Migrant Women's Modernity: Food, Culture, and Women in Interwar Harlem

Southern-style food in Interwar Harlem was ever-present, a critical part of the distinctive, vibrant culture of black New York.  Male intellectuals often wrote about this food consumption in Northern race papers, abstractly debating the social good of the proliferation of these Southern foods in Northern cities.  Specifically, they argued about whether the public consumption of foods such as chitterlings and hog’s maw was something to bemoan or to embrace.  These writers, however, rarely engaged in discussing the production of food, or gendered aspects of food consumption. Indeed, in the intellectual history of the era, there has been a noticeable elision of the people (primarily women) who were producing this food.  Migrant women in Harlem played a central role in the proliferation and retention of these Southern food-ways.  Migrant women became entrepreneurs, selling hot pig’s feet from sidewalk stalls. Domestic workers, working long days with little free time still continued to make labor intensive Southern dishes when they returned home, and women sold tickets to their rent parties through the incentive of fried chicken. The actions of these women worked to determine the development of a very specific food culture, and this had ramifications for the wider urban culture of Harlem. Migrant women’s active food choices and food production provide an important forum through which to explore the significance of their specific gendered role within the creation of a new urban, cultural identity for African Americans in the North. A very specific food culture was determined, fostered and ultimately successful because of the actions of migrant women.  Through a close examination of the different engagements that Harlem women had with food, this paper clarifies the unexplored ways in which black women were central to the creation and conception of black modernity.