To Live and Dine in Dixie: The Evolution of Urban Food Culture in the Jim Crow South

222 Pages·2015·1.817 MB·English

by  Angela Jill Cooley

TO LIVE AND DINE IN DIXIE
SOUTHERN FOODWAYS ALLIANCE
STUDIES IN CULTURE, PEOPLE, AND PLACE
The series explores key themes and tensions in
food studies—including race, class, gender, power,
and the environment—on a macroscale and also
through the microstories of men and women who
grow, prepare, and serve food. It presents a variety
of voices, from scholars to journalists to writers
of creative nonfiction.
Series Editor
John T. Edge
Series Advisory Board
Brett Anderson | New Orleans Times- Picayune
Elizabeth Engelhardt | University of Texas at Austin
Psyche Williams- Forson | University of Maryland
at College Park
To Live and Dine in Dixie
The Evolution of Urban Food Culture
in the Jim Crow South
ANGELA JILL COOLEY
The University of Georgia Press Athens & London
© 2015 by the University of Georgia Press
Athens, Georgia 30602
www .ugapress .org
All rights reserved
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2015931434
isbn 978-0-8203-4758-5 (hardcover)
isbn 978-0-8203-4759-2 (paperback)
British Library Cataloging- in- Publication Data available
ISBN for digital edition: 978-0-8203-4760-8
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction The Ollie’s Barbecue Case and the Foodscape
of the Urban South 1
PART 1 SOUTHERN FOOD CULTURE IN TRANSITION, 1876–1935 17
Chapter One Scientific Cooking and Southern Whiteness 19
Chapter Two Southern Cafés as Contested Urban Space 43
PART 2 DEMOCRATIZING SOUTHERN FOODWAYS, 1936–1959 71
Chapter Three Southern Norms and National Culture 73
Chapter Four Restaurant Chains and Fast Food 87
PART 3 THE CIVIL RIGHTS REVOLUTION, 1960–1975 103
Chapter Five The Politics of the Lunch Counter 105
Chapter Six White Resistance in Segregated Restaurants 128
Conclusion Cracker Barrel and the Southern Strategy 148
Notes 155
Selected Bibliography 187
Index 201
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Acknowledgments
Over the years, I have heard stories from various food studies scholars that
at some point in their education or academic career they encountered a
professor, colleague, friend, family member, or total stranger who informed
them that the study of food was not a serious or important scholarly topic.
I have been lucky to have avoided such experiences. On the contrary, I have
always received a significant amount of support, especially from my friends,
colleagues, and professors, for my desire to study how foodways inform
southern culture and society. I would like to thank the following people,
who have supported me with their funding, their time, and their expertise.
I hope I have not left anyone out.
I am grateful for the financial support I received to research this book
from the University of Alabama History Department, the University of
Alabama Graduate School, the Bankhead family, the Teaching American
History Program (and its Tuscaloosa coordinator, ZuZu Freyer), and the
William L. Clements Library at the University of Michigan. Thanks also
to the staffs at the many libraries and archives in which I conducted this
research, including the interlibrary loan librarians at the University of Al-
abama’s Amelia Gayle Gorgas Library, the University of Mississippi’s J. D.
Williams Library, and Minnesota State University, Mankato’s Memorial Li-
brary; Lee E. Pike at the University of Alabama’s Angelo Bruno Business
Library; the reference librarians at the University of Alabama’s Bounds Law
Library; Jim Baggett and the staff at the Birmingham Public Library’s De-
partment of Archives and Manuscripts; Jan Longone and the staff at the
Clements Library; Maria David at the Charlotte Observer; and the staffs at
viii Acknowledgments
the Annie Crawford Milner Archives and Special Collections at the Univer-
sity of Montevallo’s Carmichael Library; the Special Collections of Georgia
College and State University’s Ina Dillard Russell Library; and the Atlanta
History Center’s Kenan Research Center.
Thanks to friends, colleagues, staff, and professors at the University of
Alabama for making graduate school a positive experience in my life. I re-
ceived much support and encouragement from my friends Megan Bever,
