Antebellum Barbecues
Horace Bradley, A Southern Barbecue, Courtesy of Harper's Weekly
Solomon Northup's autobiography Twelve Years a Slave, describes the horrors of slavery and the agency of enslaved people. It also documents 19th century Louisiana food traditions. For example, wealthy planters hosted barbecue for as much as “three to five hundred” slaves (and their owners) “from neighboring plantations to join his own on [special'] occasions.” They ate around a large table “loaded with varieties of meat and piles of vegetables.” Open pit barbecued meats cooked “in the shade of wide branching trees” proved to be the main culinary attraction. Slaves dug a pit and fill it with wood “burned until it is filled with glowing coals, over which chickens, ducks, turkeys, pigs, and not [in]frequently the entire body of a wild ox [were] roasted.”