Image courtesy University of Texas Press
Over 30 years ago, Toni Tipton-Martin began her journey to reveal the important role African-American women have played in America’s food culture. Recently, the food journalist and author, now a James Beard Award winner for the resulting book, “The Jemima Code: Two Centuries of African American Cookbooks,” appeared at the Virginia Museum of History & Culture for a well-attended lecture about her revelations.
Toni Tipton-Martin
Tipton-Martin grew up in Southern California. After her grandmother passed away, her mother, Beverly Dunbar-Hamilton, was moved to make a change in the way the family lived and ate.
Tipton-Martin’s mother became a role model for healthy living — there were a dozen fruit trees on their property, they had a garden filled with fresh vegetables, they ate tofu for dinner, and the family’s beef came from a steer purchased every year with their neighbors. Tipton-Martin says she’s always understood the important role food plays in our lives. “One aspect I’ve known all along is that healthy eating mattered,” she says. “Over time, the other aspects of African-American food became more conspicuous to me the more I learned about black food history.”
Tipton-Martin knew she had to unveil the truth. The stories of African-Americans and the way they cooked had been lost, and stereotypes of African-Americans, women especially, in the kitchen transmitted messages that were open to purposeful misinterpretation. It was too easy to link African-American women with the caricature portrait of the old black mammy.
“The association between the toothy grin and the calico-swathed plump face belonging to the world’s most recognized black cook, Aunt Jemima, and modern women is hurtful and offensive,” Tipton-Martin says. “Our experience was not limited to survival cooking and what has been depicted as soul food.”
“Why don't we celebrate their contributions to American culture the way we venerate and imagine Betty Crocker?
“Why wasn’t their true legacy observed?
“Will we ever believe that strong African-American women that toted wood and built fires even before thinking of beating biscuit dough or making cakes left us with more than those formulas of pancakes?”
Tipton-Martin began digging in archives to find the answers to these questions looming in her head.
“I wanted to set black cooks free from images like these,” says Tipton-Martin, referring again to Aunt Jemima. “I don’t collect very many stereotypes, but I have just a few that help me stay focused and have some perspective.”
Tipton-Martin discovered a sale online by Antiquarian Booksellers, and it opened the doors to the research and information she needed — 375 black cookbooks’ worth of knowledge dating back to 1827.
She equates the process of writing her book with a recipe: The books were her ingredients; the time she took to hone in on her recipe and move forward in the process was the marinade; and eventually it was time to share the dish, which proved to be the most difficult part.
“The Jemima Code” was pitched to publishers and literary agents for years, resulting in a long list of rejections. Tipton-Martin believes they didn’t think she was the person to bring this message forward, that it was contrary to the story everyone has been fed about race. She began posting some of her research, her observations and more than a few recipes to a blog, and it was eventually discovered by the University of Texas Press, which finally published the book in 2015.
“The whole point of this work is racial reconciliation,” says Tipton-Martin. “Once we observe the transformation into role models that these people are, they can become inspirational and powerful symbols of wisdom and authority. They were that once, but their history was distorted. Then we can all share in and enjoy their insight the way we revere that fictitious Betty Crocker and other famous Food Network stars. These are real women, and they formed a natural and illuminating story for all of the black women who fed America.”
“The beauty of ‘The Jemima Code’ and this collection is that those 400 people stand in the gap for thousands of other cooks and present an opportunity for our young people to have many other role models,” Tipton-Martin adds. “If we can show that these people were survivors, and intelligent, and competent, and caretakers at a time when nobody thought they were, then how much easier should it be for the rest of us to walk a little further and get those healthy groceries or grow our own?”
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