Malcolm X A Culinary Biography Part 2
Courtesy of the Library of Congress
Today we share the second story in a five-part series on the culinary life of Malcolm X.
People from rural Georgia hunted rabbits, birds, and any other wild game to supplement their diet. The activity was a holdover of the African culture that came with the passage across the Atlantic. West and Central Africans came to Colonial America with a familiarity with hunting wild game. One source says that in Africa they employed themselves in hunting and thus arrived in the Southeast having hunted squirrels, birds, and other small game. For centuries, rural folk like Malcolm’s father, Earl Little, who were accustomed to owning rifles and shotguns, hunted and ate wild game.
“My father’s .22 rifle and his shotgun,” writes Malcolm, “were right out in the open; everyone had them for hunting birds and rabbits and other game.” His father had taught him and his older siblings how to shoot and trap small wild game—something that his father’s father taught him in Georgia. Malcolm describes his father as a real Georgia Negro who believed in eating plenty of fried rabbit and chicken and lots of pork.
