New Orleans' Juneteenth Feast Shows Off the City's African, Caribbean Influences

Chef Serigne Mbaye speaks to the crowd at the Afro Freedom/Afro Feast Juneteenth celebration at Grow Dat Youth Farm in New Orleans on June 19, 2023. Mbaye works to spotlight African-influenced cuisine at his New Orleans restaurant Dakar NOLA.

BY MATT HAINES

NEW ORLEANS (VOA) — Senegalese-born chef Serigne Mbaye knows the U.S. holiday Juneteenth honors the day when the last African American slaves were freed in 1865.

“But,” he said, “to me, the most important thing about Juneteenth is community.”

So Mbaye’s New Orleans restaurant Dakar NOLA organized the Afro Freedom/Afro Feast community celebration featuring food by more than a half-dozen of New Orleans’ most prominent Black chefs, music by a West African DJ and by premier African American jazz musicians and drinks from a local nonprofit that connects rising Black and other non-white hospitality workers to job opportunities.

“To have all of these Black and brown brothers and sisters celebrating our freedom and sharing their talents with this city — it’s very special,” Mbaye told VOA. “But it’s also a way to have a conversation that needs to be had. It’s a difficult conversation, but doing it over food, drink and music helps make people more open.”

Story through food

Mbaye was an emerging finalist for this year’s James Beard Awards honoring the top U.S. chefs, restaurateurs and food writers. He is using that notoriety to address issues of concern in the New Orleans food industry. Among the discussions at this year’s Juneteenth event was how, in a city renowned for its food, African contributions to that cuisine are too often overlooked.

“French food is held up as the sole standard, but I don’t really get that,” said Martha Wiggins, executive chef at Café Reconcile, a nonprofit restaurant in New Orleans providing food industry job training to at-risk youth.

“African influence can be found throughout New Orleans’ food and throughout America’s food,” she told VOA, “and I think this country should give more credit to — and take more time to celebrate — this excellent, masterful and ingenious cuisine.”

At Dakar NOLA, Mbaye helps guests make that connection by highlighting the West African influence on many of New Orleans’ signature dishes.

“Gumbo is so important to New Orleans, but you’ll find that same characteristic okra and seafood stew over rice in African soupou kandja,” he explained. “And it doesn’t end there. Louisiana’s tomato-based etouffee and doughy beignets also have origins in Africa. But those stories are often forgotten here.”

When Haitian chef Charly Pierre moved to New Orleans, he worked at several high-profile restaurants before opening his own Haitian restaurant, something he was surprised to find lacking in the city.

“After the Haitian revolution in the early 19th century, Haitian refugees doubled New Orleans’ population,” Pierre told VOA. “The effect was huge. So why isn’t Haitian culture celebrated the same way French, Spanish and Italian contributions to this city are?”

Celebration, but work to do

While the chefs at the Juneteenth event agreed African American influence on the city’s culture should be more widely learned and celebrated, Pierre believes those traditions are even more notable given the circumstances through which they have endured.

“Red beans and rice, root vegetables, chitlins, gumbo and so many other dishes survived hundreds of years of our people being enslaved,” he said. “That these dishes were able to survive from our forefathers centuries ago in Africa, and that they remain close to our hearts today after everything we’ve been through, it’s really amazing.

“And it’s a testament to how good this food is,” Pierre continued. “It’s like natural selection. How did it survive all this? Well, when you have your first bite of red beans, you get it. Of course, this food survived. It’s that good.”

More than 100 Afro Freedom/Afro Feast guests gathered at an urban farm just outside downtown New Orleans, dancing to music by the Preservation Hall Jazz Band and loading up their plates with meats and vegetables cooked over an open flame by some of New Orleans’ brightest culinary stars.

It was a spirited Juneteenth celebration that participating chefs see as more of a beginning than an end.

“When I first heard last year that Juneteenth was becoming a national holiday, I was kind of cynical and rolled my eyes,” Wiggins of Café Reconcile said. “Is this just going to be some performative way for Americans to say they support Black and brown people without really doing anything?

“But after the event, I don’t feel so cynical,” she admitted. “It’s a celebration of community. I brought some of the students I’m mentoring from Café Reconcile, and for them to see all of these Black chefs being elevated, and to see this traditional food being celebrated, I think it’s important for the next generation to understand how they fit in.”

Mbaye hopes to see continued attention for Black chefs and African-influenced dishes in New Orleans.

“There are so many extraordinary Black chefs in this city and their work should be acknowledged and their food should be tried,” Mbaye said. “I think we were able to do some of that this week, but this isn’t only for Juneteenth. Africa’s influence on American culture is something we should be talking about every single day.”

Preserving Enslavement Sites

BY RUSSELL CONTRERAS

Historic sites linked to enslavement and emancipation are getting new attention — and funding for preservation — after years of neglect.

