[jazz song playing]
[Stephen] Harlem.
In the 1920s,
it was the Black Mecca for the new negro.
In The Great Migration,
Black Southerners escaped the clutches of Jim Crow
and were now setting their own path to freedom.
Freedom to imagine,
freedom to be Black,
or to just be.
Everyone that was somebody, you moved here.
[Stephen] Their arrival fueled the Harlem Renaissance,
a flourishing epicenter of Black culture,
music, literature, art,
activism, and food.
It was their Southern soul that defined Harlem cuisine.
And that continues today
in the street vendors, eateries, and cocktail bars of the neighborhood,
all living legacies of the Renaissance.
[man] When we've painted that painting,
when we've sung the hell out of that song,
it's not done until we eat.
[theme song playing]
[theme song ends]
[woman] I, too, sing America
I am the darker brother
They send me to eat in the kitchen When company comes
But I laugh, and eat well And grow strong
Tomorrow, I'll be at the table When company comes
Nobody'll dare say to me "Eat in the kitchen," then
Besides, they'll see how beautiful I am
How beautiful I am
And be ashamed
I, too, am America
[jazz music playing]
[Stephen] As African Americans left the comfort of loved ones from the South,
they took with them pieces of home.
They carried the traditions and crafts
that would go on to create new bonds and businesses.
-[woman] Welcome! -Welcome to Charles Pan-Fried Chicken!
[Stephen] For years, I had heard of the story
of Harlem legend Charles Gabriel.
A James Beard-nominated chef and a direct migrant from the South
whose chicken is still fried in old cast-iron pans.
Today, Chef Charles and his protégé, Chef Quie,
have invited me for a sweet and savory off-menu meal that is a Harlem staple.
[Stephen] Chef Charles, Chef Quie.
-How you doing? A pleasure. -How you doing?
[Stephen] It's an honor to meet you.
-Appreciate you very much. -How you doing?
Have a seat here, where we've put some chargers.
We cooked this chicken. I'll serve you.
Chef Charles, sit. I got you.
All right.
I love to see you being served.
-[Charles] Thank you. -You've earned that.
I'm very happy to be here with you.
[Charles] Thank you.
And, uh, I'm sad to say
that it's taken me this long to eat your food,
but I am happy that it is finally happening.
Look at this beautiful plate.
-Here we go. -Thank you.
-You're welcome. -Thank you.
This is the stuff dreams are made of.
[Quie] I hope you know what this is.
[Stephen] I know what this is.
-It's that chicken and waffles, right? -[Charles] It is.
-I know ex-- -You're wrong.
It's that Charles Pan-fried Chicken and Waffles.
-Excuse me. Yeah. -[Quie] That's the difference in this.
-A little honey on yours? -[Stephen] Why not?
-Most definitely. -Is that how you take it?
-That's how we take it. -All right. Let's do it.
-[Quie] This is a must. This is important. -Yeah.
[Quie] Just a little tap. Umm.
[Stephen] That looks good.
Perfect.
What you think? Grab with your hands. You home.
[Stephen] I'm going with my hand. All right, good.
Oh man.
-[Quie] Yeah. Yeah. -Wow.
-Oh my God. -[Quie] It's Charles love you tasting now.
That's taking you back to the time when you're playing.
Get out in the dust. Didn't know what to eat. Had nothing to eat.
So, it was too late for dinner.
Too early for breakfast.
Chicken waffles was that perfect meal in between.
[Stephen] Wow.
This is really incredible.
Thank you.
You can never get that type of crust
without a pan fry.
I had to get the skillet made down South at the steel plant.
They used to make my skillet. I brought it to New York.
And when was that?
Ah. That was, uh…
you figure, 40 years ago now.
Forty-year-old skillets.
-[Charles] Yes. Yes. Yes. -[Stephen] Yeah.
[Charles] I only had a regular frying pan. They were too small.
And I had this pan made just enough for four of them on the stove.
[Stephen] They're all going.
[Charles] And they're-- Yep.
Then after that, I got a truck.
I was the only one out there with a food truck at that time.
-Yeah? Are we talking early '80s? -[Charles] Yeah. Eighties. Right.
They'd be riding around in cars trying to catch up with me,
but they can't.
-Chasing your truck? -Yeah.
It got so much, I said, "Wow. I think I need to open up a restaurant."
