WHAT DID THEY EAT? MRS. AMIE LONG’S MENU

In her essay, Psyche Williams-Forson explores food as a material artifact that “enables us to see how gender and race oppression can be racialized as a source of female empowerment.”¹ In this way, food selection offered nineteenth-century Black women the opportunity to combine work in domestic spaces with social activism. During the nineteenth century, African American catering businesses, restaurants, and bakeries in the Northeast were often quite successful.

In particular, Black-owned restaurant and catering businesses in Philadelphia reached significant economic achievement between the 1810s and late 1870s.² Some well-known black business owners in Philadelphia included, Robert Bogle, Euguene and Tillie Baptiste, Clara and Peter Augustine, Thomas Dorsey, Henry Jones, Henry Minton, and Albert and Peter Dutieuille. W.E.B. DuBois referred to Dorsey, Minton, and Jones as the “triumvirate” of African American catering. Dorsey’s story and rise to prominence is especially interesting. Dorsey was born into slavery in Maryland in 1810. He and his family eventually escaped slavery in the 1850s with the assistance of William Still and settled in Philadelphia. Dorsey’s master attempted to recapture him, however, a group of Philadelphia abolitionists raised nearly $1,000 to purchase his freedom. Despite having little formal education, Dorsey possessed a refined pallet for fine dining and entertainment and eventually rose to prominence as one of the most successful restaurant owners in nineteenth-century Philadelphia.³

Food played an important role in the Colored Conventions movement. Records like committee reports provide important information about the types of food provided during and after convention meetings. Likewise, advertisements for boarding houses often featured announcements describing food served to guests. Regardless of the setting, the decision to serve guests certain dishes allowed Black women to express agency. In her essay, Psyche Williams-Forson explained that boardinghouse owners “were very cognizant of the relationship between commensality and politics.”⁴ Food selection offered black women an indirect means to express their political viewpoints.

Mrs. Amie Long is an example of one woman involved in food preparation during the Colored Conventions. Long operated a refreshment room in her home near one of the convention halls. The Delaware County American advertised:

“Mrs. Amie Long has fitted up refreshment rooms in South Avenue, near the Court House, which will prove a great public convenience, especially during the session of the Court. She dispenses hot cakes and coffee, ham, soups, eggs, and a variety of admirably prepared edibles, and those suggestors of Christmas times, mince pies, which were so hugely appreciated by hands, are to be considered as specimens of her culinary abilities, commend us say we, to her proficiency to this especial department.”

Refreshment rooms allowed convention attendees to continue their discussions during breaks as they enjoyed meals. These locations not only facilitated conversation among convention participants, but also allowed black women the opportunity to engage in political discourse. It is hard to imagine that women like Mrs. Long, along with women attendees, did not engage in conversations with her customers and helped to shape their opinions on different matters.

At the same time, women such as Mrs. Long also expressed their political stances through food selection. Boardinghouse owners conscientiously crafted menus making deliberate decisions about what types of food to serve and how to serve these items. For instance, a hostess’ decision to serve regional foods to guests could communicate a message of affinity and shared political stances. At the same time, refusing to fulfill certain gastronomic requests also conveyed clear messages to customers. Williams-Forson reminded us that “food and conviviality bring people together, yet food is also a powerful means to distinguish people and communities from one another.”⁵

Sources

Psyche Williams-Forson, “What Did They Eat? Where Did They Stay?: Interpreting the Material Culture of Black Women’s Domestic Work and Labor in the Context of the Colored Conventions” forthcoming in The Colored Conventions in the Nineteenth Century and the Digital Age, P. Gabrielle Foreman, Jim Casey and Sarah Patterson, editors.

Barney Launcelot Ford, “Food Service Industry,” in Encyclopedia of African American Businesses Volume 1, edited by Jessie Carney Smith (Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing, 2006), 304-308.

“Albert and Peter Dutrieuille,” in African American Business Leaders: A Biographical Dictionary, edited by John N. Ingham and Lynne B. Feldman (Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing, 1993), 225-233.

This interactive menu incorporates menu selections from Mrs. Amie Long’s boardinghouse advertisement featured in the Delaware County American. It uses this menu as the framework for a visualization that features recipes from two nineteenth-century African American cookbooks: Malinda Russell’s 1856 A Domestic Cookbook and Abby Fisher’s 1881 What Mrs. Fisher Knows about Southern Cooking. Malinda Russell was born free in Tennessee around 1820. As a young woman, she planned to immigrate to Liberia. However, her plans eventually fell through and she remained in Tennessee where she established a successful pastry shop. During the Civil War, Russell and her family fled to Michigan. Shortly after settling there she published her cookbook becoming the first Black woman in the United States to do so. Abby Fisher was born into slavery in South Carolina during the early 1830s. She and her family were eventually relocated to Alabama during the 1850s. After Emancipation, Fisher and her family moved to California where she established a well-known catering business and published her cookbook. Although these two stories are not directly linked to Mrs. Amie Long’s boardinghouse, they shed light on the different types of successful businesses operated by Black women throughout the nineteenth century.⁶

Credit

Researched and written by Anna Lacy. Edited by Dr. P. Gabrielle Foreman.

Sources

Rafia Zafar, “Recipes for Respect: Black Hospitality Entrepreneurs Before World War I,” in African American Foodways: Explorations in History and Culture, edited by Anne L. Bower (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007).

What the Slaves Ate: Recollections of African American Foods and Foodways from the Slave Narratives, edited by Herbert C. Covey and Dwight Eisnach (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2009).

Malinda Russell, A Domestic Cookbook: Containing a Careful Selection of Useful Receipts (Paw Paw, MI: T.O. Ward, 1856). 

Abby Fisher, What Mrs. Fisher Knows About Southern Cooking (San Francisco, CA: Women’s Cooperative Printing Office, 1881). 

Citations