The big picture: The popularity of Juneteenth and the racial reckoning after George Floyd's murder in 2020 led several cities and states to rethink how they commemorate difficult chapters of American history, including slavery.

State of play: Hundreds of historic sites from Massachusetts to Texas offer windows into enslaved people's lives yet vary in status, sit abandoned or rarely appear in visitors' guides.Some places, such as Oatlands Plantation in Leesburg, Va., have become popular venues for weddings, even though they once were sites of harsh treatment and violence against enslaved people.
Others, such as commemorations for the Underground Railroad route that people used to travel from Texas and Louisiana to Mexico to escape enslavement, are being developed by the U.S. National Park Service.

The push to recognize places that were part of unflattering episodes in U.S. history has years of resistance, preservation activists say — especially from local historic commissions.

Zoom in: Popular tourist attractions such as Thomas Jefferson's Monticello and James Madison's Montpelier have placed physical reminders about slavery in recent years, thanks in part to pressure from descendants of those who were enslaved.They offer special tours, host lectures, and have erected exhibits honoring enslaved people who lived on the sites.

Pressure and new funding from public and private entities are beefing up demand to include the voices of enslaved people at sites.Since 2017, for example, the National Trust for Historic Preservation's African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund has received 5,638 funding proposals requesting $655 million, executive director Brent Leggs tells Axios.
The program has supported 242 historic African American places and invested more than $20 million to help preserve important sites.

Between the lines: The Action Fund announced last week it had awarded $3.8 million to protect 40 Black American historic sites.Among those receiving money was "The Slave Dwelling Project" in Ladson, S.C. It seeks to document and preserve the dwellings of enslaved people and engages communities through programs.
"(Un)Known Project Augmented Reality App" in Louisville, Ky., is another. It will allow visitors to see images of enslaved people via an app near the Louisville Riverwalk as they looked toward freedom across the river in Indiana.

What they're saying: "We believe that not until Black history matters will Black Lives Matter," Leggs said."The sites help tell stories about the Black experience across centuries and geographies that will bring reverence and appreciation for the sacrifice and the contributions that Black Americans have made to our nation."

Rashad Robinson, president of the advocacy group Color Of Change, told Axios that such historic sites are cheapened if they're used for weddings and other celebratory events unrelated to enslavement.
"How do we mark the places that speak to enslavement or the harm against Black folks?" he said.

What's next: The African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund is developing a mapping project to identify and locate all Black American cultural sites, including those linked to enslavement.It will be created on an app to help visitors locate sites, many of them relatively obscure.

--------------AXIOS

Emory Observes Juneteenth Holiday

Image via Carroll University

BY KELUNDRA SMITH

ATLANTA, GA (EMORY UNIVERSITY) - In the late 1850s, the largest recorded slave sale on U.S. soil took place in Savannah, Georgia. Approximately 436 people were sold as a result of the dissolution of two plantations, with families separated from each other for years. This period of separation was called the weeping time, and the connective tissue that kept enslaved Africans close to their culture was music and storytelling.

When President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on Jan. 1, 1863, all enslaved people were supposed to be set free. However, for enslaved African Americans in Galveston, Texas, word did not get to them until June 19, 1865. The date became known as Emancipation Day, Freedom Day or Juneteenth.

“One of the most horrific things that occurred in slavery is that enslaved people were forced — at times — to celebrate July 4 under the threat of violence,” says Walter Rucker, professor of African American studies and history.

“What Juneteenth meant for them is that the American paradox of slavery in the so-called ‘land of liberty’ had ended. The rhetoric of freedom had been in the air since 1776, but they never recognized it in their personal lives. When slavery as a construct ended, it meant unfettered joy and the formerly enslaved would be owners of their own lives, bodies and labor.”

Emory University will recognize Juneteenth as an official holiday beginning this year. Juneteenth will be observed on Monday, June 20. A handful of campus events lead up to the holiday.

On Juneteenth, formerly enslaved Black people focused on reuniting with family members who were sold away during the weeping time and reconnecting to cultural traditions such as drumming and dancing. One of those traditions they kept alive during slavery was the ring shout, a praise ritual where people stood in a circle and danced and sang. In the U.S., enslaved Africans performed this ritual in small shacks called praise houses where they had church.

An Atlanta artist tells a creation story at the Carlos

Charmaine Minniefield traveled to Gambia, West Africa, in early 2020 and found evidence of the ring shout in her great-grandmother's homeland. She also recorded footage of the ring shout in cultures across the Americas in places Black people were enslaved.

Part of the work resulting from that trip is in the exhibition “Indigo Prayers: A Creation Story,” on display at Emory's Michael C. Carlos Museum through Sept. 11. The materials in her paintings — including mahogany, indigo and shells — are links between Africa and African American cultural traditions.