That's when I opened my first restaurant.
-Your story goes back to North Carolina. -Correct.
Tell us about your childhood.
I had 12 brothers and eight sisters, so…
-Twelve brothers and eight sisters? -Yes.
I wanna make sure that doesn't go over people's heads.
[chuckles] Yeah. Twelve brothers and eight sisters in my family.
We did sharecropping.
Sometimes we had to walk five miles to the cotton field.
We'd leave at 6:00,
and we'd come back at 6:00.
We'd get back home. Then we'd have to kill a chicken.
Everybody had a chore to do.
My chore was to turn the chicken in the pan. That was my chore.
We didn't have a stove like this. We had a wood stove, you understand?
My mom, she'd tell me what to do.
She said, "I want you to turn this chicken
every few minutes." So that's what I did.
She said, "Look, always cut the chicken,
season the chicken. Let it sit for eight hours."
"And after eight hours, then you fry."
So, each day we'd come,
we'd have the chicken ready for the next day.
So, you don't do any brining?
None of this buttermilk stuff?
-None of that? -No. I use regular milk and egg.
-That's it. Milk and eggs. That's it. -Milk and eggs.
And Ma's special seasoning that she gave me to put in.
And did you grow up with the same exact recipe?
-Same recipe. -[Stephen] Wow.
My mom gave me this recipe, and I wanted to put it out there.
So how y'all can see, you know, what it's all about.
Keeping your mother's legacy and recipes alive.
[Stephen] Do you ever miss the South?
No.
When I was down South, I was working at this dairy farm.
This one day, I was there milking a cow, and I knocked over a bucket of milk.
And this guy came by, and he kicked me.
Because I spilled the milk.
And he called me names. And he told me to go home.
So, I went home. Told Mom.
But I still went back.
I didn't have a choice. I went back because I needed the money.
You had to go back.
[Charles] I went back, yeah.
He's being nice, saying he got kicked.
He got kicked, and he waddled home.
So they actually beat him for spilling milk by accident.
Yes.
And so that's why when I came to New York,
it was a blessing because I could do what I wanted to do.
And not what somebody else wanted me to do.
I felt like I was free.
Yeah.
So, Chef Quie,
how did you link up with Chef Charles?
I idolized this man all my life. He used to work at Copeland's.
I used to go there with my family on Sundays when we had money saved up.
-Yeah. -I asked to work with him in the kitchen.
And my first time with him in the kitchen
was working with a church feeding homeless people during COVID.
[Stephen] Amazing.
And, by you reaching back to one of your idols
at a very difficult moment
where restaurants are going out of business
and saying, "I got you."
That's also something that I'm paying attention to.
Part of the experience of Blackness
is you take something that should have beaten you,
and that becomes its own new legacy.
That is the Blackest shit I can imagine.
That's that Renaissance spirit keeps moving on.
It's why our Harlem restaurants are so important. This is history.
Keep it moving.
This conversation with you both
is… is one that I will never forget.
And it's such an honor for me to learn from you.
And I am so grateful to you as well, my brother,
because you are instructing us all
on how we need to show up and protect
the legends in our own communities.
-Thanks. -So, Chef Quie, thank you for that.
And Chef Charles.
-I just appreciate you. Thank you all. -Thank you.
[Stephen] Chef Charles is part of a distinguished cohort
of successful Black Harlem businesses,
born from the legacy of the Harlem Renaissance,
a time when the artistry of Black chefs and jazz artists
fused together.
So I'm on my way to see renowned restaurateur
Alexander Smalls,
most known for reopening famed Renaissance hot spot,
Minton's Playhouse.
And its sister restaurant, the Cecil.
It's been years since I've had a chance to sit at this coveted table.
A place where artists and dignitaries have dined.
[Alexander] Hello, man. How are you?
-Good to see you. -[Stephen] I'm good. Great to see you.
-It's a long time since you were here. -It has been.
[Alexander] Hello.
You grew an inch or two since you were here last.
[Stephen] People just forget. People forget.
[Alexander] Welcome back to Harlem.
[Stephen] Thank you so much. It feels good to be back.
-Especially to be back here. -I know, thank you. I appreciate that.
And this is… the right stop
because this is the most coveted dinner table in Harlem.
If you were to take a walk down memory lane,
and you were to read
some of the stories and novels of Harlem writers
if you were to look closely at a lot of the music.
