In the spirit of the cannibalistic holiday, Thanksgiving, I urge the Afrakan community to not only boycott thanksgiving for economic reasons but nutritional values as well.
Many of the stable Thanksgiving meals stem from the European involvement of the Maafa. Due to the wicked restriction by the beast that enslaved them, our Ancestors had a limited food supply. As the Creators we are, our Ancestors were forced to use their creativity to make a meal out of what they had.
History of Soul Food:
Things such as biscuits, black-eyed peas with rice known as hoppin’ john, butter beans, catfish (dredged and fried in seasoned cornbread), fried chicken, chitterlings, chow-chow, collard greens are all foods that are considered “soul food”. Soul food is a term used to describe cuisine traditionally prepared by Afrakans in the Southern regions of America, after the enslavement of Afrakans. Because of severe poverty, newly “freed” enslaved Afrakans were forced to eat scraps of meat and offal, which is a variety of internal organs and entrails of animals.
The usual diet for the enslaved Afrakan for Breakfast consisted of cornbread and pork. Boiled corn was shared with the enslaved as well as the pigs they fed on the farm. The excess corn would be dried and ground, fried with flour to create corn cakes, or as we now know it, cornbread. Booker T. Washington stated, “If I was not there at the exact moment of feeding, I could still find enough corn scattered around the fence or the trough to satisfy me.” Plantation owners “provided” enslaved Afrakans with salt herrings, cornmeal, lard, molasses, flour, pea, sweet potatoes, and maize, which we can still find in “soul food” meals today. Because of the scarcity of food, “one pot” meals were created, where they will bring all the food they were allowed to eat into one cooking pot to serve as a soup or stew, keeping the traditional West Afrakan feel to dinner. Gumbo, a very popular stew, made with okra, and other vegetables, is thicker with sassafras leaves combined with Creole and Afrakan cooking.
The following are examples of “slave cuisine” meals:
- Cala Sweetened rice cake
- Callow is a thick soup or stew similar to gumbo
- Coffee
- Cowpeas are black-eyed peas
- Cush is a sweet, fried cornmeal cake
- Fufu is a mixture of cornmeal and flour, poured into a pot of boiling water.; this mixture is made into “hot cake” in the fields and called ash cakes. This later evolved into “pancakes” and “hotwater cornbread.” Fufu is a common food throughout Africa and the New World, consisting of yams, plantains, and cassava roots.
- Goober or peanuts
- Grits or hominy
- Guinea corn or millet is used to bread or boil it, before feeding fowl
- Gumbo is a soup made of okra pods, shrimp, and powdered sassafras leaves
- Gunger cake or Gingerbread
- Hop’n johns is a meal of black-eyed peas and rice cooked together
- Jambalaya is described as a dish of tender, cooked corn similar to gumbo
- Jollof rice
- Juba Traditional slave food, from the leftovers of the plantation owner’s dinner. Generally cooked in big pots on Sundays and Saturdays and shared with those working directly in the field.
- Maluku or palm wine
- Millet bread
- Okra
- Peanut oil generally used by Afrakans in the “Big House, used for deep-fat frying
- Pone bread is mush from cornmeal.
- Kola is used for stomach aches, but also the main ingredient in modern cola drinks. Kola nuts were given to suppress hunger and thirst.
- Rice
- Sesame seeds were used to make soups and puddings.
- Tania or coco-yam.
- Watermelon
The following are examples of “soul food” meals:
- Biscuits, shortbread served with butter, jam, jelly, sorghum or cane syrup, or gravy; used to wipe up, or “sop,” liquids from a dish
- Butter beans are immature lima beans, usually cooked in butter
- Catfish (dredged in seasoned cornbread and fried)
- Fried Chicken
- Chicken livers
- Chitterlings are the cleaned and prepared intestines of hogs, slow-cooked and often eaten with vinegar and hot sauce; sometimes parboiled, then battered and fried
- Chow-chow is a spicy, homemade pickle relish sometimes made with okra, corn, cabbage, green tomatoes, and other vegetables; commonly used to top black-eyed peas and otherwise as a condiment and side dish
- Collard greens
- Cornbread is a shortbread often baked in an iron skillet, sometimes seasoned with bacon fat
- Chicken fried steak is beef deep-fried in flour or batter, usually served with gravy
- Crackling is also known as pork rinds
- Fatback is fatty, cured, salted pork used to season meats and vegetables.
