Note: This is a version of a speech I delivered at Duke University’s Sara P. Duke Garden at the invitation of the student group Farmhand on Jan. 19.

I want to congratulate the members of Farmhand for their brilliant idea of celebrating Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy at a garden. And not just any garden, but a culinary garden, one whose produce not only delights the eye but actually feeds people; and not just a culinary garden, but a community garden, one that brings people together across race, class, and age lines to grow things together.

I doubt that Dr. King found much time to hang out among the flower buds, but I don’t doubt he would have approved of the practice of community gardening. And of course, as an African American from the Deep South, he was exposed to the tradition of home gardening and smallholder farming, and he saw how cooks, both white and black, built a food culture out of the resulting bounty of collard greens, butter beans, okra, and other flavorful and highly nutritious foods.

Since King’s time, “soul food” has undergone a process of industrialization; it is now demonized as unhealthy, a view based more on the “Southern fried” stereotypes than the multitude of ways cooks in the South actually prepare these foods.

Full story:
http://www.grist.org/comments/food/2009/01/23/?source=daily