"Gimme a Pigfoot and a Bottle of Beer."
[song playing] ♪ Gimme a pigfoot ♪
♪ And a bottle of beer ♪
Food was always…
interwoven into
the lifestyle of Black and brown people.
I love thinking about
how we wouldn't really have
-the Renaissance without our food. -Yeah.
The food isn't really thought of
on the same tier as the art and literature,
but this was actually the source of all of that.
When we've painted that painting, when we've sung the hell out of that song,
you know, when we've done all these creative things,
it's not done until we eat.
[laughs]
I mean, you simply can't leave that out.
Right where our history begins, it's there.
For a lot of the folks who migrated from the South,
they would have these rent parties.
They would come together at each other's homes,
and they would sell the food they would cook.
-[Stephen] Food is at the center of that. -[Alexander] Food is at the center.
[Alexander] They would create a social dynamic
in their private apartments or dwellings.
And when I read about the Harlem Renaissance,
and I read about the parties they would all have…
[sighs]
…it inspires me.
It's such an important part of this Harlem legacy
that you… that you are keeping.
It's why I do what I do.
So I prepared some wonderful stuff. I hope.
-Wow! -[laughs]
Oh my God.
"Wow" for the quantity or "wow" for the dish?
-Well, there's just a lot to take in. -There's a lot to take in.
Tell me everything.
[Alexander] Okay. So what we have here is
a green lima bean ham hock stew.
With heirloom carrots. Corn.
And the corn is sweet right now.
Some crushed tomatoes, sage, thyme, rosemary.
Smoked pork belly to just kind of give it an extra kick.
[Stephen] Yes.
-I think you'll like it. -I think I will love it.
And we have black rice.
Because it's one of my favorites.
Cousins to the red rice, which is an African grain of rice
that was brought to South Carolina just like the Carolina gold.
Let's do it.
This is such an honor to be back here with you.
-I'm glad to have you back in Harlem. -Eating your food.
-Back in Harlem. -[Alexander] Yeah.
[Stephen] Wow. Limas, ham hocks.
Oh, you have to take the whole thing. It's a big--
I'm reaching. I'm trying to take the whole thing. We're in a fight now.
[laughs]
I have to take another one that's a little more ready to be taken.
-Right. -Look at the size of this.
[Alexander] It takes all of that because it's not a lot of meat.
-[Stephen] Right. -[Alexander] But it's bold.
[Stephen] Very.
[Alexander] So after I soak it for a day and dry it out,
then I roast them in an oven
for a couple of hours, and they get really crisp.
-They reduce down. -[Stephen] Um-hmm.
[Alexander] And then, I put them
in the ham stock that I premade.
Onions and celery and garlic.
And then I add, sautéed, and braise for a couple of hours.
Then I finish it off with a little red wine.
-And then we have something special. -It's not really a weeknight meal.
[laughs]
Look at this.
I wish so badly that people could smell this incredible smell.
[Alexander] I know.
-But this is the South on a plate. -[Stephen] It really is.
You like that?
And the meat is like butter. It really is.
I've come full circle
on two favorite dishes of my childhood.
Pork and beans,
which is so foundational in our culture.
The other is succotash.
Because that is my reinterpretation of a classic.
And we're allowed to reinterpret classics.
[Stephen] Of course. And whatever this interpretation is,
it's really working out, so…
Your story, in particular, is such
a unique and important bridge from this migration of the 1900s
to the Harlem of today.
From South Carolina, the decision to come to Harlem,
and what was happening in your life around that time.
My aunt and uncle, who were my everything,
they were my mentors. She was a classical pianist,
and she taught me classical music and classical piano.
My uncle was a chef who taught me how to dream through food.
He taught me that food was a language
and that I could learn that language and be expressive.
But the most important thing added to it was who had the power.
And the person who wields the spoon,
the person who made the food, had the power.
And also the respect.
And I always knew I wanted that.
[Stephen] Right.
For you, there was a middle period
where you were in Manhattan, but you were not in Harlem.
I wonder what that period was like for you as you tried
to find your place in the world
before you ultimately found your place here.
When I came to New York, I came as a young opera singer.
I had essentially landed a contract with the Houston Grand Opera
that had created a production of Porgy and Bess.