- Fried fish
- Fried ice cream coated with cookies and fried
- Grits often served with fish
- Ham hocks, smoked, are used to flavor vegetables and legumes
- Hog maws cooked with chitterlings)
- Hoghead cheese
- Hot sauce is often used on chitterlings, fried chicken, and fish
- Lima beans
- Macaroni and cheese
- Mashed potatoes cooked with butter and condensed milk
- Meatloaf with brown gravy)
- Milk and bread are cornbread, buttermilk, and sugar
- Mustard greens are cooked with ham hocks
- Neckbones are eaten with fried cornmeal and okra
- Pigs’ feet, eaten with vinegar and hot sauce)
- Red beans
- Pork or Beef Ribs
- Sorghum syrup
- Sweet potatoes are usually parboiled, sliced, and then baked, using sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, and butter or margarine, commonly called “candied yams”; also boiled, then pureed, and baked into pies
- Turnip greens are usually cooked with ham hocks.
- Sweet potatoes
These meals we typically eat feed and sustain heart disease and other ailments. For example fried chicken, fried turkey is dead flesh that cannot be processed by the human digestive system. Because of this, it is usually stored as far in areas such as the hips, stomach, buttocks, and thighs. Macaroni Cheese contains starch and gluten. Combined with fermented indigestible cow pus (cheese). Cheese is full of bacteria, and parasites and the yeast of the pasta feeds the bacteria. Corn and cornbread use GMO products. Corn already covered with Monsanto herbicides also hosts fungi such as Aspergillus and chemicals such as aflatoxin, one of the most deadly and highly carcinogenic toxins. Collard greens are cooked with meats, such as ham hock, which contaminated the once healthy greens with all the parasites and bacteria.
Humans instead of Turkey:
According to a passage from the Smithsonian, the pilgrims first celebrating thanksgiving engaged in cannibalism.
Smithsonian forensic anthropologist Douglas Owsley said the human remains date back to a deadly winter known as the “starving time” in Jamestown from 1609 to 1610. Hundreds of colonists died during this time. Scientists have said the settlers likely arrived during the worst drought in 800 years, bringing a severe famine for the 6,000 people who lived at Jamestown between 1607 and 1625.
The historical record is chilling. Early Jamestown colonist George Percy wrote of a “world of miseries,” that included digging up corpses from their graves to eat when there was nothing else. “Nothing was spared to maintain life,” he wrote.
The cannibals would kill the natives and eat them due to “famine”. Explorer George Percy stated:
How great was our famine, that a Savage we slew and buried, the poorer sorte took him up againe and eat him; and so did divers one another boyled and stewed with roots and herbs… [the cause of starvation was] want of providence, industrie and government, and not the barennnesse and defect of the Countrie, as is generally supposed.
The people of Jamestown were poor, and hungry and did not particularly enjoy each other’s company, as they were criminals of Europe. Disease and famine attacked Jamestown and, as a result, ate each other and the natives around them. Smithsonian forensic anthropologist Douglas Owsley stated, “Given these bones in a trash pit, all cut and chopped up, it’s clear that this body was dismembered for consumption.”
Thanksgiving has its history of cannibalism and foods that were used as survival for our enslaved Afrakans, but in modern times we voluntarily decide to engage in a genocidal, fibroid-causing holiday. Take the time to pay homage to our ancestors who were forced to eat the foods we now wait all year to eat. Take the time to fast and detox your mind and your body from the poisons of the flesh and the historical toxicity of Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is not an Afrakan-centered holiday, although it is a time to gather with family and give thanks. Instead, we should avoid the day together and eat with our families all year long. We should not wait for a specific day, aggressively suggested by others to continue their cannibalistic traditions.