Up From the Delta

Drusilla, my great aunty, has two pies and a cake on the table. In the kitchen she has cooked some chicken, potatoes, greens, and cornbread for us to eat. There is fruit ambrosia in the refrigerator. In the cooler is soda, water, and Capri Suns for her family: her grandchildren and great grandchildren, who will be “hitting the door any minute now.” These stories that hold our family together are centered on the thriving relationship we have with food. It was a concerning time during the COVID-19 pandemic, when our families did not gather in the same way. We pivoted toward self-sustaining food growth during a critical public health moment. It is our intergenerational norm to use what we have, or have access to, to make it through difficult times. Without the most common ways of social sustenance, households turned back to the land, when social gathering was not an option.

Drusilla, like many of my elder family members, graduated from “Aggy Elementary.” It was the local agricultural school. Through the years, the class reunion has been a staple activity for the folks who still live in the Mississippi Delta, and for those who moved into larger urban areas. The regular class reunions have been a space where folks hold programs about their local history while dining together.

Many of Drusilla’s friends and family moved up North. There are people in Saint Louis, Memphis, and Chicago who regularly come back down South to share memories and connect with friends, relatives, and loved ones. They visit places of the past to reminisce and to check in with those they are still familiar with.

The trade route of the Mississippi River shows its modern day livelihood through the train, bus, and affordable flights. From cities like Memphis and Saint Louis, the Delta is a relatively short drive. It’s less than an hour and a half away from Memphis and five and a half hours from Saint Louis. The American Black Migration is evident in our family “ways,” neighborhoods, phone or social media connections, and Sunday church bulletins.

In Saint Louis, we’ve been impacted by both the Trail of Tears and American Black Migration. The Trail of Tears was the forced relocation, during the 1830s, of Eastern Woodlands Indians of the Southeast region of the United States (including the Cherokee, Creek, Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Seminole, among other nations) to Indian Territory west of the Mississippi River — what is present day Oklahoma.K1 Estimates show that approximately 100,000 indigenous people were forced from their homes during that period and that some 15,000 died during the journey West.

Similarly, the Great Migration was one of the largest movements of people in United States history. Approximately 6 million Black people moved from the American South to northern, midwestern, and western states between the 1910s and the 1970s.K2 The driving force behind the mass movement was to escape racial violence, pursue economic and educational opportunities, and obtain freedom from the oppression of Jim Crow. Saint Louis is a trade route, industrial center, and cultural pathway for our country.

At the turn of the 19th century, Black people made up less than 6% of the population in Saint Louis. There was an even smaller percentage of Native people. Throughout the last century, our unified migration stories brought us to this central urban environment. The built environment created a place for families to mingle, grow, and even start new identities. Our foods, such as cornbread and three sisters soup, are evidence of our shared culture of survival.

Much of the North Saint Louis population has similar family stories. There are Saint Louis churches full of past Mississippi residents. Elders in the Greater Ville comment on what they are growing this year at our neighborhood convenience store, while getting their numbers and ordering lunch. Tomatoes are still a staple in our backyards. Some people grow in containers and some grow in the ground. At the convenience store, the kitchen manager orders their peppers from our local garden.

We share the cuisine of the South in Saint Louis, because the native plant family supplies us with healing foods. The persimmon, a native fruit tree, bears fruit throughout Mississippi and Missouri. We share in Elderberry. Echinacea, once known as “wild nigga head weed,” grows abundantly throughout our shared migration route and continues to support generations of Black and indigenous people in healing the common cold and more.

We depend on native foods — slow foods such as beans — to eat. Throughout the years, our slow cooking process has become a longstanding wave in Saint Louis. It is not uncommon to see soul food at our local restaurants and sassafras tea in our nutritional stores. In both places, Clarksdale and Saint Louis, neighbors and relatives continue to grow in their backyards.

Drusilla asks me how my farm is going. I excitedly let her know that it’s going well. I ask her where she planted the persimmon tree I gifted her the season prior. I brought it down from Saint Louis because her daddy used to have some. She tells me that she planted it, not so far from where her clothesline once stood.

I plant food because that is what my family taught me to do. I learned that planting food was the way to make sure that your loved ones and family survived. Planting food has taught me that I am investing in my future — and future generations.

I am highly inspired by my granddaddy’s baby sister. I used the stories of their older sister, Mary, as a blueprint for my herbalism practice. All of the siblings of their generation speak proudly of the “growing hand” of their parents. Their mother kept a beautiful flower garden with a variety of roses in her front yard. My great grandfather was known for not only being community oriented, but for having the best watermelon in the Delta. The story of his sweet watermelon traveled to Saint Louis and through three generations, with the people he loved and fellowshipped with. My family has taught me that agriculture is an opportunity to share love through food.

Coahoma Orchards is an urban orchard “direct action” dedicated to the cross-cultural heritage of Native and African people. Based in Saint Louis, these multi-site orchards grow chokeberry, plums, black cherries, perennial herbs, and flowers. We are in the Cote Brilliante, Jeff-Vander-Lou, Greater Ville, and Baden neighborhoods of North Saint Louis. The orchard is named after Coahoma County, meaning “Red Panther” in Choctaw. Coahoma County is an area in the Mississippi Delta where my family members still reside and ancestors once lived.

Coahoma Orchards also works to create food forests to combat the effects of climate change, which impacts our life through our cardiovascular and respiratory health, and affects our access to food and nutrition. The food forests are an attempt to heal generational environmental and social harm in the heart of our country using the traditional roots of our past.