The Melting Pot
The first immigration from within the United States to another part of the United States involved the blacks from the South who had a general dislike of organized labor, so northern industries recruited them as “strikebreakers” as early as 1875.
The mill owners deliberately used the non-union blacks to put down the whites in the unions. This caused violence sometimes. They weren’t paid much and were allotted 24 cents a day for meals and they stayed in boarding houses.
The largest influx of African-Americans (1910-1930) from Virginia, Georgia, Alabama and the Carolinas increased the black population in southwestern Pennsylvania by 115 percent. The great steel strike of 1919 and demands on the area for war materials provided blacks opportunities to negotiate for better wages; however, this was a two pronged fork in that as soon as anyone was to be laid off it would be the blacks first.
Even with the passage of the Wagner Act in 1935 (giving workers the right to collective bargaining) blacks were allowed to join unions; however, there was much discrimination and often they were not eligible for government housing for misplaced families. World War II caused more demands for laborers and more blacks were recruited up until 1950.
From the South (and their slave ancestors) they brought their cooking style, which included wild greens to which they added ham hocks rejected by the main house. What was discarded at the main house in the South was eaten by their slave ancestors and this was where the term “soul food” originated.
Castoffs included: pigs’ feet, hind-parts, jowls, intestines, cow brains and tongues and others. The southern slaves cooked the bitter collard, mustard and turnip greens with pork leftovers. This “make-do” or “soul food” which was the slave mainstay and its transformation has become part of white and black households today.
Foods
Collard Greens, Shrimp Pilau (bacon, onion, tomato, hot pepper, parsley, rice, shrimp stock, shrimp), Cornbread, Cracklin’ Corn Bread (Cracklins are crispy, golden pieces of deep fried pork fat and skin), sweet potato casserole, African chicken (chicken breasts, onions, tomatoes, garlic, ketchup, peanut butter, cayenne, hard boiled eggs), shrimp creole (green pepper, garlic, butter, tomatoes, lemon juice, tabasco, shrimp, rice), sweet potato pone (sweet potato bread) and old-fashioned hoecake (corn meal, flour, bacon fat, etc. NOTE: This was called hoecake because out in the fields they often didn’t have cooking pots so they baked the bread on a hot hoe (gardening tool) over a fire.)
Other foods include: scalloped pineapple (sugar, butter, eggs, white bread, milk, crushed pineapple baked in casserole and topped with whipped cream as a dessert or served plain as side dish to meats), sweet potato pie, southern ham and brown beans, fried okra, buttermilk fried chicken and others.
Visit www.The PAMeltingPot.com for more than 100 “soul food” recipes as well as other recipes from the 1700s to 1960s.
Christine Willard, a native of western Pennsylvania, researches and blogs about the food unique to the area. Her blog can be found at www.ThePAMeltingPot.com.