: Yeah. It’s an amalgamation. I have not picked up a distinctive Bay Area barbecue vibe, but that doesn’t mean that it could not develop. I think one thing that might be interesting that could be distinctively Bay Area is vegan barbecue. A lot of interesting things are happening with vegan cuisine in this area.
One thing you find out when you get into barbecue culture as much as we talk about tradition, you could start something. You just got to get enough people on board in order to say, “that’s a regional style.” If people think there is a Bay Area style, I would love to hear that, but I just don’t see one. I see elements from other places that show up here. PHILLIPS: What is your 60-second idea to change the world? MILLER: I was thinking about a limited dinner series guide to difficult conversations. The first would be a potluck. The next one, the marginalized group that’s affected by the challenge has the platform.
The third meeting would be a clap back. So all the people who are not part of that marginalized group would say, “Here’s what we heard. This is how we’re processing it.” Then the last would be a meal where we talk about the journey together.
The food story is this: Potluck first. Second meeting, everybody else who’s outside of the marginalized groups, cooks the food of the marginalized group. Third meeting is comfort food, because we’re processing stuff. Then the last meeting would be a fusion of all the people who have been part of that journey. PHILLIPS: I love that. MILLER: That’s what I’m thinking about. So I call it the welcome table.