The Carlos Museum hosts a Juneteenth celebration with Minniefield on Saturday, June 18, at 5 p.m. Attendees will meet for a gallery talk at the Carlos and then travel to the water tower on Auburn Avenue to see Minniefield’s “Cosmic Cypher, Prayer Circle” mural as well as to her nearby studio where they will see more of her paintings. The event is open to the public but currently has a waitlist.

“We are interested in how contemporary artists are in conversation with ancient objects, and Charmaine’s work with indigo is reflective of that,” says Elizabeth Horner, senior director of education at the Carlos.

Minniefield says she sees her work both as a way to connect to her ancestors and as an act of resistance to the erasure of Black culture, similar to the ring shout.

“Juneteenth is an opportunity to honor the legacy of our ancestors,” says Minniefield. “To respect and remember their stories of our past as an example for what is possible for our future. Juneteenth is about acknowledging, with respect, the history of slavery in this country as it informs our present and future.”

In addition to “Indigo Prayers,” when she returned to the States, Minniefield created the Praise House Project. The small white house resembled an actual praise house and inside she projected videos of ring shouts across the world. The immersive piece is coming to Emory in fall 2023.

The School of Medicine’s “Power to Heal”

In the vein of learning from the past and resisting erasure, the Office of Equity and Inclusion (OEI) at Emory University School of Medicine hosts its third-annual Juneteenth program on June 16 at noon. This year, in partnership with Woodruff Health Sciences Center and Grady Health System, they will celebrate with a panel discussion on the 2018 documentary, “Power to Heal.” Based on the 2015 book with the same title, the film chronicles the history of how Black and Brown people were mistreated in the health care system and the role of Medicare in desegregating hospitals and doctors’ offices.

“The reason we want to focus on history is that history is not that long ago. I was alive when Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated,” says Dr. Sheryl Heron, who is chief diversity and inclusion officer in the School of Medicine (SOM) and professor and vice-chair of faculty equity, engagement, and empowerment in the Department of Emergency Medicine. “When we look at maternal mortality, COVID-19 or other areas of health inequity, it's all related to race and racism. While we are celebrating, we still have inequities. We must talk about how we got here and more importantly where we need to go.”

Attendees should register and watch the movie prior to the panel discussion. Heron is hosting the discussion, which will be moderated by Nate Spell, associate dean for education and professional development at the School of Medicine, and Nancy DeSousa, assistant director of the Office of Multicultural Affairs, Learner Diversity Programs for Graduate Medical Education for the School of Medicine. Both are members of the School of Medicine’s history subcommittee of the Actionable Education Initiative within the SOM’s DEI strategic plan.

The panelists include Nanette Wenger, a cardiologist at Grady Hospital who is featured in the film; Joanne McGriff, chief diversity officer in the Rollins School of Public Health; Yolanda Wimberly, chief health equity officer for Grady Health System; Ildemaro Gonzalez, chief diversity, equity and inclusion officer at Emory Healthcare; Rep. Jasmine Clark from the Georgia House of Representatives, District 108; and Jasmin Eatman, an Emory MD/PhD student.

“A lot of times when we’re having these conversations and producing these programs, it’s a lot of preaching to the choir,” says Natalie Fields, director of the OEI office at the School of Medicine.

“We want to also reach those who do not typically engage in this work. The call to action is to promote a deeper understanding and increased mindfulness about the health care system we’re operating within and how it’s everyone’s responsibility to make it better.”

Images of the 7th Annual June'Teenth Heritage Festival: Celebrating Black Freedom

June'Teenth is the oldest nationally celebrated commemoration of the ending of slavery in the United States. On June 19, 1865, two months more than President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, General Granger of the Union Army landed in Galveston, Texas, and issued Order No.3: All Slaves Are Free!


Ndugu, Wadada and Kelly Love Jones performs at the back lot of The Vision Theater in Leimert Park Village.


Anthony Aquarius Mystery and the Jimi Hendrix Tribute Band performs live on stage as part of festivities celebrating the 7th Annual June'Teenth Heritage Festival.


The groove and the jam sessions.


The twist dance at the exclusive Barbara Morrison's Show.


Anthony Aquarius Mystery of A Jimi Hendrix Tribute Band and Cynthia Exum, the executive producer of the Leimert Park Village Book Fair share a moment...


The audience watches A Jimi Hendrix Tribute Band perform live on stage.


Vendors make brisk business hawking Los Angeles Dynasty t shirts.


Leon Mobley and Wadada entertains at the back lot of The Vision Theater.


Oran Z, founder of The Oran Z Pan African Black Facts and Wax Museum, which presents wax figures of African American personalities chats with a guest at his museum booth during the festival.


Afro Cuban Jazz Ensemble entertaning at the jam-packed Leimert Park.