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During the recent recording of “Listen, St. Louis with Carol Daniel,” an Emmy-nominated PBS podcast produced by St. Louis broadcast station Nine PBS, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville’s Tandra Taylor, PhD, appeared as a guest expert on African American culinary history. Host Carol Daniel featured Taylor on a special Juneteenth broadcast set to debut on Thursday, June 19. The show was recorded in front of a live audience on location in St. Louis at the Missouri History Museum.

Daniel introduced, as she described, a soul-stirring discussion to mark the 160 years since the last enslaved persons in the United States learned of their freedom.

“Tonight, we're going to focus on three aspects of life for the formerly enslaved, starting with the immediate aftermath, and then how more and more African Americans are doing the research to determine their ancestry beyond slavery,” said Daniel. “We will conclude our conversation with a delicious talk about food. Food as sustenance, food as cultural impact, and food as resistance by and for those who came out of slavery.”

Taylor, an assistant professor in SIUE’s Department of History and SIUE's Interim Director of the Institute for Community Justice and Racial Equity (ICJRE) at the Southwestern Illinois Justice and Workforce Development Center on SIUE’s Belleville campus, contributed to the broadcast as an expert on African American food traditions. Taylor’s research on early 20th century Black women, education, and labor fuels her expertise on Black food history and culture.

“My research focuses on Black women, their pursuit of higher education, and their identities,” said Taylor. “The ways in which late 19th and early 20th centuries Black women shape their identities are linked to food. Their work is linked to food, whether as agricultural workers or domestics, like a cook or a maid.”

“While still enslaved, many Africans were allowed to have gardens and supplemented the rations that they received of cornmeal and salt pork. Generally, they further varied those meager staples by fishing, foraging, and hunting,” added Taylor.

In addition to talking about how resourceful enslaved communities were with the staples of cornmeal, pork, cabbage, greens, okra and other food traditions, Taylor explored the lives of post-Emancipation Black women, many of whom as newly freed persons had to still live in the same home as their form enslavers turned employers. With little privacy and chastised for their pursuit of education and more realistic wages, culinary creativity may have been a form of escape.

“It’s not just food to eat,” Daniel commented. “It’s food to heal.”

Taylor continued the thought: “Food to eat, food to heal, food as a pathway to entrepreneurship.”

Taylor regaled the audience with stories of pioneering chefs, such as Malinda Russell, author of the first published African American cookbook that was written by an African American woman. “A Domestic Cook Book” was published in 1866.

Daniel’s hour-long format guided listeners through fascinating topics, even covering “The Grit Debate,” the recent pop culture debate involving the seasoning of grits. Taylor, by the way, errs on the side of sugarless grits.

Other distinguished guests on the program included Cicely Hunter, the Public Historian for the Missouri Historical Society’s African American History Initiative and Linda Simms, President of the St. Louis African American History and Genealogy Society.

“I think that the relationship between Black food and Black joy and Black creativity and Black resilience has been inextricably linked since we left the shores of West Africa,” said Taylor. “Food creation is an unrestricted space where Black folks were able to create something out of nothing, so it's a constant reminder that we became so good at creating something in a very terrible time in our history.”

The “Listen, St. Louis with Carol Daniel” Juneteenth special episode, “160th Anniversary of Juneteenth: Exploring the Resilience and Strength of African Americans,” will debut on Wednesday, June 18 at 7:00 p.m., on the Nine PBS YouTube channel, the Listen, St. Louis with Carol Daniel web page and any podcast streaming platform. Watch the television broadcast on Nine PBS at 10:30 p.m. on Thursday, June 19 and at 7 p.m. on Saturday, June 21.

PHOTOS: (top row, left to right) Jody Sewell, PhD, President and CEO of the Missouri Historical Society (MHS), Amy Shaw, President and CEO of Nine PBS, Cicely Hunter, Public Historian for the Missouri Historical Society’s African American History Initiative, Linda Simms, President of the St. Louis African American History and Genealogy Society, Aja Williams, Vice President and Chief Content Officer of Nine PBS, (bottom row, left to right) Host Carol Daniel, Tandra Taylor, PhD, SIUE; Taylor as podcast guest during a “Listen, St. Louis with Carol Daniel” recorded podcast in front of a live audience