The Pullman porters. The Nation of Islam. The Black Panther Party. These are just some of the legendary groups that the Netflix docuseries High on the Hog: How African American Cuisine Transformed America explores in its wide-ranging second season, which airs Nov. 22.
The first season offered a poignant history of Black American food, linking it to its West African roots and enslavement in the United States. The current season leaps ahead to the 20th century and explores the momentous changes Black Americans experienced during that period and how they informed their relationship with food.
These changes include the Great Migration, which took place from roughly 1916 to 1970, and saw over 6 million Black Americans leave the rural South in hopes of better jobs and fairer treatment in the industrialized North. As the Great Migration unfolded, African Americans working for the railroads became unionized for the first time, forming in 1925 the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and Maids. In the second season’s opening scene, host Stephen Satterfield dines on a train car and speaks with a 99-year-old former railway waiter and the son of a porter to examine food’s role in the Great Migration.
Just as trains took the Pullman Porters all over the country, Satterfield takes viewers across America—stopping in cities including Chicago, Atlanta, New York, and Los Angeles. At times, Dr. Jessica B. Harris, the culinary historian and author of the book from which the series takes its name, joins Satterfield on the journey. The strength of the second season lies in its exploration of the little-known links between food and Black American progress. Most people know that civil rights activists desegregated lunch counters, but it is lesser known that Black restaurateurs hosted civil rights strategists, while home cooks sold cakes and pies to fund actions such as the Montgomery Bus Boycott. During the Black Power Movement that followed, the Black Panther Party launched their free breakfast program for children, an idea the federal government would later appropriate.
In addition to speaking with activists to uncover the links between food and justice, Satterfield visits Villa Lewaro, the palatial estate of self-made millionaire Madam CJ Walker. Once a cook, the wealthy entrepreneur and her daughter, A’Lelia Walker, entertained the nation’s Black elite before and during the Harlem Renaissance.
Civil Eats spoke with Satterfield and Harris about High on the Hog’s sweeping sophomore effort and how, like the first season, it highlights the ways that Black innovators have left an imprint on the country’s culinary landscape.
This season of High on the Hog mentions that many Black people have avoided agricultural work because of its association with enslavement, but points out that they are increasingly starting urban farms. Are Black Americans’ perceptions of working the land changing?
Jessica Harris: It is changing in the Black community, but we are far from monolithic. A lot of people moved away from the land, and with deliberateness. I think what has happened is many of those folks who migrated to the North lost land that they owned, or their families lost land, so now they have a desire to return to the land. There are people who, like Matthew Raiford—who is not in the episode but he’s a sixth generation farmer who has returned to his land in Georgia—and Karen Washington, who is in the last episode. She has a group for Black urban gardeners, and it’s an enormous group that’s bringing people back to the land in real and productive ways.
Stephen Satterfield: In part of the scene where I have a conversation [with former sharecropper Elvin Shields], I have an expression on my face like I’ve heard something surprising. He is inferring that the plantation . . . is something to be reclaimed. I had frankly not ever thought about that, and I felt challenged by that notion. But I thought it was a perfectly logical position, especially considering his life, what he’s seen, and what he’s fought to protect. So I appreciated him for that enlightenment.
Dr. Harris, you mentioned Karen Washington. The fact that she coined the term “food apartheid” is discussed in this season. How much of a game changer is this term and why is it more accurate than “food desert” to describe challenges to food access?
Harris: Apartheid is caused by someone. Deserts are caused by nature. So, I think that’s part of the distinction that Karen may have been making very deliberately. I think the whole notion of where do you go for what you eat is something that merits a considerable amount more discussion than it’s getting, and it gets some of that discussion in episode four. Where do people get their food? What kind of food are they getting? Can they walk to it or do they have to have a car? Is there public transportation? So, you have all of those questions as well.
I found the interview with the former railway waiter and son of a porter very interesting. Can you discuss the significance of these workers both in terms of food and the labor movement, because Pullman porters really paved the path for other Black workers.
Harris: The Pullman car porters are important in the foundation of African-American wealth and the migration of African-American food. [George] Pullman came up with his railroad cars within a decade or two of emancipation. So a lot of people who had been enslaved as house people got jobs on Pullman cars, because they knew something about service. The Pullman cars then took them all over the country. Anybody who was alive, or who has been alive as long as I have, will never forget A. Philip Randolph, who was the head of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, and the way that he organized his union. The way that that union advocated for African Americans was of cardinal importance. He was one of the forces behind the 1963 March on Washington. He was galvanizing and that all grew out of that same culture of African Americans on trains in service.
Stephen, your grandfather was a Pullman porter, so this history is personal for you, right?