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Loved your article or open letter the the chef in Charleston. Please keep doing what you’re doing. I wish you had a show on the food network to point out the importance of food culturally. Amazing that no one even knows Africans cook. Or that blacks have many subsets in the diaspora. Creole, Gullah, Latino

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Michael, I want to thank for your work on early American food and I enjoyed you on Jas. Townsend and Son channel. Your right when reactors play the part of the American revolution, War of 1812 and Civil War everyone forgets to think about the slaves that toiled to keep the food cooking, the water flowing and everything else to the primary players. While some slave owners did free there slaves to fight and or serve in the wars. There were far more slave that served without reward. My family were well to do farmers in Virginia from 1700, I know they owned slaves, My first known great grand father had 25 slave and bond servants. We know that he passed these slaves on to his 10 children that survived. the male heirs split the land 4 ways with each sister receiving 5 acres. We don’t know much about the history after 1800 they were not wealthy enough to matter except one if they were kind or cruel but I hope kind I do know one of my ancestors freed his 3 slaves around 1808 while in the Kentucky legislature. But the history that we share no matter what ancestors did it is still the history that built America. Again I want to thank for your work on early American history, focusing on food and the life of the slaves.

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Question from Tom:. Thanks for writing your fascinating book, it prompts me to request a professional opinion. My recent ancestry (known to the early 18th century) is mostly German, with a smattering of English and French. My maternal grandfather was a second generation German baker here in Saint Louis and he Grandma and 16 kids (did I say Catholic?) lived above the bakery. But my Ancestry DNA sez 50% Scandinavian and 20% Italian. Here’s my question:. Would you suppose that is due to marauding Romans and Norsemen raiding and raping through Europe? While far enough distant that I have no cultural angst about personal family slavery and abuse, though the Germans were passionately against slavery in antebellum Saint Louis. Appreciate your thoughts!

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Mr. Michael W. Twitty

Sir,

I just completed reading your article on BBC Travel: “How Rice Shaped the American South” (8 March 2021).

You mentioned that the rice grown in the Carolinas was brought by “enslaved Africans” during 1750 and 1775.

Would you please comment on the following, which is taken from Saul K. Padover’s book Jefferson (abridged) [New York: New American Library, A Mentor Book, 1942/1970 pp67-68].

(This took place in 1787 – a dozen years after your 1750-to-1775 timeline.)

Jefferson… When he reached Marseille he was asking everybody about rice, a superior variety of which he was hoping to plant in America. He got no satisfactory answer, so he decided to find out in northern Italy.

Jefferson spent his forty-fourth birthday on muleback, crossing the Maritime Alps into Italy. … He was still pursuing rice in Piedmont, but did not find it until he reached Vercelli two days later. “From Vercelli to Novara the fields are all in rice, and now mostly underwater.” Here he made the discovery he was looking for, that the superiority of European rice to American (Carolinian) was inherent in the species, and not, as he thought, due to a better cleaning machine used in Italy.

Jefferson decided to take with him some of the Piedmontese rice and grow it in America. But to his surprise he was told that he could take rice out of the country only at the risk of his life. There was a death penalty attached to the exportation of rice from Piedmont. Jefferson considered that sort of regulation so arbitrary that he had no scruples about breaking the law. He filled his coat pockets full of rice and then, to make doubly sure that he would get his precious species out of Piedmont, he hired a muleteer to smuggle two sacks of rice across the Apennines to Genoa.

Thank you,
Jim “Chip” Foley
(a reader who likes rice, but is a big fan of Jefferson)

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I just listened to you MasterClass intro and I can’t wait to watch the rest and read your book. I am eastern European Jewish. My maternal grandparents were from Przemysl, a town that no one ever heard of until CNN started broadcasting from the train station there about Ukrainian refugees. My mother was born in a place that is now in Poland, or in Ukraine. We don’t know. The border moved after WWII and she was born within a mile of the border. My father was born in the center of Ukraine. However, they were Jews, not Ukrainian or Poles or Austro-Hungarians (My grandfather was in the army in WWI before my mother was born). Food was of great importance to my family and I can really connect with your idea of how food is tied to culture. Yes, it is tied to the food of the region, but it is also tied to the necessities of religious Orthodoxy, I have spoken about it often to friends and in my synagogue, where I have cooked important meals with religious tie-ins for hundreds of people. However, I have never really heard anyone else speak on the subject (maybe I was not listening enough) until I heard you today. Bravo.

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