Food and the Civil Rights Movement

The purpose of my presentation is to analyze broader significance of the act of ordering food and/or beverages at lunch counters by African Americans in the segregated South as illustrated in Anthony Grooms’s short story “Food that Pleases, Food to Take Home” (1995). Annie McPhee and Mary Taliferro, two African-American heroines, decide to demand their rights at the lunch counter in a local store in Louisa, Virginia. I intend to apply Victor Turner’s concept of social drama (cultural anthropology), along with the issue of commensality (Kerner et al 2015) and the issue of black (in)visibility (Elizabeth Abel 2010) to analyze the order of a hamburger and some fries as the symbol of acknowledging the racial wound. Such an order of a hamburger, which along with Coca-Cola symbolizes the American nation (Weiner 1996, 109), not only encapsulates May and Annie’s desire to be included in “a democratic vision of consumer abundance known as the ‘American Way of Life’” (Weiner 1996, 110), but also offers an opportunity to the characters to confront and/or upset the racial status quo and to reevaluate their own beliefs. It is also my intention to demonstrate how Annie and Mary’s demand to be served at the lunch counter reverberates with Ella Baker’s assumption that such sit-ins sought “to rid America of the scourge of racial segregation and discrimination – not only at lunch counters, but in every aspect of life” (1960, 375)