Friendly Reminder: Sunday May 6th at 11:59 pm our campaign is done. Its going to mean cutting places, venues, community service opportunies, and losing time to do genealogical research if we don't make our goal--so please please please don't take my work here for granted and all the sweat our team has put into this …
Are You Really What You Eat? Or are You the Meals that You Cook?
"Over Yonder" Cooking at the GreenmarketWe have four days left to raise some 3,000 plus for our campaign. Over 600 people viewed this blog yesterday. If only 180 had made a contribution to our Campaign of 18$ or more, the Campaign would have been an overnight success…We need you—Now. Please contribute 18 or more today: www.indiegogo.com/The-Cooking-Gene-Project-The-Southern-Discomfort-Tour When I …
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Meet Edward Booker, Aged 112
Name: Edward Booker Relation: Great-Great-Grandfather of Michael W. Twitty through his paternal grandmother, Eloise Booker Born: 1839 Died: 1953 Where: Prince Edward County, Virginia around the town of Prospect. Occupation: Former enslaved indivdual on the Booker tobacco plantation, Freedman and landowner, and tobacco farmer I need help telling his story--and finding out more about him …
From the Family History Files: Appomattox, April 9, 1865
On April 9, 1865, in Appomattox, Virginia my great-great Grandfather Elijah Mitchell was standing with his brother when he witnessed the surrender of Lee to Grant...and this is how he found out that he was free...as copied from a family history file left to my Father: "Appomattox County is a historical place in the commonwealth …
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Explaining: Looking for My Families’ Slaveowners
This project is sacred to me and the people who have elected to spend time working on it with me. Making that video was not easy. Although I treated it as though it were a matter of routine, I began to feel emotionally wound up and hurt as I stammered out the names. I realized …
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Watch Blair Underwood/The Nike Galaxy Shoe/And Why I Want this Project to Succeed
"African Americans are innately wired to want to know who we are. Its almost being like an adopted child."---Sharon Malone, commentator, "Slavery by Another Name." A few days ago I almost gave up on The Cooking Gene. I will admit, I am an impatient man. I am not attracting significant support from African Americans. I …
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Twenty Reasons Why This Project and This Research is Important
The Project: http://www.indiegogo.com/The-Cooking-Gene-Project-The-Southern-Discomfort-Tour It’s crucial to bring our family together again through food—our family meaning Africa and her Diaspora and all those who admire and appreciate the contribution to world cuisine. However, our family needs to understand why this knowledge system is important and how its practical for us today. Sullivans Island Sign 2004 For …
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The Cooking Gene: A Preview
In April of 1865 a seventeen year old house servant and his brother stood holding their Master's horse outside of a courthouse in central Virginia, when a bearded man dressed in blue and a bearded man dressed in gray emerged from a doorway. Within seconds their world as they knew it shattered when they were told …
To My Old Master: Decoding a Race Relations/Blog Hit And What It Really Means
So you've probably been reading, sharing and looking at this gem from 1865. It apparently appeared in the New York Daily Tribune: http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7035/6790780585_466117fe88_o.jpg "Colonel" P.H. Anderson asked his former servant, Jourdon Anderson to basically come on back home and be his laborer. Mr. Jourdan, dictating his letter, responded in kind: Dayton, Ohio, August 7, 1865 To …
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African American Genealogy: The Cooking Gene As Contextual/Culinary Genealogy
I believe they call this delayed gratification. I am not resting the same as I once was. I am sleepless at times. I don't know what day it is. The television in the background provides a soundtrack of cooking shows, news programs, sitcoms and political punditry. Every now and then my mind comes back to …
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The Cooking Gene 