Savage Barbecue: Race, Culture, and the Invention of America's First Food

Acknowledgments

acknowledgments Almost a decade ago I began to gather material in and around the subject of barbecue, and the debts that I have accumulated since then have grown difficult to count. All mistakes here are my own, but what I get right I get right because I have been so lucky in my friends and colleagues. Over those eight years Bridget Bennett, Martin Butler, Susan Castillo, Rachel Farebrother, Denis Flannery, Robert Jones, Caryl Phillips, Jay Prosser, Julia Reid, David Stirrup, and Sam Wood have all offered timely reminders and even timelier new pieces of information. Early in the project conference audiences at the Universities of Leeds, Lancaster, Oxford, and Prague offered murmurs of agreement, leading me to suspect that these speculations about barbecue and writing might lead to a book. An informal conversation with James Walvin helped confirm this suspicion. With the combined support of Leeds University and the Arts and Humanities Research Council in Britain, each of which funded a semester’s leave, I was able to devote an entire calendar year to develop the manuscript. Richard Godden, Richard King, and Doris Witt provided help in the form of references and much besides, while the anonymous reporters for my ahrc application offered heartening, important interventions. I also owe debts of gratitude to libraries both local and distant. Staff at the British Library, the John Rylands Library at the University of Manchester , and the Special Collections of the Brotherton Library at Leeds University remained patient at all times. Further afield, I am grateful for my happy and productive visits to the New York Public Library and its Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, while staff at the Library of Congress, and particularly those in the Prints and Photographs Division, were courteous and helpful. At the North Carolina State Archives Boyd Cathey and Kim Cumber in particular provided wonderful and committed service, not only guiding me to John Hemmer’s extraordi- { xi } nary photographs but also trawling the archives for barbecue references on my behalf. Last but not least, colleagues at Leeds University, and my good friend Pam Rhodes in particular, were as fantastic as ever. Acknowledgments for this kind of book would remain incomplete if I did not also thank the cooks who fed me along the way. From the barbecue I ate at Washington d.c.’s Black Family Reunion Celebration to the pulled-pork sandwich that Wall’s served up on the outskirts of Savannah’s Historic District, lunch has been an integral part of this project. I will not soon forget eating Ed Balls’s southern-style pit barbecue—an art he presumably picked up in d.c. between lessons on fiscal responsibility—while listening to a brass band play “Jerusalem” on a rainy day in Yorkshire. For helping to fuel some cracking conversations with John McLeod, Shabab’s restaurant in Leeds also deserves mention, as should all the cooks who have kept my spirits as well as energies up over the course of this research. I would also like to thank those who read the first draft of the completed manuscript. The responses of John T. Edge and the anonymous readers of the University of Georgia Press were friendly, challenging, and have helped make this a far better book. Everyone at Georgia, and in particular my commissioning editor, Andrew Berzanskis, remained remarkably patient throughout. So did the thoughtful suggestions of David Fairer, a colleague whose prose I have long admired, and who remained at all times supportive of my rather brazen foray into 1700s London. My wife, Sue, and my mum, Jill, gave brilliant suggestions, as ever, while all my family, McManus as well as Warnes, were supportive throughout. Last but not least I would like to express my gratitude to my former doctoral supervisor, Mick Gidley. I should make space here to thank friends as well as professional colleagues, but Mick is surely both and has done more to set me on the path of an academic career than anyone else. Mick’s critical interventions, his eye for detail, and the sheer breadth of his knowledge have been a great boon throughout the project. In recent months Mick’s characteristically close and insightful reading of the final manuscript led to some enhancements that, I think, are major. As a token of thanks for his efforts, I dedicate this book to him. { xii } acknowledgments Savage Barbecue...