What does Juneteenth taste like?

It tastes like barbecue ribs, chicken and homemade sausage. It tastes like potato salad, broccoli rice casserole, watermelon, coconut cake, sweet potato pie and peach cobbler. It tastes like Big Red, my paternal grandmother’s favorite soda and a Texas delicacy. 

This menu was my first introduction to Juneteenth, one of America’s oldest African American holidays that commemorates the day enslaved Africans in Texas were told that slavery had ended on June 19, 1865. 

But long before Juneteenth became a federal holiday in 2021 — a milestone made possible through decades of advocacy by figures in my hometown of Fort Worth, Texas, such as retired teacher and activist Opal Lee — my grandmother’s house was my classroom, and she was my teacher.

“The backbone of Juneteenth festivities has always been the table”

Looking back, Juneteenth was my grandmother’s time to shine, and I can still see her face light up with joy. Cooking was her superpower, and each recipe, pot, utensil and ingredient recharged it. I remember watching her carefully prepare these dishes while my dad and uncles stood at the grill in the backyard, laughing and enjoying themselves. 

As a native Black Texan, an expert in Black food history and a professor of African American Studies, I now understand that my grandmother’s house was much more than a site of Juneteenth celebrations. It was a portal into Black Texas tradition that spans generations. 

“Before Black Texans had their own history, schools, churches, warriors, martyrs, and women and men of big affairs, they had Juneteenth,” writes Black Texan and Historian Amilcar Shabazz in his book Advancing Democracy:

It may not have looked like much in the eyes of an arrogant world, but it was everything Black Texans had, and they each loved and cherished that day with all their heart … and most important of all, they remembered.

In High on the Hog: A Culinary Journey from Africa to America, prominent culinary historian and James Beard Award-winning author Jessica B. Harris writes, “The backbone of Juneteenth festivities has always been the table … picnics and barbecues were the hallmarks of the early celebrations.”

The people, like my grandmother, who carried forward the food traditions of Black Texans and sustained the holiday, are a critical piece of the Juneteenth story. As more Americans become aware of the holiday, it’s imperative that we find ways to amplify their contributions and keep their stories alive for generations to come.

Emancipatory food power

As head cook in several restaurants, including some in the Fort Worth Stockyards, my grandmother practiced freedom through food, exercising a personal form of what I call emancipatory food power in my book Food Power Politics. The kitchen was her domain, and the table her sphere of influence. She transformed meals into a means of caring for her family and safeguarding their food security. 

My grandmother passed away in 2013, but she believed in the power of the table. She never sat us down to explain the facts surrounding Juneteenth’s history. She would stand proudly in her kitchen, showing us what emancipation looked like for a southern Black woman who could cook on her own terms. 

The future National Juneteenth Museum in Fort Worth will stand just a few blocks from the home where my grandmother prepared many of the meals that shaped our family’s celebrations. Including stories like hers would not only honor the women who kept these traditions alive but also broaden public understanding of how freedom was practiced, nurtured and passed down at kitchen tables, on backyard grills and at family gatherings across generations.

Juneteenth traditions are not fixed. They vary across families, communities and generations, and my grandmother’s story is only one iteration of the holiday. Yet it is also part of a larger Juneteenth history that rarely receives public attention. Stories like my grandmother’s — of Black women whose labor, cooking and care sustained families and communities — are as much a part of Juneteenth’s legacy as the public celebrations that often dominate its remembrance.

[Kaitlyn Diana edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.