The East Kitchen
Courtesy of Brooklyn History Center
Here’s another addition to our ongoing series food rebels. An increased African consciousness that came out of the community control of schools movement in Ocean Hill-Brownsville among students and teachers led to the organizing of the East in 1969. The New York Amsterdam News Describe the East as a cultural and educational institution for lower caste people of African descent. The East’s food rebel Jitu Weusi believed insisted lower caste black folks needed a healthier alternative diet to the standard American diet in order to reach their maximum potential as marginalized people living in a caste system. As a result, the East started a kitchen in April 1970 in central Brooklyn. Weusi hired Loddie or Lotti Hicks Brown, a professional cook to run the kitchen. Brown had a daughter who had attended various summer programs that Weusi supervised. Hicks Brown had been working for another kitchen and had been unhappy on the job, she took charge of the kitchen and over time turned it into a thriving unit of the organization. Activist understood food as part of a system of production, distribution, and consumption and wisely managing your food system is a successful strategy for economic and political independence and for resisting and undermining hostile oppressive forces such as white supremacist focused on controlling you and your community.
