Abstract
I spent June 28, 2010, in Smith Park in the heart of downtown Jackson, Mississippi. During my six years living in Jackson, I spent most of my weekends doing community-justice work, but that June 28 was especially memorable. It was my friend Treshika’s birthday, and she wanted to spend it in Smith Park in the community with its homeless population. Smith Park sits between the Governor’s Mansion and Jackson’s oldest church on Yazoo Street. It is also a park that Joseph Ewoodzie described in Getting Something to Eat in Jackson (2021). Despite its prime location in a white part of town, Smith Park is a regular hang out for Black homeless men in the area. Perhaps it was the park’s water fountain (since removed for a splash pad). Jackson has a toxic water problem. In any case, my sister and I ended up in Smith Park that day (for a reason not too different from the homeless men): to hang out with Treshika.
When I met Treshika Melvin our first year at Millsaps College, she was already a community advocate intern at the Southern Poverty Law Center. Having gone to two high schools in Madison County, I knew Jackson but was new to living in Jackson. Treshika grew up in South Jackson and went to Jim Hill High School. But moving to a predominantly white college downtown introduced her to a new Jackson, too. Soul food was not ceremonial for her growing up because, and I quote: her grandma “threw down.” But in college, soul food became something she purchased at places like Gloria’s. Her go-to plate: smothered chicken, mashed potatoes, yams, and collard greens.
As Millsaps students, food also became a privilege. We lived on a gated campus with two restaurants and a cafeteria in a city full of hunger. The contrast was striking. The neighborhood of Midtown sat just across West Street from Millsaps, but the realities could not have been more different. Inspired by classmates like Treshika and professors like Dr. Darby Ray, I dedicated most of my college life to eroding the divisions between Millsaps and Midtown.
Millsaps began to financially and physically turn its back on Midtown in the 1980s after a Black man from Midtown was accused of raping a white Millsaps student. The college’s entrance was literally on West Street before the administration put up gates between Millsaps and Midtown and built a new driveway on State Street on the other side of campus. When Treshika and I moved to Millsaps in 2009, the college was finally trying to rebuild its relationship with the community.
Food was central to this rebuilding. Darby Ray started things off with a “Shut-up-and-Listen” Dinner. Midtown residents came to campus for a dinner where they did the talking while the college administration did the listening. I was more interested in education and infrastructure. Building homes, gardens, and after-school programs were my thing. But I did start an award-winning food redistribution program that took extra food from Millsaps’s cafeteria to a local food kitchen called Gleaners. Treshika helped occasionally. But we were not evangelical or opportunistic like the Mississippi college students Ewoodzie encountered.
As a non-Christian person, I witnessed many structural and cultural connections between faith and food in Jackson. Even before saying grace, faith informs where, when, and how food was redistributed. However, churches seldom make decisions about food without community in mind. As an employee of Mississippi Children’s Museum and Jackson’s chapter of Stop Hunger Now from 2010 to 2013, I learned that advocating food justice to churches and religious organizations was a significant way to garner and redistribute tens of thousands of dollars from church coffers to the community services. At a structural level, the impact of religion on eating in Jackson can be problematic, but I rarely saw religion as a culturally insensitive “hindrance” or an “invasion” (p. 82).
Beyond religion, food remained a barrier between the college and the community. I will never forget a second-grader asking me to stop reading a book called Accidental Snacks because he was too hungry to talk about food. Even though schools play critical roles in the city’s food and water landscapes, they fall short in many ways. Treshika tells me that in 2022, the Our Jackson Public Schools coalition is establishing morecommunity schools to serve as food and community-service hubs for their local communities beyond traditional school hours.
Reading Joseph C. Ewoodzie’s Getting Something to Eat in Jackson rocked me like a pothole of Fortification Street. His analysis of Black food access and food choice across class differences reminds me of a bit of graffiti that someone once sprayed onto the northbound sign for Northside Drive on Interstate 55. It read, “These are the paths we take,” and stood as a constant reminder of the money that left Jackson for the suburbs. The city eventually covered the words, but the message still reflects a reality wherein the best jobs in Jackson are held by people who do not live or invest in Jackson. The paths one takes in Jackson are influenced by city planning or the lack thereof. Some pathways have more potholes than others. Some don’t exist at all. Thankfully, Ewoodzie Jr. reminds us that our personal and communal networks can feed and nourish us most.