Many assume African American food consists only of fried chicken, collard greens, and cornbread. Yet African American influence goes beyond soul food. It is all around us: in our rice, sugar, ice cream, whiskey, and more.
Trace some of the people, food, and culinary knowledge from Africa to the Americas and across the US. Explore the ways African Americans have refashioned our country’s food through creativity, skill, and entrepreneurship. Meet the people who have built our national culinary identity.
African/American: Making the Nation’s Table will be on show at The Africa Center at Aliko Dangote Hall.
Exhibition Advisors
The African/American advisory committee comprises some of the country’s most distinguished scholars, writers, chefs, and food and drink producers:
Scott Barton, food historian and professor
Gustave Blache III, artist and visual biographer of Leah Chase
Adrienne Cheatham, chef and star of Top Chef
BJ Dennis, chef and cultural activist
Carla Hall, chef, author, and television personality
Tanya Holland, author and chef/owner of Brown Sugar Kitchen
Tonya Hopkins, co-founder of James Hemings Society
Charlotte Lyons, former food editor of Ebony
André Mack, owner of Maison Noir wines
Adrian Miller, James Beard Award-winning author of Soul Food: The Surprising Story of an American Cuisine
Thérèse Nelson, founder of Black Culinary History
Kwame Onwuachi, James Beard Award-winning chef
Questlove, co-founder of The Roots, author, and entrepreneur
Matthew Raiford, chef and farmer at Gilliard Farms
Glenn Roberts, founder of Anson Mills and president of the Carolina Gold Rice Foundation
Marcus Samuelsson, television personality and restaurateur
Chris Scott, chef and star of Top Chef
Michael Skolnik, board member of the Trayvon Martin Foundation
Alexander Smalls, James Beard Award-winning co-author of Between Harlem and Heaven
Omar Tate, creator of the Honeysuckle dinner series
Nicole Taylor, author of the Up South Cookbook
Pierre Thiam, chef, educator, and author of Senegal
Toni Tipton-Martin, author of The Jemima Code and Jubilee
Michael Twitty, James Beard Award-winning author of The Cooking Gene
Colleen Vincent, Director of Culinary Community Initiatives at the James Beard Foundation
Jarobi White, founding member of A Tribe Called Quest
Psyche Williams-Forson, author of Building Houses Out of Chicken Legs: Black Women, Food, & Power
Curatorial Team
Dr. Jessica B. Harris, Lead Curator
Dr. Jessica B. Harris is widely considered the world’s preeminent expert on the foods of the African Diaspora. Dr. Harris is the author of 12 critically acclaimed books and was recently inducted into the James Beard Foundation’s Hall of Fame.
In 2012, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture engaged Dr. Harris to conceptualize and curate the museum’s acclaimed cafeteria.
Following a 50-year teaching career at CUNY Queens College, and building on over four decades of work as an acclaimed journalist, African/American is a natural extension of Dr. Harris’s life work. As Dr. Scott Barton writes, “Dr. Jessica B. Harris has championed the heretofore invisible African American / African culinarians, rendering them visible and in plain sight.”