I was pursuing that childhood dream
of being the first African American male opera singer
to transverse the globe as an international star.
It's what I wanted.
Uh, what I did not understand that was in store for me was the glass ceiling
where people who look like me wasn't allowed.
And I realized that I had to make changes,
that essentially
not only did I have to have a seat at the table,
but I had to own the table.
I couldn't own an opera house, but I could own a restaurant,
and I opened the first African American fine dining restaurant in New York
called Cafe Beulah, and that changed my life.
[Stephen] Wow.
Food was the salvation for how I was going to satisfy
what I needed to say as an African American man.
A creative. An artist.
I love what you're talking about
as far as food being a language
to be learned and leveraging that language
for our own advancement.
You can't have a gathering with Black folks if you ain't got no food.
[chuckles] That's a fact.
Because we are tied to that expression.
Mm-hmm.
The extraordinary thing that people don't understand
about the African American culture
is that food was currency.
That recipe that was unique
was the way we created worth when we didn't own ourselves.
-We owned that dish. -Right.
And that dish not only gave us dignity and respect,
it was currency.
[laughs]
[Stephen] Black folks in Harlem tapped into their culinary roots
to create lucrative opportunities.
Like Lillian Harris Dean, also known as Pigfoot Mary,
a street vendor who sold pig feet
to those nostalgic for a taste of the home they left behind.
A business that ultimately made her a millionaire.
Stories like Pigfoot Mary's, the recipes of the Renaissance,
and many other parts of our history are preserved with care
at the Harlem Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture,
led by curator Joy Bivins,
the first woman to serve as director of the Schomburg Center in 40 years.
[Joy] When I think about the Harlem Renaissance,
one, I think about the New Negro Movement
and really this moment
at the beginning of the 20th century, right after World War I,
post-emancipation, post-Reconstruction.
This is in a new space, an urban space
where Black people were really looking to themselves to say,
"What is our culture? What is our aesthetic?"
So we are a research library,
and the archivist has pulled some things for you to look at,
and we're gonna go to the manuscripts archives
and rare books reading room.
Great. I can't wait.
I can't either.
[indistinct chatting]
All of these menus and rare books
and cookbooks and things of that nature that really reflect the culture as well.
So we've assembled some things here for you.
Okay.
There's a lot of good stuff to get into on this table.
[Joy] There is.
This is really all to the credit
of the many generations of folks like yourself
who have stepped into that stewardship role.
So I thank you for that and for making this education possible for us.
Well, thank you.
Let's just start with what's in front of us.
Mm-hmm. So here we have Pigfoot Mary's recipe for pig feet.
So this is like a prized recipe.
I mean, this is the thing that made her famous, obviously.
[Joy] Yeah, this looks…
-I'm hungry, actually, right now. -Yeah, I love this.
So she actually creates her own agency,
her own opportunities, and great wealth for herself.
A Black woman who was born enslaved
comes to Harlem and, without any infrastructure,
is able to start selling
the parts of the pig that we had access to
and that are familiar to us and our palates.
And so I always just like to think of,
you know, her story as a kind
of small microcosm for Black women,
using the kitchen and their culinary skills
as a means of creating agency.
Right. Right.
Her adventures in real estate were so successful
that at one point, her total holdings were estimated at 375,000 dollars.
Off of pig feet.
-The pig has not done us wrong, has it? -[chuckles]
[Stephen] The best part is the last three words of this recipe.
-It says, "Pass hot sauce." -[Joy] "Pass hot sauce."
[laugh]
-'Cause you've got to, right? -[Stephen] I love that.
[Stephen] Over a century later,
the streets of Harlem are still telling the story of our food.
The move North created a cultural explosion
that gave way to African American entrepreneurship
and a new middle class.
Cha McCoy is a third-generation Harlemite and sommelier
who is working across the globe
to make the beverage and hospitality industry
more accessible, accountable, and relevant.
We're on a historic street that I know a little bit about,
but give us a little bit more context.
So welcome to Harlem.
This is Strivers' Row,
and I think the key part here is really just being grounded
in Harlem Black excellence, all right?
So if you were a politician,
the musicians of the time of the Renaissance,
everyone that was somebody, you moved here
and that moving-on-up theory.
It wasn't really about going downtown.
It was just making it to Strivers' Row for us.
I was hoping we could have a stoop session.
For sure. For sure.
