Food Power Politics: Race, Civil Rights, and Food Access in the Mississippi Delta

FAIN: FEL-272890-21

Bobby J. Smith II
Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois (Champaign, IL 61801-3620)

Writing and revision for a book on civil rights-era food justice movements and contemporary food politics and activism in the rural South.

Food Power Politics uses archival materials and qualitative data to examine the interaction between oppressive and emancipatory practices of food power as exercised in the Mississippi Delta from the civil rights era to today. By documenting these dynamics, my book shifts the way we understand civil rights history and current struggles against food disparities in black communities. It offers a new line of inquiry that uncovers a neglected period of the movement when activists expanded the meaning of civil rights to address food, and control over access to food, as integral to social and economic conditions. This meaning-making process is used as a model by black communities today that mobilize around the food justice movement. By making these connections, my book brings together histories of civil rights with food justice studies to illuminate the connections between civil rights activism and present-day food justice activism in rural black communities in the Delta.

Associated Products

Food Power Politics: The Food Story of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement (Book)
Title: Food Power Politics: The Food Story of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement
Author: Bobby J. Smith II
Editor: Lucas Church
Abstract: This book unearths a food story buried deep within the soil of American civil rights history. Drawing on archival research, interviews, and oral histories, Bobby J. Smith II re-examines the Mississippi civil rights movement as a period when activists expanded the meaning of civil rights to address food as integral to sociopolitical and economic conditions. For decades, white economic and political actors used food as a weapon against Black sharecropping communities in the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta, but members of these communities collaborated with activists to transform food into a tool of resistance. Today, Black youth are building a food justice movement in the Delta to continue this story, grappling with inequalities that continue to shape their lives. Drawing on multiple disciplines including critical food studies, Black studies, history, sociology, and southern studies, Smith makes critical connections between civil rights activism and present-day food justice activism in Black communities, revealing how power struggles over food empower them to envision Black food futures in which communities have the full autonomy and capacity to imagine, design, create, and sustain a self-sufficient local food system.
Year: 2023
Primary URL: http://uncpress.org/book/9781469675077/food-power-politics/
Access Model: Available for purchase
Publisher: University of North Carolina Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 9781469675077
Copy sent to NEH?: No

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