Season 2 of Netflix’s acclaimed docu-series sees host Stephen Satterfield travel across the country to uncover the impact of African-American cuisine.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00 Why do you think African-Americans have such a spiritual
00:03 and emotional connection to food
00:05 and the culture that surrounds it?
00:07 - Brief answer, because for many years,
00:09 we didn't have enough.
00:12 I think it also goes back to a kind of,
00:16 and this is a gross generalization,
00:18 which we all know we shouldn't do
00:20 when we come to black people.
00:21 I think we are inherently a spiritual people.
00:26 And I think that that spirituality reflects itself in food
00:31 and in our looking at food and in our ways of preparing it,
00:36 serving it, eating it, and all of the rest.
00:40 - When we've sung that song,
00:42 when we've painted that painting,
00:43 when we've done all these creative things,
00:48 it's not done until we eat.
00:49 - Dr. J and I are continuing our journey
00:55 to uncover the stories of African-Americans.
00:58 - We are implementing something that black people
01:00 have a right to, and that's a right to eat.
01:03 - Through the food we grow.
01:04 - Who we are is our connection to land.
01:07 - Prepare.
01:07 - This is a little bit of everything.
01:10 - And commune over.
01:10 - Oh, wow.
01:11 - Food is that thing that can create home wherever you go.
01:15 - I like to hope that food can bring us together.
01:17 - The best part is the last three words.
01:20 - Pass hot sauce.
01:21 (laughs)
01:22 - Being as though we have such a vast history
01:24 in this country, even after post-emancipation,
01:27 how did you identify what stories and dishes
01:31 you wanted to highlight this season?
01:33 - I think that really as much as anything,
01:35 we were trying to tell a story about movement,
01:39 about migration, and that story in particular,
01:44 especially after emancipation,
01:46 where the first season left off,
01:48 brings us to places like Louisiana,
01:52 to places like Chicago, to places like Atlanta,
01:56 as cities that can function as a microcosm
01:59 for this 20th century Black American story.
02:03 And of course, there's food stories everywhere,
02:07 there's history.
02:08 So I think we sort of worked backwards from there,
02:12 identifying what cities best embody
02:15 this particular version that we were telling.
02:18 - So Dr. Jessica, can you tell me,
02:22 do you think that our relationship,
02:24 African-Americans' relationship with food
02:26 changed from the time during slavery to the time post?
02:31 Like, do you think our relationship changed at all?
02:33 - I think it did.
02:34 I think it has always been a communal thing,
02:39 a celebratory thing, a familial thing for us.
02:44 I think that post-emancipation,
02:49 as we moved and spread and became more affluent,
02:54 many of those things continued,
02:58 but also our diet changed.
03:01 I think that as we, in the great migration,
03:06 moved all over the country,
03:09 we ended up with regionalisms
03:13 and different kinds of regionalisms,
03:15 eating other things, doing other things.
03:17 But I think basically food as a connector
03:21 of family, community,
03:24 and as a representation of hearth and home
03:28 has remained a constant.
03:30 - So Steven, this next question is for you, my brother.
03:33 What has been the most fulfilling thing
03:36 in working on "High on the Hog" for you?
03:39 - I think simply that it's been a dream
03:42 for Black foodways and Black culinary history
03:47 to be used as a way to understand our own history.
03:53 And that so many, especially Black people,
03:58 have come to me and expressed to me
04:00 how much this work means to them.
04:04 And I can't express to you or to them
04:06 how much that means to me.
04:08 - Dr. Jessica, now that's the same question for you.
04:10 What has fulfilled you the most in working
04:12 on this amazing docuseries?
04:14 - Well, thank you for the amazing docuseries part.
04:18 I think the thing that has just moved me extraordinarily
04:23 is, you know, this is something I've been working on
04:27 since literally I was at Essence.
04:30 I was the travel editor of Essence in the mid '70s.
04:34 And so watching it come to,
04:39 in some kind of ways, fruition,
04:41 seeing it go out into the world to the 190 countries
04:46 that are going to be, you know,
04:49 able to watch this docuseries,
04:52 it's like unbelievable.
04:55 It's extraordinary.
04:57 I've had friends call from as far as New Zealand,
05:00 Brazil, certainly France, the continent itself,
05:07 and say how much the first series meant to them
05:10 and how it enabled them to have conversations
05:13 with their own elders about their traditional foods.
05:16 It's not just African-American friends.
05:19 Apparently it has elicited conversation among the Maori
05:24 in New Zealand about their traditional foods,
05:28 Afro-Brazilians about theirs and so on and so forth.
05:31 So it has just been an extraordinary moment in my life.
05:36 I feel very blessed to have been able to experience it.
05:39 (upbeat music)