Food and the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement: re-reading the 1962-1963 Greenwood Food Blockade

Smith, Bobby J.

doi:10.1080/15528014.2020.1741066

Cited by 4 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…13 More recently, sociologist Bobby J. Smith's work demonstrates how incidents such as the Greenwood Food Blockade pushed members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee to 'recognize the power of food' during the movement. 14 By arguing that the food blockade constitutes a 'food riot', where protesters, in this case the planter aristocracy, the White Citizens' Council and other members of the white supremacist power structure in Mississippi, denied access to the free surplus commodities food programme in order to discourage poor Blacks from collaborating with activists and participating in voter registration drives, Smith shows how SNCC used their emergency food campaign 'to connect local people in Mississippi to the national struggle of civil rights and address their day-to-day needs'. 15 Building on and furthering this scholarship, this article argues that food was the foreground of the Civil Rights Movement in the lives of everyday people.…”

Section: Black Women's Resistance Food Justice and Civil Rightsmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Some Time We Have Trouble in Getting Mail. And Everything Else Here’: Black Women, Freedom Food and the US Postal System

Walker¹

2022

Gender & History

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This article puts food at the centre of the Civil Rights Movement by illuminating rural Black women's experiences accessing food and survival goods in Mississippi from 1964 to 1968. Examining letter correspondence, it demonstrates how Black women strategically participated in the little-known postal benevolence programme, 'Box Project', to feed their families. Within the context of surplus commodities and the food stamp programme, the article reveals how the postal system allowed Black women to acquire food and engage in conversations with northern sympathisers about the insidious state welfare structure under which they lived. As the volume of boxes and letters entering Mississippi increased, so did the risk of Black women's strategic use of the interstate mail services. The US Postal System, as quotidian and seemingly benign a state apparatus, was a battleground for food and freedom for ordinary rural Black women.

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Section: Black Women's Resistance Food Justice and Civil Rightsmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Some Time We Have Trouble in Getting Mail. And Everything Else Here’: Black Women, Freedom Food and the US Postal System

Walker¹

2022

Gender & History

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“…2.But see Smith II (2020) and Daigle (2019). Nor have the movements around food sovereignty always been vocal around some of the radiant examples of struggles for land redistribution and national liberation in this millennium, for example, in Zimbabwe and Yemen.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Land and the US Agrarian South

Ajl

2021

Agrarian South: Journal of Political Economy

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This review essay summarizes and synthesizes three books on Black and Indigenous agrarian struggles in the modern-day territories of the USA. It discusses how they recount the centrality of land, national liberation, self-reliant development, food sovereignty and sustainable forms of agriculture and land management to Black and Indigenous radical struggle. It then suggests parallels and divergences between those struggles and those in the Third World’s agrarian south. It focusses on the anti-systemic dimensions of national liberation struggles in the core, especially those carried out historically by Black and Indigenous movements, and details how those movements historically looked out beyond the US landmass for solidarity and to build internationalist fronts. Finally, it reflects on their role in destabilizing settler-capitalism in the USA.

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Carceral geographies of pesticides and poultry

Williams

Freshour

2022

Food and Foodways

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Food and the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement: re-reading the 1962-1963 Greenwood Food Blockade

Cited by 4 publications

References 21 publications

‘Some Time We Have Trouble in Getting Mail. And Everything Else Here’: Black Women, Freedom Food and the US Postal System

‘Some Time We Have Trouble in Getting Mail. And Everything Else Here’: Black Women, Freedom Food and the US Postal System

Land and the US Agrarian South

Carceral geographies of pesticides and poultry

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