So why are people from Harlem
so expressive and so uniquely Harlem?
What's in the water here? What's going on in Harlem?
It's the spirit of the hustler.
-It's in the DNA, as my mother would say. -It is.
No matter where I go in the world,
I still make sure I show up as Harlem everywhere.
I wanna check out some of these spots in your neighborhood.
Sure, let's do it. [chuckles]
[Cha] We're about to pull up on my block. We're on three-nine,
and we wanna get some watermelon.
-[Stephen] Watermelon. -From one of my homies.
We went to school together.
[Stephen] All right, coming to see the watermelon.
What's up? We gotta see you. Show you some love.
How you doing? This is Stephen.
Nice to meet you, man.
I told him. Officially Harlem when you're at the watermelon stand.
That means the summertime, too.
-That's a fact. -[Cha] So, tell us what we got here.
[Tyrell] These are from Georgia.
-We go down there-- -Me too.
You're from Georgia?
[Tyrell] All right. I've been down there a little while.
So we do everything. We juice them. We bowl them. They make salads with them.
They started Jell-O rind. That's like a snack. But it's healthy.
And the rind has the most nutrition inside of it.
-You know? The green part. -[Cha] I didn't know that.
[Tyrell] So there's a lot about this. It's a superfood.
How did you end up out here selling melons?
It started as a hustle. We didn't want to be in the street.
We said, "You know what? I like the watermelons."
We said, "That's a good flip." We learned about watermelons.
It took us all the way back to the South.
We came up in the streets. So to even have something
that's gonna provide a way for our families.
A way for these kids to stay off the streets.
There's a lot of gun violence, so we're trying to bring that down.
-Right. -Come here.
Throw a watermelon. I'll pay you a couple of dollars. Don't worry about it.
The watermelons provide that. Then I look at the slaves
who used to trade watermelons when they got out of slavery.
-[Stephen] Exactly. -You're the watermelon baby.
I'm the watermelon king.
Now, any time you see Black people creating wealth for themselves,
you know what's coming next. They're making fun of us.
They're trying to take it away. They're trying to undermine,
diminish what our agency is
when we can provide for ourselves.
So to me, seeing you out here,
this is actually how we should be reclaiming
this narrative, you know?
-[Cha] Word. -[Stephen] Yes.
[Cha] What've we got here? Looking good.
So it's a watermelon salad. We have red watermelon, yellow watermelon,
red onion, cucumber, a little bit of feta cheese,
and we have a raspberry vinaigrette dressing drizzle.
We didn't forget about you.
-[Tyrell] Aww, thank you. -It smells delicious.
-Thank you. Enjoy. -[Stephen] Thank you.
[Tyrell] You're eating the yellow watermelon, strawberries.
We've got the black seed yellow watermelons.
-[Cha] Okay. -You have Jubilees.
[Cha] Jubilees?
Then you have, um, Sugar Babies.
Then you have yellow meat.
I like the Sangrias better.
-[Cha] Sangria? Okay. -Yes. Sangrias.
These are Sangrias? I need the Sangrias.
Jubilee, you'll see a long stripe going through it.
That's the Jubilees.
The Sugar Babies are small and round and dark.
Are the farmers the ones who taught you about all the different varieties?
Yeah, I'm at school right now. I'm always learning 'cause I'm a city boy.
They call them pollinators down South. 'Cause we deal with the Black farmers.
We go down there with the Black farmers, and then I'm asking them.
And we show support to them.
They're dying down there.
And their land's going up for auction, and then somebody else is buying them.
That's what this campaign is about.
It's going back, reconnecting with the Black farmers.
I take the trucks down there. We help them plant.
We've got 100 acres of land we got to actually cultivate.
Did you know when you were growing up
that street vendors
were a part of the Harlem Renaissance?
Are you connected to that history of people selling food on the street?
No, I was in the streets.
I was in the wrong part of the street vending.
You know, we were selling something we weren't supposed to be selling.
I wish we would have got introduced to that a long time ago.
That's why I do what I do.
It took me about three, four times to go to jail
and come back to realize, "We don't need that no more."
I really feel extra honored to be here with you,
and I'm a fan of your work, man.
You're teaching me in real time.
You're teaching many others, and so I wanna name that
and let you know that I appreciate your work, man.
-Yeah. Appreciate you. -Appreciate having you. Thanks.
