A PINCH OF NUTMEG…A FEW GOOD SHAKES OF CINNAMON…THE RIGHT AMOUNT OF SUGAR TO SWEETEN YOUR SOUL…AND OF COURSE, BUTTER, BECAUSE BUTTER MAKES EVERYTHING BETTER.

Watching Alma Jean, my paternal grandmother, roam around her kitchen felt like an experience like no other. She glided gracefully. She crafted flavors, stirred, folded, and chopped with intention, while The Clark Sisters, Diana Ross, & Marvin Winans played in the background. 

Every dish delivered comfort, but her sweet potato pie always topped the list of family favorites. Birthdays, holidays, family reunions, church picnics, you name it: Alma’s sweet potato pie showed up, and you could guarantee that only crumbs would be left by the time the function ended. 

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WHILE SYSTEMS OF POWER EXPLOITED BLACK LIVES AND SUPPRESSED OUR VOICES, MY GRANDMOTHER AND SO MANY OTHER BLACK MATRIARCHS CARVED OUT SAFE SPACES, TAUGHT US SELF-WORTH, AND SHAPED A LANGUAGE OF FREEDOM WE COULD SPEAK FOR OURSELVES.

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Alma’s cooking nourished, resisted, and sustained. Each dish asserted sovereignty and taught me what it means to center Black liberation. 

Through her rituals of care, she revealed to me how food could delight the senses, comfort the heart, and push us closer to freedom. Because Black communities must constantly assert their rights, food often functions as a tool of power, connection, and liberation. Across generations, Black women have preserved stories, passed down knowledge, and kept history alive through what they prepared. A dish never stood alone. It carried the fingerprints of those who came before. 

My grandmother did more than serve meals. She taught me who I should be. She showed me how to care for others. She created love and abundance within the ruins of a system built for our erasure. Her kitchen formed a classroom. Her recipes carried oral history. Her meals satisfied more than hunger, they nourished my spirit and safeguarded Black joy.

Each collard leaf picked, each piece of chicken seasoned and fried, every peach sliced for cobbler, and all the pie crusts crimped and filled with sweet potato filling, marked acts of care. With cast iron and calloused hands, Alma nurtured generations through food, planting resistance in every bite and pouring liberation onto each plate. While systems of power exploited Black lives and suppressed our voices, my grandmother and so many other Black matriarchs carved out safe spaces, taught us self-worth, and shaped a language of freedom we could speak for ourselves.

The kitchens of our elders never mirrored protest sites, yet they operated as spaces of resistance. Alma transformed cooking into a strategy for survival and refusal. A slice of sweet potato pie may appear simple, but in my grandmother’s kitchen, simplicity functioned as a strategy, and comfort often masked survival. While I studied the erasure of Black farmers, the dehumanization of Black bodies, the surveillance of kitchens during enslavement, and the denial of land and capital to Black communities, I witnessed policies attempt to sever our ability to feed ourselves. And still, matriarchs like my grandmother prepared meals that nourished families, supported neighbors, and fueled movements for liberation.

Though constantly under siege, Black foodways have endured. Our ancestors protected autonomy, restored dignity, and anchored us in the ancestral truth that we have always possessed the tools for freedom. Through my studies of food systems and public policy, I recognize how my grandmother’s sweet potato pie responded directly to racist and corporatized systems, even if she never named it as such. She practiced mutual aid, exercised food sovereignty, and cultivated collective resilience. Long before I acquired the knowledge or the language, she modeled those organizing frameworks.

Alma’s cooking showed me how wisdom can grow in the face of violence and how nourishment can shape a blueprint for collective liberation. She handed down the practice of feeding one another, even as systems attempt to starve us, and I continue to carry that praxis forward.

Time in the kitchen with my grandma shaped everything I value. With her, I grew a love for food, strengthened my commitment to community, and discovered how meals could uplift, empower, and liberate. Sweet potato pie still holds Alma’s presence and the ways she created joy, modeled care, and passed down power.

My grandmother taught me that cooking holds power as radical as any demand voiced in the streets. Liberation doesn’t always march with a sign or echo through a crowd. For me, it rose from a warm oven and a slice of pie that pointed toward something larger. Her wisdom planted the seeds for the work I do now, as I research how Black communities grow, cook, and care for one another as well as fight for policy change that restores land, protects our foodways, and centers our liberation. I follow the threads Alma wove into every meal, each one revealing how the intentionality of a kitchen can sustain Black life, carry our history, and craft our future.