Poultry and African Culinary Traditions
Black Famer Pomp Hall’s Guinea hens, Courtesy of the Library of Congress
As I have documented in the past, African Americans like Dr. Alvenia Fulton’s mother come from a West African heritage of raising and cooking poultry. For example, the Guinea hen is indigenous to Africa. The Fulani of Northern Nigeria considered their lean and dry meat superior to other types of poultry such as chicken and pheasant. The Fulani mastered the art of raising large flocks of Guinea hens in the grasslands where they flourished. West Africans also incorporated the Guinea hens into many of their religious celebrations. Indeed, West Africans had been familiar with raising, cooking and baking poultry; pre-nineteenth travel accounts are full of descriptions of West African meals served with poultry before they arrived in the Americas. For more see Dr. Psyche Williams-Forson’s book Building Houses Out of Chicken Legs: Black Women, Food, & Power