-Keep up the good work. -Thanks, brother.
[Tyrell] Thank you, Cha. Sure, thank you.
[saxophone instrumental playing]
[Stephen] It was a treat to see the city through the eyes of a Harlem native
and observe and appreciate the spirit of Black enterprise
still thriving in Harlem today.
The Harlem Renaissance was a time of deep artistic and cultural expression.
As a former sommelier myself,
I know that what's in the glass
can teach us a lot about our history.
Through the 1920s,
speakeasies, clubs, and dance halls
were all part of the subculture of Harlem.
That legacy is being kept alive today
at 67 Orange Street, a local Black-owned bar in Harlem
with an underground mystique similar to the speakeasies of the Renaissance.
I'm talking to owner Karl Franz Williams
and influential mixologist Tiffanie Barriere,
who has been awarded with some of the beverage industry's highest honors,
about the role of spirits in our story.
Where do we actually come into Harlem,
in a tradition of Black spirit?
Prohibition lines up with the Harlem Renaissance.
That was the period of time where this huge outburst
of creative energy was all coming out of this area.
The cartoonist E. Simms Campbell was the first published Black cartoonist.
He did this map called a nightlife map of Harlem.
And he's super descriptive. He's like, "This is the weed man here."
"This is where a nightclub is. This one opens at 2 a.m."
What's not on this map are the speakeasies.
And they're not on this map because there's over 500,
so you won't have any problem finding one.
There were more speakeasies in Harlem than in any other part of the city.
Prohibition was the backdrop to what really… The light, the fire
behind the Harlem Renaissance, because now there wasn't really
a great place to go for entertainment anymore.
The rest of the city was on lockdown. They stopped downtown.
In Harlem, that nightlife continued,
and you had all these top artists and intellectuals
who were already here.
At this exact time this is happening,
down South, many beautiful Black towns in the South
were known for their shining or growing their oats
or growing their rye or corn to make some of the best moonshine ever
and possibly get it up to the North.
We were no longer enslaved at this point,
so it's a matter of what the Black community can do to make money.
In making bottles, you were making some of the best money ever.
We've been doing this since--
[Karl] Yeah, we were making phenomenal beers in Africa.
We were masters of that craft already.
We're farming sugar cane, and one of the byproducts
of creating sugar from sugarcane is molasses, right?
That is the beginnings of rum.
I think there is some pride to bring home to this home.
-Yeah. -And survive.
The Southern woman in me has got to make a punch.
-Indeed. -I have to.
The punch has been the go-to,
"Y'all come to my house," celebratory, "I've got something for you"
bowl of greatness for so long,
and in the Black community, we've seen it at church.
It's in college. It's at Granny's house.
You know, my family is from the Caribbean
and, you know, Planter's Punch,
uh, the Bajan Rum Punch, those are all big parts of our cultures.
Definitely.
-[Stephen] There's a lot of history here. -Yeah.
Tom Bullock, who is one
of the most important Black scholars of cocktail scholarship.
He wrote the first published cocktail book by an African American.
We don't know much about Bullock's story.
We think he was from the South,
and he's made his way through the rail line to the Midwest, but…
And the book is titled The Ideal Bartender.
This means you're making some of the best cocktails,
hands down, and that kind of respect
being seen across the bar makes me humble to be a bartender
and make his drinks and drink his drinks. [chuckles]
Tom Bullock's punch, which I'm making, I'm giving you a little aromatherapy.
It wasn't just bartenders behind the bar,
but caterers had, you know, ingredients such as citrus and fruit,
whatever is fresh on deck,
and making it in a batch, because we have a lot of work to do.
It's before some constituent, president, speaker, or writer is coming on deck.
Super special to have something to show off
not only your style and your etiquette but how fresh your garden is outside.
So the South is serving what's coming in from the port,
hence why I'm throwing in some Madeira wine.
[Stephen] I'm trying to taste each individual component
while appreciating the fact that it is so perfectly blended.
[Tiffanie] We've got fresh fruit that has beautiful juices.
The citrus balances out the sweetness,
but this is a method that we know coming from home.
Like, we knew sweet to sour instantly.
We knew how to say this needs a balance to it.
We also knew how to serve it properly.
We're able to really blend these ingredients together with no problem
and let it sit so everything can macerate.
