Booker T. Washington and Culinary Self-Sufficiency Part 4
Annual Black Farmers' Conference, Hampton Institute, 1912, Courtesy of The New York Public Library
Booker T. Washington’s Tuskegee Institute indeed inspired movements for black culinary self-sufficiency and economic independence. For example, in 1899 African-Americans organized 150 events advancing strategies for black culinary entrepreneurship and financial literacy. Washington championed tactics that would lead one to food self-sufficiency, financial freedom, and building wealth. Washington strategy of black culinary independence as a step toward economic independence and not ownership influenced African Americans at the turn-of-the-century. Started in 1916, Washington also influenced Marcus Garvey and the black owned and operated grocery stores he built as part of his Negro factories initiative within the United Negro Improvement Association. One also sees Washington's influence the black food cooperative movement of the 1930s and on the Nation of Islam and other black nationalist groups and a black culinary entrepreneurial endeavors food they founded and operated launch in the late 1960s. More on that later.
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