Cornbread Nation 2: The United States of Barbecue (Cornbread Nation: Best of Southern Food Writing) (11 page)

"How many black teams are entered this year?" I ask Louis Archendaux, the
team leader.

"I think there's two or three," he says.

"Out of how many?" I ask.

"A little over three hundred."

The main reason blacks don't enter barbecue cook-offs is money, says
Archendaux, who runs his own chemical company in Sugarland. "You've got
to know somebody. We don't have any sponsors-except for friends and relatives who help us out with a few bucks here and there. We have one of the littlest booths out here. We are barely getting by with $5000 or $6000"

The team's booth is furnished with a few picnic tables and a small bar. There are about a dozen people of various races sitting around eating barbecue and drinking beer. I ask the team members who gets invited in to eat.

"We set up folding chairs outside the booth here and watch for hungry
people who don't have wristbands," chuckles Reginald Wilson. "You can tell
by the look on their face that they have no idea what's going on. So we bring
them in and give them some barbecue."

Anyone foolish enough to purchase a five-dollar general admission ticket
to the Houston Rodeo Barbecue Cook-off without a corporate wristband gets
a pathetic chopped barbecue sandwich, a scoop of industrial coleslaw, and
some tasteless beans served on a Styrofoam plate at the public tent. Then they
get to walk around and peek into the invitation-only tents. Sponsors entertain
and raise money for worthy causes, and that's where the competition-quality
barbecue, live bands, and open bars are.

For barbecue buffs who lack corporate connections, the Skinner Lane
Gang booth is a tiny outpost of real-world charity. I take a second helping of
brisket, which is very tender and cut into irregular chunks. I am curious about
how it will fare in the judging. But Archendaux tells me the brisket they will
enter is sliced completely differently.

"Do you change your cooking style for the competition?" I ask.

"You have to," says Archendaux. "If you get it really tender, you can't slice it
perfectly. And appearance is very important to the judges.

"Are any of the judges black?" I wonder.

"Probably not," he says. A visit to the judging booth confirms Archen-
daux's suspicions. All the judges I see are white.

Texas isn't the only place where barbecue cook-offs are divided along racial
lines. Jim Auchmutey of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution attended a Georgia
cook-off called the Big Pig Jig in 1994. "Only a few black teams registered, an
imbalance that's typical of the cook-off circuit," he wrote. Although organizers would like to see more black teams, the Caucasian block-party atmosphere
drives them away, Auchmutey reported. One sign he saw read, "Redneck
Mardi Gras." And that sums up the cook-off atmosphere pretty well, he tells
me on the phone.

Confederate flags were much in evidence at the Georgia event. "The flag is
a big issue at these things," he says. "If you fly even one, that puts out a signal
to black people that this isn't our scene."

"Two years ago, when that flap was going on over in South Carolina, barbecue teams started flying Confederate flags here in Houston," says Archendaux. "Somebody complained, and the Livestock Show folks told the teams to take down the flags." Confederate flags are still banned at the Houston Rodeo
Cook-off.

But Archendaux couldn't care less about the flags. The Skinner Lane Gang
has been breaking the color barrier at Texas barbecue cook-offs for going on
twenty years now. "We were the first black team at the Fort Bend County
Cook-off in 1984," Archendaux says. "They had Confederate flags flying all
over the place."

"Did anybody give you trouble?" I ask him.

"There's always a few assholes," shrugs Archendaux. "But we are kind of
rowdy. If you want to take it there, we can help you out. We never minded a
little scrape."

The BP World's Championship Bar-B-Que Contest at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, as it is officially known, doesn't discriminate against
blacks, its white organizers, white corporate sponsors, and white judges will
tell you. If very few blacks choose to participate, well that's just the way things
work out.

But the white-dominated contest is symptomatic of a larger racial divide
that runs through the middle of Texas barbecue with far more serious consequences. This division wasn't the result of intentional racism either. It's just
that, according to Texas mythology, barbecue belongs to white people.