Becky Bruce, Stephanie Chalifoux, Colin Chapell, Matthew Downs, Ryan
Floyd, Jonathon Hooks, Christian McWhirter, John Mitcham, and R. Vol-
ney Riser. Thanks to History Department staff members Kay Branyon, Fay
Wheat, and Ellen Pledger for helping me to negotiate the bureaucratic side
of academia. Many thanks to professors John F. Beeler, Tony A. Freyer, Mi-
chael J. Mendle, Joshua D. Rothman, and Maarten Ultee. Particular appre-
ciation goes to my dissertation committee—Lisa Lindquist Dorr, George C.
Rable, and John M. Giggie of the University of Alabama and Grace Eliza-
beth Hale of the University of Virginia—for encouraging me to revise and
publish this book. My dissertation advisor, Kari Frederickson, deserves
special acknowledgment because she encouraged this project when it was
just the germ of an idea for a seminar paper and because she helped me to
successfully navigate the vagaries of the academic job market.
Much of the work of revising my dissertation to turn it into a book man-
uscript took place while I served as a postdoctoral fellow at the University
of Mississippi’s Center for the Study of Southern Culture. I owe a great deal
of gratitude to Ole Miss faculty, staff, and students and especially to the
Southern Foodways Alliance (sfa) and its board, staff, and members. The
center’s director, Ted Ownby, and sfa’s director, John T. Edge, gave me the
invaluable gift of a two-y ear postdoctoral fellowship. Not only did I have
the time to revise my dissertation, I had the opportunity to teach the cen-
ter’s southern studies students, who are among the most enthusiastic and
creative individuals in academia. They, along with faculty members Michele
Grigsby Coffey, Deirdre Cooper Owens, Barbara Combs, Darren Grem,
Adam Gussow, Andy Harper, Katie McKee, Zandria F. Robinson, Jodi Skip-
per, David Wharton, and Charles Reagan Wilson; center staff members Ann
Abadie, Mary Hartwell Howorth, Sarah Dixon Pegues, Jimmy Thomas, and
Becca Walton; sfa staff members Sara Camp Arnold, Amy C. Evans, Me-
Acknowledgments ix
lissa Booth Hall, Emilie Dayan Hill, Mary Beth Lasseter, Julie Pickett, Sara
Wood, and Joe York; and former Nathalie Dupree Graduate Fellows Roy
Button, Susie Penman, and Anna Hamilton, gave me a safe and inviting
space in which to develop my interpretation of southern food culture. The
center and the sfa do important work by educating students and the general
public about the constantly evolving and ever- diverse culture of the Amer-
ican South, and I am honored to be part of the sfa family. I offer special
thanks to Anna Hamilton, who helped to secure permissions for the images
that appear in this volume, and to sfa’s managing editor, Sara Camp Ar-
nold, for helping to edit this manuscript, to secure image permissions, and
to educate me on the publishing process.
I would like to acknowledge my colleagues in the History Department:
Kim Greer, the former dean of the College of Social and Behaviorial Sci-
ences and Maria Bevacqua, the acting dean of the College of Social and
Behavioral Sciences at Minnesota State University, Mankato, for giving me
time to revise this manuscript for publication with much-n eeded course
releases and for their support and encouragement throughout this process.
Thanks also to the University of Georgia Press, especially Patrick Allen, for
seeing value in this project. I appreciate the close attention of the anony-
mous readers and their help in making this manuscript as strong as possible.
I am also grateful to the editors of the Southern Foodways Alliance Studies
in Culture, People, and Place series—Brett Anderson, John T. Edge, Eliz-
abeth Engelhardt, and Psyche Williams- Forson—for including this book
among the exciting scholarship coming out in the area of southern food-
ways. Special thanks goes to sfa board member and University of Texas
professor Elizabeth Engelhardt for the vital role she played in helping me to
revise this manuscript for publication.
Finally, I appreciate my family—especially my mother, Frances; my
father, Gene; my sisters, Susan and Jesslyn; my brother, Shane; and their
families—for their constant love and support through the uncertainties of
an academic career.