Great Migration and Food
Courtesy of The New York Public Library
I once heard Comedian Chris Rock declare, "I love sweet potato pie!" Chris Rock grew up in Brooklyn but he was born in South Carolina where is mother’s family is from. In her book The Warmth of Other Suns, Author Isabel Wilkerson tells us that southerners followed three migration streams out of the south during the Great Migration: folks from Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas followed a West coast migration to California; some people from Louisiana and the majority who came from Mississippi went to Chicago and other parts of the Midwest like Cleveland and Detroit; migrants from the upper south from states like Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas, and Virginia followed an East coast migration to among other places, Philadelphia, New York, Pittsburgh, and Boston. When they relocated, Southern migrants brought with them a tradition of church membership and foods iconic to their southern roots like sweet potato pie.