The pork shoulders have been smoked over hickory until the meat is as soft as
applesauce. I eat mine on a sandwich bun with vinegary sauce. Supervising
the cooking is a famous pit master named Devin Pickard who has flown in
from Centerville, Tennessee, for the occasion. "Barbecue: Smoke, Sauce, and
History" is the name of this three-day symposium sponsored by the Southern
Foodways Alliance (5FA), an affiliate of the Center for the Study of Southern
Culture at the University of Mississippi.

The SFA brings together a diverse group of scholars, journalists, and
restaurant folk. Founding members include African American food authority
Jessica B. Harris and Southern cooking's television belle, Nathalie Dupree.
The meals at this symposium are being catered by some of the most famous
names in Southern barbecue-black and white.

Paper plate in hand, I find a spot at one of the tables that have been set up
under the tall shade trees of the quadrangle, an open space in the middle of
the Ole Miss campus. The sandwich is delicious, although it's hard for a Texan
to comprehend that this mushy pork on a bun is considered America's purest
form of barbecue. Anyway, it gives me something to talk about in this shady grove, where a couple hundred barbecue experts have assembled to brag, debate, and pontificate on their favorite subject.

The consensus here is that barbecue is an icon of the American South held
equally dear by blacks and whites. And as several speakers explain, in the Deep
South it is sometimes the common ground that brings the races together,
and sometimes the battleground on which they clash. The case of Maurice
Bessinger is a prime example of the latter, and a topic much discussed at the
symposium.

Shortly after the Confederate flag was removed from the South Carolina
statehouse a couple of years ago, Bessinger lowered the giant American flags
he used to fly over his nine Piggie Park barbecue restaurants and raised the
stars and bars. It wasn't the first time Bessinger had taken a rebel's stand. In
the early i96os, Bessinger refused to integrate his barbecue joints until, in the
oft-cited case of Newman v. Piggy Park Enterprises, he was forced to by the
courts.

Given this history of discrimination, and the fact that Bessinger also passed
out religious tracts in his restaurants claiming slavery was justified by the
Bible, the usual "regional pride" defense of the Confederate flag didn't wash.
And so blacks started protesting Bessinger's racism. As a result, national chain
stores removed his popular barbecue sauce from their shelves. Bessinger sued,
claiming his right to free speech was being violated. "This is part of my exercising my beliefs in Christ and putting out the word," Bessinger told CNN in
explanation of his views.

The way in which barbecue and race are emotionally intertwined in the
Old South is among the most fascinating topics in food history. Among the
deeply held convictions on the subject are opinions as to whether the true
progenitors of barbecue in the American South were whites or blacks.

Based on the etymology of the word barbecue, most scholars agree that the
cooking style came from the Caribbean, or at least that's where it was first observed by Europeans. The word first appeared in print in the English language
in 1661. In 1732, Alexander Pope was already writing about the craving, "Send
me, Gods! a whole hog barbecu'd."

In Colonial times, barbecue had become common in the Carolinas and
Virginia. Cooking whole hogs over smoldering coals in long pits was the usual
methodology. By the height of the plantation era, no political rally, religious
revival, or civic celebration in the Deep South was complete without a barbecue. Whites obviously did the organizing, but who did the cooking?

In the heart of Dixie, evidence suggests that African Americans did the work. "It was said that the slaves could barbecue meats best, and when the
whites had barbecues, slaves always did the cooking," writes a former Virginia
slave in the Autobiography of Louis Hughes. But there are also Southern barbecue traditions, in the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina and elsewhere, where whites were always in charge. So, what's the verdict?

"Did blacks create Southern barbecue?" I ask Lolis Eric Elie, the black author of the widely acclaimed barbecue book, Smokestack Lightning, and a staff
writer for the New Orleans Times-Picayune.

"You can't draw a straight line between black and white contributions to
Southern culture," Elie says philosophically. "But you can't ignore the fact that
the South is distinct from the North because of the presence of so many black
people. And many white Southerners are still afraid to acknowledge the
African influence that flows through their food, their music, their manner of
speech, and their attitude toward life."

The origins may be hazy, there can be no doubt that barbecue became central to black identity in the South after the Civil War. Black barbecue stands on
the side of the road became the first barbecue restaurants in the Old South.
And because of the fame of black barbecue, "whites, in a strange reversal of
Jim Crow traditions, made stealthy excursions for take-out orders," according
to the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture.

