Wilmington, Delaware's Big Quarterly Part 3
Courtesy of the Library of Congress
In part three of our series on Big Quarterly, a revival/food festival that had been held in the city of Wilmington Delaware, we talk about how the event evolved since the antebellum period. By the time Great Depression (1929-1941) Big Quarterly continued to attract large crowds of churchgoing African-Americans of all denominations which viewed it as an annual religious and cultural pilgrimage that included a spiritual and culinary feast. The event attracted some of the best speakers of the day who used large venues as well as smaller street corners as their pulpits. Along the sidewalks of the streets of Wilmington the savory aroma of sizzling dishes on tables tantalized throngs of pedestrians. In addition to the sidewalk concessions, practically every house in the African-American section of the city transformed into an eatery for the day similar to contemporary Cuban paladares. To learn more about the history of the Great Depression era read the book WPA writer Zora Neale Hurston which includes historical recipes from the time period.