[Stephen] Tiffanie, you were just talking about something
that was even more relevant than you realized
when you started to talk about us being,
thank you, love, the descendants of bootleggers.
I never had an opportunity to meet my grandfather.
-He was born in 1907. -[Karl] Oh wow.
One of the things that has just been brought to my attention
was that he was not only
in the business of moving alcohol around
for Capone.
So this is a wild story.
There's this time where he's looking for a way
to make a living in this new place up North.
He links up with "the mob"
-and is a driver for Capone. -[Karl] Mm.
And then, there is a truck that is intercepted.
There is a shoot-out. He makes it out alive.
-[Tiffanie] Go on. -[Karl] Okay.
But then he decided that he wanted to be outof the distribution business.
And that's actually what led him to becoming a porter,
but he was also making moonshine in the basement
for law enforcement as protection for his family.
When I found this out, it brought up a time for me, obviously,
you know, this very colorful legacy,
but it's very relevant to what you're talking about,
which is we have always been in this work,
even when the work was underground.
And the speakeasies up here were kind of like that as well.
It was a place for us to share information,
share ideas, make connections.
That is also part of the culture
of this time that I'm really curious about.
Indeed, bars have been that space that we want to be
that communal comfort space, especially for the Black community.
Whether it was a woman sitting in a bar,
which we didn't see a woman sitting at a bar
until the '40s and '50s.
And then, even in the Black queer community
being out in the open and people married to, you know,
opposite sex while dating, you know, the same sex in the side.
We see that a lot in literature and even some in poetry,
just kind of hiding that story of who you could be.
It happened at the bar,
but it was, at times, a safe and fun space.
-Yeah. -Yeah.
-Cheers to that. Salut to that. -Salut.
[Stephen] Salut.
[Tiffanie chuckles] Cheers.
[Stephen] As much as the Harlem Renaissance
is rightfully celebrated
for the artistic expression of Black people,
it was also a time when we turned to each other
and created safe spaces
to build and keep community.
About an hour north of Harlem is the mansion of Madam C.J. Walker,
the first Black woman in the United States to become a self-made millionaire,
which she did by creating hair products
sold directly to and by Black women all over the country.
The estate, called Villa Lewaro,
was an oasis where she and her daughter, A'Lelia Walker,
would build a new legacy and playground for Black excellence.
A'Lelia Walker hosted gatherings with artists like Zora Neale Hurston,
James Weldon Johnson,
W.E.B Du Bois, and Langston Hughes.
These gatherings inspired creativity and community.
On a summer afternoon, A'Lelia Bundles,
the great-granddaughter of A'Lelia Walker, has invited me,
Alexander Smalls, Cha McCoy,
and retired radio news anchor Dean Schomburg,
the grandson of Arturo Schomburg,
the man whose private collection of Black art and artifacts
became the basis for the Schomburg Center.
It's so special to have you in this room.
When A'Lelia Walker had a Fourth of July party
for the President of Liberia in July of 1921,
fireworks out on the terrace,
live music with Ford Dabney,
who was one of the great orchestra people of the era.
He was not invited to the White House,
-but he was invited to Villa Lewaro. -[Cha] Mm.
[A'Lelia] So this was our White House.
-[Alexander] Mm. I like that. -[Stephen] I love that.
It feels like we're in the Black White House.
The chandeliers are very similar to the chandeliers in the East Room.
Yeah.
[A'Lelia] She, of course, was giving parties during Prohibition.
But she always had a great bootlegger, and she always had the finest champagne.
And I would say that, with all of the Black girl magic
that we're celebrating today here at Madam C.J. Walker's house,
it made perfect sense to make sure that we're pouring champagne.
Exactly. And can you tell us more about
the culinary legacy then of A'Lelia?
So Madam C.J. Walker,
born Sarah Breedlove on a plantation
in Delta, Louisiana, in 1867,
had the arc of her life of going from
an uneducated washerwoman,
who then became a cook, who then started a hair care company
and employed thousands of women and became a millionaire.
But that key part is the cook
because that was how she was making money on the side
when she was starting her business.
And when she began to have money,
of course, she employed cooks, and when she was able to have parties,
she always hired Black caters.
Later on, A'Lelia Walker started a place called The Dark Tower.
It's kind of the iconic Harlem Renaissance space.
That was in her townhouse on 136th Street.