But a combination of forces conspired to take the barbecue business away
from its rural black roots. Urbanization, new sanitary regulations enacted
during the Progressive Era at the turn of the century, and strict segregation
laws gave white-owned barbecue businesses major advantages.

At the symposium, we watched a documentary called Smokestack Lightning: A Day in the Life of Barbecue. In the video, Lolis Eric Elie asked the owner
of Charles Vergos's Rendezvous, perhaps the most famous barbecue joint in
Memphis, about the origins of the Southern barbecue tradition.

"Brother, to be honest with you, it don't belong to the white folks, it belongs to the black folks," Vergos said. "It's their way of life; it was their way of
cooking. They created it. They put it together. They made it. And we took it,
and we made more money out of it than they did. I hate to say it, but that's a
true story."

Racial controversy is part of the culture of Southern food, and the SFA has
never shied away from it. In fact, the association's 2004 symposium will be devoted entirely to racial influences in Southern cooking. After all, promoting
diversity and multicultural understanding is part of the association's charter.

Which is why the S FA's "Taste of Texas Barbecue Trip" ran into problems in
the planning stage. The idea was to bring food writers, scholars, and barbecue lovers from across the country to the Lone Star State for a barbecue tour in
June of 2002. But S FA officials were dismayed to discover that all of the barbecue spots selected by a committee of Texans were white-owned.

The SFA asked for a list with more diversity. The Texas barbecue experts insisted that the state's most emblematic barbecue was produced by Czech and
German meat markets. When officials insisted that any SFA program about
barbecue in the American South must be multiracial, one Texan accused the
SFA of "inserting a racial agenda" where one didn't belong. In a compromise,
a few black and Hispanic-owned barbecue joints were eventually added to the
tour.

But the conflict put the widely held assertion that Texas barbecue is a white
tradition under the microscope. And considered in the larger context of racial
issues discussed at the Ole Miss symposium, the matter raises some troubling
questions. "The Bessinger controversy has given barbecue a starkly political
dimension," wrote Brent Staples in the New York Times. "The pulled pork
sandwich you eat is now taken as an index of where you stand, on the flag, the
Civil War and on Maurice Bessinger."

Last summer, the New York Times picked the top four barbecue joints in
Texas: Kruez Market, Louie Mueller's, Cooper's, and the Salt Lick. All of them
are white-owned. The article, entitled "Stalking 4-Star Barbecue in the Lone
Star State," appeared on Wednesday, July 24, 2002. A barbecue survey that excluded black establishments anywhere else in the South would have no doubt
drawn angry charges of racism from Brent Staples.

So why is Texas barbecue different?

In the myth of Texas that most of us know, the state was settled by brave Anglo
pioneers and rugged cowboys. And since they were there all by themselves,
Texas barbecue must have been invented by Anglos too. Lacking any specific
details, many creation stories have emerged. In all of them, the inventors of
barbecue are white Texans.

In the proposal for The Chuck Wagon Cookbook of the Lyndon Baines Johnson Ranch, author Jane Sherrod Singer wrote:

In the cattle-raising country of Texas, each owner of a ranch brands his
calves with his own insignia, a Texas kind of heraldry. Legends says that in
the early days, a cattle owner, a Mr. Bernarby Quinn, used a branding iron
with his initials B.Q., with a straight line under the B. He also served the
best steaks for five hundred miles around. Thus the Bar-B-Q is synonymous with excellent cook-out foods.

The Bar-B-Q ranch story is also recounted in Jane Butel's 1982 cookbook,
Finger Lickin' Rib Stickin' Great Tastin' Barbecue. Only in Butel's version, the
rancher is named Bernard Quayle.

In the early 1940s, the Texas Writers Project submitted material for a book
called America Eats, a collection of food folklore from around the country that
was never published but can still be found in the Library of Congress. The liberal writers were staunch defenders of the rights of minorities. But they evidently had no idea that barbecue even existed in the Old South. The Texas
chapter had this to say about Texas barbecue history: