The Black BBQ Hall of Fame exists to recognize, honor, and document the legacies of Black people in barbecue. This is important because Black contributions in barbecue have been systematically omitted from history books. The Black BBQ HOF provides official recognition and honors individuals who have served their communities and made a lasting impact on the world of barbecue.

The Roots of BBQ Academy is an in-depth educational experience that explores the history of whole hog barbecue and its place within American history. If you love American history, culture, great food, and fellowship while obtaining education, you don’t want to miss this opportunity. Proceeds from the The Roots of BBQ Academy will go to support the #100AcresProject to help preserve black owned farm land and to develop economic opportunities in the rural south.

Reading and speaking America’s BBQ history requires great specificity, when making claims. Researching any foodways, especially one as vast as the American foodways, involves a combination of critical thinking, historical knowledge and the ability to present evidence in the form of documentation from government records, archived information, books, periodicals and ephemera such as a photo, poster or postcard. Or, as in the case of Black involvement in BBQ, recorded narratives are useful as first-person accounts. 

On the surface, it could be nitpicky, but those things are necessary. They help provide context to an ongoing narrative as well as leave room for the discovery of new information. 

It’s a lot like Black family history research and genealogy. Complicated, affected by chattel slavery and requires creative approaches to fact-finding and documentation of evidence to confirm what we believe to be true. Genealogists like American historians often begin sentences in the same manner. 

“Well, what we do know is…” 

“I have no evidence to support that…” 

“Evidence supports…”

“That’s plausible (or implausible)…” 

Seems like a bunch of vagaries and dancing but it’s important to say things a certain way to avoid spreading something as gospel truth without evidence. The problem with American foodways, especially Black-centric foodways is that we often see memes, articles and books containing information that has been repeated as truth. 

So, what makes researching Black folx in American BBQ so hard? A number of things that are directly related to the complexities of Black family research. Here are some factors:

• It is rare to see Black people – the enslaved – mentioned by name or a whole name in documents like the Census or on slave rolls or even in diaries and journals. One of the greatest examples of this are the labor diaries of George Washington. In most cases, he only refers to people by first name, describing a task they performed. Thanks, George. 
• Black people changed names, had their names changed and changed the spellings and pronunciations of their names over the span of decades and centuries. 
• Black family oral histories sometimes die with family. 

The Conyers family is almost an anomaly in that this current generation can go back several generations by name and location to tell their story. And the methods in which they farm, make BBQ and live out family traditions has not been altered much by modernization, so you can envision what it was like for their ancestors to BBQ. That’s important. 

If you are researching Black foodways or Black BBQ, below are a few important things to keep in mind or practice as you go along. 

MAJOR HISTORICAL TIMELINES

Dates matter. The memorization of dates can be hard, but keeping a mental timeline that understands which event came before or after an event is helpful. For example, references to “America” technically and historically would not be accurate if referring to an event taking place before 1776. Before 1776, nothing and no one was “American.” And before the passage of the 14th Amendment in 1868, African Americans were not Americans. 

Statehood is an often overlooked way to capture time. Before statehood was granted, a region was either a territory or colony or independent city. 

LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION 

While you don’t need to become a geographist or cartographer, paying close attention to maps is important to understanding where or why or how an event took place. Reviewing a map of Virginia before their 1788 statehood is important. Why? Maryland, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, and West Virginia all border Virginia. There are cities and counties in those states that share the same name as neighboring Virginia cities and counties. West Virginia, Kentucky, Indiana and Illinois, and portions of Ohio and Western Pennsylvania at one time were a part of their territory. 

Maps can be found in the Library of Congress or on their site. 

ORAL HISTORIES/LIVED EXPERIENCES 

Oral histories and narratives are some of the best resources of lived experience, first-hand accounts about almost any topic. Most notable in regard to Black people in the United States is The Project Gutenberg EBook of Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery

in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves., by Work Projects Administration. The narratives can be found on the Library of Congress site as well, and some even have accompanying photos. Some state archives and repositories have collected their own narratives and oral histories available on their sites or through your local library. 

Austin Grant

“I met my wife down on Black Creek, and I freighted two years after we was married. We got married so long ago, but in them days anything would do. You see, these days they are so proud, but we was glad to have anything. I had a black suit to be married in, and a pretty long shirt, and I wore boots. She wore a white dress, but in them days they didn’ have black shoes. Yes’m, they had a dance, down here on Black Creek. Danced half the night at her house and two men played the fiddle. Eat? We had everythin’ to eat, a barbecued calf and a hog, too, and all kinds of cakes and pies. Drink? Why, the men had whiskey to drink and the women drank coffee.” Austin Grant discussing his wedding day, 89-90, Texas

Ms. Jones with her daughter and granddaughter. 

“Den we goes out in de backyard, where de table sot for supper, a long table made with two planks and de peg legs. Miss Ellen puts on de white tablecloth and some red berries, ’cause it am November and dey is ripe. Den she puts on some red candles, and we has barbecue pig and roast sweet ‘taters and dumplin’s and pies and cake.” Harriet Jones discussing her wedding day in NC, 93, Texas

The beauty of narratives and interviews is both allow people to speak for themselves and shed light on what used to be. A favorite narrative contains information on how enslaved people would trap wild hogs and other game to eat in the quarters without using traditional hunting equipment or weapons. 

EPHEMERA

Photo: Robin Caldwell

God bless the family that keeps a genealogy in the family Bible and a scrapbook or ten of historical family photos. That’s ephemera. Those are the best documentations of a time and place, the people, and an activity. Other forms of ephemera can include restaurant menus, obituaries, and photo postcards. Recipe cards are important to family history and documenting a family’s personal foodways. 

The pockets of communities were called freedmen towns. Then in 1873 a system was needed to improve the previously slow transport of the budding city’s greatest export – cotton. It was now that the railroad industry began to expand across North Texas, laying tracks in Dallas and cutting through the communities that had been inhabited by largely Black populations. Because many African Americans worked with the railroads in various roles such as pullman porters, service workers, or laying the tracks, it would make sense that they would build their homes along the railroads. Deep Ellum, in Dallas, was one such community. Named by the African Americans who often indicated they lived further south or “deep” on Elm street (pronounced “Ellum”) due to their dialects. These families began to build Deep Ellum into a thriving and successful neighborhood that eventually came to be known as the “live music capital of North Texas”. They opened food establishments that focused primarily on three specialties: fried chicken, fried fish, and of course barbecue.

Eventually the families were pushed to move to Southern parts of Dallas. But they continued their legacies of barbecuing with the same methods they had been taught years ago.

Imagine stepping back into time into a Dallas juke joint and hearing a bluesman pining away over his lost love while strumming a bass guitar. The lights are low, you can smell the distinct smokiness of barbecued meats and you thirstily wash down your chopped beef sandwich with the popular homemade brew, persimmon flavored beer.

Pre-commercialization of the food and beverage industry menus typically involved one of those three specialties: fried chicken, fried fish and barbecue.

One explanation is that these foods allowed a budding food entrepreneur the ability to feed the masses, for clarification fried foods cook quickly and barbecue can be cook in mass quantities to feed a lot of people. Living close in proximity to nearby Trinity River, for example, you would have been able to catch your own fish thereby cutting out the middleman and maintaining more of your profits. When farming was more embedded in the community, cows and hogs were easier to come by for barbecue in a time with no refrigeration.  Fried chicken came more accessible when commodity farming came more online.  Also, according to Record’s Barbecue matriarch, Barbara Record, in the Black community it wasn’t uncommon to share resources with barbecue competitors because sometimes they were friends or even extended family.

Record recalls how when her husband Albert started the business 53 years ago in 1969, they sometimes lacked resources but other nearby pitmasters always offered what they had in surplus and they would all share.

There are a small handful that have withstood the test of time by weathering the fickle storms for over 50 years like Record’s Barbecue, or even Hardeman’s BBQ which has been operating for over 75 years. A feat. Still not quite as ample, but more widespread are the 30-plus year operations, among them being award-winning Smokey Joe’s. 

They have been located at 6407 South RL Thornton since a wintery December afternoon in 1985. The building, cozy and unassuming, was resurrected from the faux ashes of the previous structure, a tiny gas station that proudly served the neighborhood in the 1930’s, whitewashed facade with crimson red trim. The dining area is an add-on, built later to accommodate a growing need to offer diners a choice between walk-up only, as it had been since its origins, or dine-in. A photo of the original Smokey Joe’s rests on a wall in the dining area where customers sop light bread in leftover sauces dripping along the brown butcher paper on the silver school lunch trays. The wood floors releasing a recognizably sweet piquant aroma arising from the floorboards like a smoky atonement straight from the Old Testament to the gods. It’s a bit of sensory overload – but in the most magnificent way. The smells, the visual stimulation, the sounds of whatever plays on the television act as an auditory backdrop to the r&b music causing guests to tap their feet in rhythmic beats as they await the cue from the omnipotent voice connected to the loudspeaker that it’s time to grab their food.

When I placed my order, I didn’t mention I was there as a writer at first. I wanted to blend in so that I could experience the atmosphere just as a casual diner would have.

The staff was overly accommodating and with just the right amount of comfortability. A cashier, a rosy cheeked young woman behind the counter who must have seen the indecisiveness of my stare, greeted me warmly and asked if I had any questions about the menu. “I hear you’re known for your ribs. Is that right?” I ask in a matter-of-fact tone. Her smile turned upwards into a sly grin as if she held a secret I would soon discover. Here, at Smokey Joe’s, behind the smoldering smell of firewood embedded into the walls, it occurs to me that Smokey Joe’s has done something quite remarkable. His staff reflects his hungry patrons, so that you see a bit of yourself in every employee. Quite a different outlook from some who still seem to use Blackness in servitude roles as a way to appease customers. This thought transports me to chapter 2 of Savage Barbecue. I am reminded that in barbecue culture, Blackness is often used as a sort of cultural reset, if you will, to contrast against whiteness. The act of slaughtering a beast, cutting its innards out, rotating it on a spit over open flames and feasting on its flesh, is what Americans once deemed barbaric against the more acceptable genteelness of European standards of the Gilded Age.

The juxtaposition of labor versus leisure. This woman, Lindsay, is a welcome progression of that antiquated mindset. 

“Oh yeah,” Lindsay continues, “we’re definitely known for our ribs but anything you get from here is gonna be good. I can promise you that!” It’s that Texas sized ego that some commonly misjudge as arrogance that I am all too familiar with, and in an instant, it makes me feel as though I am at home, back in Sherman, awaiting my white paper plate edged with printed floral etching, full of half-burnt smoked hot links that had sadly fallen into the hot embers and been quickly scooped out before serving and barbecued chicken lovingly prepared by my uncle, Thomas Earl.  

I then tell her I want a bit of everything so I can have a decent sample of what they have to offer. She looks curiously at the menu trying to make the best decision and then I decide to let her know that I was a writer and, on an assignment, to write about Smokey Joe’s. She smiled seemingly unphased by the attention, I’m sure accustomed to the spotlight since being placed consistently at the top of some of the state’s most honorable barbecue lists. She disappeared towards the back, and I watched her as she spoke with who I assumed was the owner I wanted to interview, Mr. Kris Manning. He looked much younger than I anticipated for an award winning pitmaster. Lindsay reappears and the man, Kris, approaches behind her. I introduce myself and we exchange pleasantries. I apologize for stopping by unannounced but went forth in asking if he might have time to speak for a few minutes with me about his restaurant. He happily obliges and she continues my order. I shared with Kris that I knew I wanted his famous ribs, but beyond that I was willing to try anything he suggested. She offered a large platter that would have been enough for me to eat, have leftovers and still feed a hungry date. I politely declined, instantly wondering if I’d make a mistake and instead opted for something in the middle. It could have comfortably fed two adults’ and consisted of ribs (both beef and pork), pulled pork, sausage links, macaroni and cheese, corn casserole, sliced dill pickles and pickled red onions.  Kris hands me my order number and instructs me to wait for my food in the dining area and when my food was ready in a few minutes he would be out to sit with me.

As I waited patiently, I watched the steady stream of customers that slowly started to drift in.

I read online reviews that warned that it’s not uncommon for Smokey Joe’s to run out before it’s time to close so I arrived immediately at 11am when the doors opened.  An elderly man shuffled along the wood floors and accidentally tripped while carrying a paper bag full of whatever deliciousness he ordered, I held my breath, and a quick-thinking Black woman not much younger than the man grabbed his elbow assuredly and steadied him by helping to catch his balance. Just as she helped guide him towards the exit, her order number was called by the same woman who took my order and older Black woman yelled back, “That’s me suga! I’ll be right there!” There was a familiarity with her tone. She finished walking with the older man until he reached the front door and then she pushed the worn handle allowing the bright sun to pour into the main entrance as he hobbled out to his weathered Chevy Silverado. Just before the door closed it reopens abruptly. This time a middle-aged police officer enters with a low cut. He smiles briefly and saunters by to place his order. As I begin to settle into my seat, I hear Kris over the loudspeaker call my order number. I hungrily grab my silver tray and immediately find the bench I had made myself comfortable at just seconds ago. My seat is still warm. The platter is a feast. My eyes sweep over the expansive selections, and I attempt to decide where to start. I knew Kris would be out shortly, but I naively bet that I would have time to get one bite in before he arrived. Now I should inform you, I usually have a bias for all things beef.

I’ve never really been a pork rib lover, but something about the way the ribs glistened, they seemed to beckon for me.

I picked up the meaty pork rib and inspected its pink interior. I looked over my shoulder and then picked up the rib to take one bite. I closed my eyes and was delighted and surprised to find I enjoyed the taste. I don’t think I finished chewing the first bite when I greedily decided to bite another. This time, as fate would have it, Kris appears at my table, and I am embarrassingly rubbing grease from my mouth and hurriedly scanning the table for a napkin to wipe my hands so that I may greet him properly. He laughs and apologizes for catching me off-guard. I laugh too, no doubt exposing a pesky piece of pork stuck between my front teeth. One thing I notice immediately is how comfortable Kris appears. He is equal parts humble and eager. He reveals that although his father has been part owner of this well-known neighborhood spot, his father was the “silent investor” with his friend Joe, Kris’ surrogate uncle, who took him under his wing after he graduated from Stephen F. Austin University and gave him a crash course in everything he had learned over the past few decades.

I ask Kris how it felt to step into such large shoes a few short years ago when he took over as operator and his answer was refreshingly honest, “Overwhelming.”

He continued, “He (Joe) made sure he went over everything with me in great detail. Coming from my background it was a lot to take in. I was scared I wouldn’t be good enough.” When I point to the obvious signs framed and displayed on either side of us, I wave my hand and ask, “So I’m sure all of these accolades helped calm any fears you may have had in the beginning about your worthiness.”  Surprisingly, he answered that the awards certainly helped but that he was always looking for ways to improve his craft. His modesty was a stark contrast to the server’s braggadocious demeanor minutes earlier. Kris also revealed his contemplation of attending culinary school. I was perplexed as to why this accomplished pitmaster would feel the demand to improve on something already so perfect. “I always feel like you can always be better. There’s always so much more to learn. Joe taught me so much but it took him years to acquire that knowledge. I wouldn’t dare think that I already knew everything.” He continued revealing an unconscious bias that some awards unknowingly enforce. “These competitions” he motioned towards the awards hanging on the walls, “choose which restaurants are the “best” based on skills that are usually only taught in formal settings like culinary school.” He explains further that tactics considered such as specific measurement amounts to add consistency to products and cooking methods used to prepare sides are all judged by groups of people who have only known formal training taught in schools so their palates are influenced by that. For example, although no racial group is a monolith, there is some truth to the expectation that Black people traditionally bake their mac-in-cheese, while other races may prefer a more loose and “saucy” texture than can be achieved with the stovetop versus the oven.

Cultural differences like these are not acknowledged by non-Black competitions.

Hearkening a need to further diversify judging competitions to lead to a more inclusive and accurate picture of what barbecue really is. For many, barbecue is not a series of rigid, proper systems that are taught within a formal setting, but perhaps a much more nuanced and fluid intangible quality that can only be attributed to the indelible remembrance of our ancestors’ fortitude. With this concept I am reminded of a question posed by Dr. Howard Conyers in his blog “Conyers Family BBQ” dated March 22, 2022,

“Science has proven to us that trauma can be passed down in DNA, by leaving a chemical mark on the genes…If barbecue was invented anywhere from 375 years to almost 500 years on the soils of the southern United States by Black BBQ cooks, could BBQ also leave a chemical mark on genes in black people…?”

Some, including myself. would argue the answer to this thoughtful question is an astoundingly loud yes! 

Having grown up along the Red River of North Texas, bouncing between my own small-town’s meandering paved roads and blistering summers running barefoot in the red clay earth of East Texas. My fondest memories of visiting my grandmother’s birthplace always include hayrides on the family’s sprawling farm where they primarily raised cattle, chickens, and hogs. I recall my grandmother, affectionately known as Bigmama, telling us stories of her youth spent walking the same path we drove that led to her family’s farm. I also remember my mother telling me about her own trips to Crockett which were much more frequent than my own. She remembers my grandfather Herbert, piling the family into their sedan and traveling the four hour trip to Crockett every weekend because his older sister feared her cattle was being stolen by a hired farm hand. After my grandfather passed away our family trips were reduced to every few months. Each time my grandmother would grow more excited than the last when we would travel back to her old home. My cousins and I would take turns mounting the horses while my older uncles held the reigns and walked us along the perimeter of the massive, fenced yard. These were my most memorable summers. My deep appreciation for traditional Black foodways stem directly from these memories mixed in tandem with my own birthplace of Sherman, a slow town that rests an hour north of Dallas and mere minutes from the Oklahoma border. Also, like so many in the African American community, the greatest moments of my life have been punctuated by the most familiar comfort food, and what many would like to claim the “OG” of all soul foods – barbecue. Barbecue, is more than the “OG” of all soul foods, it is the food invented on these soils that celebrates the most significant holidays in this country from the 4^th of July to Juneteenth here in Texas.  Yes, of course, beef reigns supreme here in the Lone Star state, but we still have a reverent appreciation for various regionally prepared cuts of meats prepared over a long tedious slow roasting flame. My cousin born and raised in other neighboring East Texas towns recall two very different methods of preparing meat. My cousin Derrick recounts, “Some people had tiny smokehouses where they would smoke their meats. Another preparation my cousin recounts, is we always would do it the old-fashioned way by digging a hole about three feet deep in the ground, gathering our wood and charcoal and then seasoning up our hogs with a bunch of spices or sometimes a vinegar mix before cooking. We’d leave it like that for hours until it was time to eat.” 

My grandmother’s hometown holds the honor of belonging in the oldest county in the state – Houston County. From carmine-colored viscous sauces begrudgingly sliding from the wet mop eager to kiss seasoned pork ribs, to rich creole roux-colored gravies that nestle discreetly between chopped beef and small pearls of fat right before it disappears into the white bread it sits atop. 

Yes, it is true that barbecue has been a Texas staple for as long as the steer have roamed our state, but what’s also true is that having lived in a state as expansive as Texas will allow you the opportunity to sample a varied array of different sauces and techniques. Techniques and intellectual property that were undoubtedly carried with the enslaved Black women, men and children, like my Bigmama’s paternal ancestors who traveled long ago from southern states like Alabama and South Carolina. They brought with them decades of memories unlocked when they shared oral history to be passed down from one generation to the next, or cooking methods that they were taught by their parents and grandparents. 

Written By: Deah Berry Mitchell

In the early 1820’s Mexico offered large tracts of land to settlers to entice their move to Texas.

These new settlers, many of whom were immigrants themselves, were known as “The Old Three Hundred” and saw this trek as the perfect opportunity to start anew. About 25% of the settlers brought enslaved Black people. A few who, I speculate, may have been some of my ancestors.

Barbecue “culture” is interpreted, or shall I say “misinterpreted,” en mass by groups who have come to expect their almighty pitmaster to look like a Texas caricature: a sage old white man, potbellied, clad in well-worn denims, boots and a ten-gallon hat.

Upon completing Savage Barbecue my opinions progressed from a rather superficial point-of-view to a more in-depth inner reflection of how easily words and behaviors are callously misconstrued by people in positions of power. How, even now, there is a far too often dismissive attitude towards anyone who has experiences that differ from what largely white populations have come to expect barbecue to look or taste like. And how we, collectively, view barbecue culture as a barometer for American masculinity.

“The Texan of today considers barbecue native food. It is robust provender, as inherent to the history and traditions of this State as the Alamo. And it is man’s own. Women, in truth, never bother with it. It’s process of preparation is too arduous and primitive. But men cook barbecue by the ton, for thousands to feast on. It is folk food of feudal scope and magnificence.” Dallas Morning News, March 26, 1937. 

Without context, one might assume that the above paragraph was written in the latter part of the 20^th century.

Today, we no longer dispute the existence of womanhood in barbecue culture or make such sweeping claims as this writer assumes – that women can’t “bother” with such grueling work.

For example Tootsie Tomanetz is an excellent Texas pitmaster that epitomizes barbecue in the state.  Even less, the statistics to show the amount of African American women pitmasters in comparison to white female pitmasters who represent a larger piece of the, albeit already much smaller, proverbial barbecue “pie.” Far more common are the amount of white family run businesses that are the faces of prestigious barbecue enterprises and popular sauce brands but have conspicuously anonymous Black pitmasters at the helm of those businesses or, in many cases, taught by a black man, like Tootsie’s teacher. Orange Holloway. This familiar tactic is eerily similar to the early days of barbecue culture when Black labor was also often exploited.

Chapter 3 of Savage explores more about the racial dynamics of Black and whites specifically during the Jim Crow Era.

The physical work that was a necessity when digging trenches, carrying hogs and cattle weighing as much as an adult, or sometimes more, and also tending to the meat overnight was a workload that would have been expected of the  Black labor, while the people in positions of power – white people – were left to do little at the end of this arduous chore but do life the succulent smoked meats from their plates to their expecting mouths. However, they were not aware that it was not just physical labor the Black workers were exerting. On the contrary, the amount of mental acumen required has seldom been acknowledged until the balance of power shifted to more a white-centered viewpoint that included the relabeling and attaching the name pitmaster, implying that they have acquired complete knowledge or skill, the mastery of a craft. Dr. Conyers has also confirmed in many interviews that this is a new word popularized by TV series Pitmasters, as he recalls growing up in the 1980-1990’s never hearing that word on the farm.

The science behind barbecue is as demanding as the physical strength required to successfully complete a roast.

Things like the amount and level of heat, how to regulate the temperature in ground, which wood yields a different result and why, and even how to prep the meats differently according to animal type are all more scientific methods that must be considered when executing pit barbecue. 

Today popular barbecue associations and the pitmasters they catapult into stardom set the standards that many try to emulate for barbecues “best practices”.

It is important not to strip away the voices of those who have paved the way for centuries in this form of cookery.

A more inclusive environment can expose so many to new forms of thought and perhaps answer questions about the past which can in turn aid us in the future of this art.

Dr. Howard Conyers is going to host and educate for two days, an in-depth historical whole hog barbecue immersion in Manning, SC on a farm to close out National BBQ Month in an outdoor setting under the barn to return bbq to its roots. Dr. Conyers have not hosted anything like this since 2015 and since then he has has learned a lot more. This class is not simply a class on how to cook a whole hog even though we will cook it in the ground (weather permitting), it is a place to learn about the history in a place it was preserved and the culture behind barbecue in America from a place of people whose stories never been truly shared to created this cuisine. You will hear from farmers, true masters of the craft, and Dr. Conyers in a curated series of round table and round the pit conversations. If you love American history, culture, great food, and fellowship while obtaining education, you don’t want to miss this opportunity. Also, if a family is interested and someone is planning on bringing an RV, please let us know as we are making accommodations for you at a different price point. This immersion is also great for people that home school and want an educational experience that is deeper than a text book.