And famously, she served spaghetti
when she had the first meeting of a group
of young writers that included Countee Cullen
and Langston Hughes and Wally Thurman,
when they were talking about creating The Dark Tower and what it was to be.
They would have patrons who would donate money,
and then the artists could join for $1 a year
and basically eat all the food.
-And that was really the concept. -[laughs]
[Stephen] You both come from a legacy
with your own family's history in terms of cataloging Black culture.
Arturo Schomburg was my grandfather.
He was a collector of everything that had to do with Black culture.
He wanted to make sure that everybody understood
that we as a people had made significant and very important
contributions to civil society.
And among the things that he did propose was a cookbook.
Certainly there are some recipes that were handed down.
I have a letter where Madam Walker is describing Brunswick Stew.
How to make ice cream. And there's so much detail.
The food really does matter to her, and it mattered to her mother as well.
When they had the slaves up on the blocks,
one of the selling points was, "Do you cook?"
[Alexander] Slave owners would answer the question.
They weren't really people. They were livestock.
The slave brokers who were selling them
would tell you exactly what they could do.
-[A'Lelia] "She's good at the pot." -[Dean] That would add to their value.
-[Alexander] Yes, absolutely. -[Dean] Right.
As we sit here in this grand mansion,
and we're in the home of the first Black woman
to ever be a millionaire in this country,
I wonder the ways in which food
was used to actually communicate to Black people
around class and access
and privilege and opulence and these other things.
It's so perfect that we're having lobster.
Yes.
[A'Lelia] Because lobster was one of A'Lelia Walker's favorite foods.
She liked to have seafood dinners.
But lobster and champagne,
the combination, is particularly significant in her story.
She went to a birthday party in August of 1931
on the beach in Long Branch.
You know, it was one of those resorts.
It was like Martha's Vineyard is now. That was where presidents summered.
And anytime there are wealthy white people
during that part of the century, there was always a Black community
that was parallel because somebody had to cook for them.
Somebody had to clean for them. Somebody had to entertain them.
She went for the birthday party,
and they were on the beach, and they had lobster
and chocolate cake and champagne.
Now, she had high blood pressure. She'd had a stroke some years earlier,
though she'd fully recovered.
But after this wonderful day of lobster and champagne,
she came back to her cabin
and woke up in the middle of the night, and had a stroke. And died.
-[Stephen] Mm. -[A'Lelia] And it is sad that she died.
But you know, she was doing something she loved up to the last minute.
She didn't linger.
Her funeral was grand. There were thousands of people
who came past Howell Funeral Home
on 138th and 7th Avenue.
A motorcade followed out to Woodlawn Cemetery.
There was a Black pilot, Hubert Julian,
who flew over the grave and who dropped her favorite flowers
onto the grave as all of these people around.
But lobster and champagne was her last meal.
Lobster was a very pedestrian dish for African Americans.
It was cheap, and the white folks weren't interested.
So they were eating lobster as well as oysters
because you could throw your net out,
and shrimp, all of these things that we pay a premium for
because they'd been discovered by the establishment.
And so shrimp and grits, you know, goes from five bucks a plate to 30.
This is a cultural phenomenon that is a part of who we are.
As a person who went to culinary school
under this very rigid French
hierarchical education that tells me,
"This goes with that. That goes with this,"
I can't help but separate that
from the fact that y'all are trying to tell me
that this is a bougie item now,
but when we were involved in lobster and oysters,
-it was pedestrian. -[Alexander] Very pedestrian.
And then we internalize that
as a community and think that's not for us.
When in fact, we are the ones who created it.
[Stephen] So much of our story has been suppressed.
But how can a people know who they are
if they don't know who they've been?
It's on us to reclaim our ancestors' stories.
[glasses clinking]
-[A'Lelia] To the ancestors. -[Cha] To the ancestors.
[A'Lelia] Cheers.
[Stephen] Despite the vibrant culture established during the Renaissance,
millions of Black folks still returned home from World War II
to rampant discrimination.
This was a time to engage in a strategic fight for our freedoms.
From organized planning meetings to well-executed protests,
a movement of accountability was brewing.
In Atlanta, there was a little-known lunch counter sit-in
led by a group of HBCU student activists
whose stories I had not known until now.
Their efforts shifted
the course of history in this country forever.
[closing theme song playing]