Food Power Politics

“Smith’s pathbreaking and interdisciplinary work recovers a food focus that has often been muted in the historical retelling of the movements of the civil rights and Black Power era. Food Power Politics provides a perspective on history, on food justice, and on the fight for civil and human rights that offers important lessons for how we understand food sovereignty.”—Monica M. White, University of Wisconsin

“The civil rights movement operated on a series of registers that made it a multilayered and nuanced mass of movements. Here, Bobby Smith II examines the layer providing bodily sustenance and how food, politics, and race operated together. Food was weaponized in modes of oppression but also used to shield and protect communities as an expression of freedom. With four case studies in Mississippi’s civil rights movement, Smith underlines the power of local histories and local people to tell national structural stories while celebrating the resilience of Black folk in the wake of white supremacist tactics to literally starve Black progress.”—Françoise N. Hamlin, author of Crossroads at Clarksdale: The Black Freedom Struggle in the Mississippi Delta after World War II

“A thought-provoking book that sheds new light on the modern Civil Rights Movement of the ongoing struggle for food justice in the Delta. Drawing on historical research, sociology, economics, and powerful storytelling, Smith reveals how food served as both a tool of oppression and a source of resistance for Black Mississippians during this transformative period.”—Journal of African American Studies

“This historical narrative, deeply rooted in the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement, serves as a powerful connection to the past, shedding light on the subjugation of Black people during the Civil Rights era in the Jim Crow South. . . . The insight provided by Smith is a perfect example of history repeating itself on all fronts and manifesting in the modern-day struggle for power and food justice.”—Society for U.S. Intellectual History

“Through this historical extension of the contemporary food justice movement into more rural spaces, Smith . . . [brings] a new perspective that can bridge the analysis of the structural forces that create and sustain oppressive food power with community level responses and the emergence of emancipatory food power. . . . [A] well-written and well-researched contribution that should not be overlooked.”—Sociology of Race and Ethnicity

“Smith’s book is admirable for its interdisciplinarity and its engagement with foundational scholarship from Black studies, history, sociology, anthropology, and critical food studies. . . . [V]ery valuable. . . . This insightful book certainly will influence future studies about the importance of food as fuel for the movement.”—Journal of Southern History

“Bobby J. Smith II fundamentally alters how we understand the civil rights movement and its legacy by putting food at the center of the story. . . . By drawing from interdisciplinary scholarship and a diverse source base, Smith’s work convincingly shows how working-class Black people attempt to build a future where they can control the cultivation and distribution of their food supply. . . . [E]ssential reading for organizers and historians alike.”—North Carolina Historical Review

“[Smith] shows how the struggles of the region’s Black communities laid the groundwork for the modern food justice movement. Sadly, access to fresh, unprocessed meals still elude many Black Americans today, but this little-known narrative reconstructed by Smith offers key lessons that could inform the current challenges.”—Civil Eats

“Explores spaces and places often overlooked by civil rights historians . . . . Smith’s text places into perspective the long history of community organizing, direct action, and educational activism that rural and working-class Black Americans have relied on in the face of economic and social dispossession. Instead of debating the legitimacy of trickle-down activism from hyper-visible politicians and celebrities, Smith reminds us that, historically, political victories and social justice reform sprouts from the bottom up.”—Ariel Lawrence, Southern Spaces

“While rooted in the historical moments of the civil rights struggle of the 1960s, the book connects their present-day effects to those causal threads, making Food Power Politics much more than just a history text. . . . By examining food as a tool for making meaning and wielding power, Smith opens up the historical narratives as windows into epistemology, one of the most significant forms of power.”—CHOICE