Shirley Satterfield and Henry Pannell gather the produce from Littlebrook’s Freedom Garden to give to local chefs for the preparation of soul food dishes.
Littlebrook fifth-grader Torynz Bethea samples dishes prepared from the school garden on Food Day in October.
As part of Food Day celebrations, students at Littlebrook Elementary reaped the bounty of their harvest and got a lesson about soul food from two Princeton community members in October.
The lesson coincided with Littlebrook fifth graders’ Freedom Garden project; the garden consists of soul food ingredients like okra, cowpeas, collard greens and fish peppers.
Under the direction of garden educator Priscilla Hayes, students are planting crops that were formerly grown by African people who were brought to America as slaves. The corps became foods that African-American families brought with them into freedom.
Guest speakers Shirley Satterfield and Henry Pannell discussed about the history and cultural context of soul food.
Satterfield, a former board member and current adviser of the Historical Society of Princeton, has personal experience with the connection between food, culture and social struggles.
As a child growing up in Princeton, Satterfield was among the first pupils from the Witherspoon School for the Colored, which closed in 1948, to integrate with Nassau School under the Princeton Plan. While attending college in North Carolina, she joined the Greensboro Four at the Woolworth’s lunch counter to protest segregation.
Pannell, whose family hails from Virgina, grew up with collard greens and kale in the garden. He continues to grow the crops in his own garden. Satterfield gets her kale from her share in a local organic farm; she told the students that she now eats the leafy green in a salad as often as she eats it in soul food dishes.
As part of the lesson for Food Day, Satterfield and Pannell took the children’s Freedom Garden produce to local chefs William Fowler and Edward Rice to prepare traditional African-American dishes for the students to sample.
Local entrepreneur Peter Young, Jr., helped arranged the Food Day lesson. His projects include a catering business with an emphasis on soul food.