This is non refundable. We will also be following the CDC recommendations for COVID. Proceeds from the The Roots of BBQ Academy will go to support the #100AcresProject to help preserve black owned farm land and to develop economic opportunities in the rural south. This offering is only for less than 30 people. One can pay a deposit to RSVP, with the balance due by April 30, 2022. Please email info@howardconyers.com if you want to make payment arrangements or if you have other questions

 For American Barbecue, the intellectual property was devised using influences available and integrating them in a way to solve the issue of how to feed the masses of elite people at a political rally.  The people that acquired this intellectual property were enslaved Americans, from going from merely recognition from property to 3/5 person, and then to a full person, being freed from slavery after the civil war. Just because slavery ended, bondage went from physical to debt bondage with the sharecropping system.   As America grew, the guardians of the knowledge were the enslaved Americans as they were also the practitioners that had very melaninated skin color for the longest period of time and as other societal things came available as America industrialized from an agrarian (agricultural) society, barbecue stayed with them as it was shared orally and further learned by apprenticeship in those farming base communities.    The trade secrets of barbecue for enslaved Americans were never documented by the enslaved or their descendants that lived in an agricultural community in the American South, because they were not allowed to read or write, so what we know about their accounts are second or third person accounts, not a first-person account.

After a life time of cooking whole hog barbecue and then doing 8 years of research in BBQ through the literature, oral history collection, and experimentation, mostly unpaid as I definitely lost money along the way, I was finding information that was in the world’s greatest library, the cemetery.  However, I like to think of the money lost as tuition that I paid for education.  Similarly, to the tuition that had to be paid from college to my doctorate, learning costs either time or money.   In making an invention, if a patent could be realized, there is an intrinsic Intellectual property and value proposition for someone to use it.  For someone to use the invention, they would have to pay royalties or licensing fees as they evolve it, or build upon it foundations.  I see parallels in barbecue, IP was acquired and people exploit without give any royalties or licensing fees commensurate to the level of the invention, even in a multibillion-dollar industry.   Barbecue belongs to people, not to a region.  At a time period all over the southern United States, it looked merely identical when people were cooking in open earth dug pits for whole animals that were mopped with a vinegar-pepper base sauce from the Virginias, the Carolinas, all the way to east Texas.  The connected tissue across those states names, were the enslave America.  Regions of barbecue formed as people move to cities as industrialization gained traction and the concept of barbecue changed.  Today, if Central Texas does not want to acknowledge barbecue with it roots in southern pitcooking when you see direct heat pits with burn barrels in Hill Country, I think they should coin a phrase of smoking meat and return barbecue and its usage back to melaninated people that created it.  I left Barbacoa cooked in Mexico/Texas region and how people in Hawaii cook pork because it is a totally different thing from a point of technique and we should called it what those indigenous folks want and hold it with high respects.   The sad reality is that the exploitation is so bad today, that the acknowledgement of melanated people are totally ignored while white people gain for profit or non profit.  Just look at what influencers, non festival organizers, TV shows, books deals etc.  I hope when someone read this, say that one has to work for the money.  Well I have worked for it, and for most of what I have I obtained for it, it is pale in comparison.  I am so glad that I did not due this labor of love for money, because I would be broke.  However, when you come today for knowledge in barbecue, please know the labor and intellectual property costs.  Otherwise, you may get a bunch of wrong, incorrect information, that is taken to be humorous when it is serious matter.   One last thing, just because a black person write a book about black people in barbecue it does not mean it is the gospel, as black culture is not monolithic and lived experience versus research are two things.  Also in terms of books written by mainstream authors that talk about history and culture of barbecue, what happens when the books they all cite the same research and the research is wrong.  From what I learned in engineering school, the books need correction with public recognition or they should be taken out of print so not to continue to proliferate a bad message.  Just my thoughts, as the invented practice of Barbecue was invented by enslaved people and not indentured servants and quit citing the wrong information originally developed by Ned Ward.

By Dr. Howard Conyers