Newswise — It was a time when slaves scrabbled for whatever food they could find, grow or collect from their white owners, a time when spirituals held coded messages for fugitives, a time of dangerous escapes to the North or Canada for freedom via the Underground Railroad.

Myria Bailey Whitcomb, a student at Baylor University and a former re-enactor at a Pennsylvania church that was a safe house on the Underground Railroad, was enthralled, saddened and heartened by the legacy of her ancestors.

She wanted to share the heritage and spiritual strength of those times. So she embarked on assembling an unlikely mixture: lyrics of such spirituals as “Wade in the Water” and “Go Down, Moses,” memories handed down from those who lived through an unforgettable chapter of American history, and recipes with such ingredients as hog’s head, ham hocks, collard greens, chitlins and oxtails.

In “An African American Cookbook,” many of the 400-plus recipes exemplify turning something undesirable into something good — just as tragedy was turned into triumph not only by those who escaped to liberty long before and during the Civil War, but by blacks and some merciful whites who helped them along the way. “I wanted to honor the Underground Railroad,” said Bailey Whitcomb, a student at Baylor’s Truett Seminary enrolled in a dual degree program to earn master’s degrees in theology and social work. “This is more than a cookbook; it’s a history book.”

The book (written under the name Phoebe Bailey) includes quotations by “the famous and the not so famous,” she said. Those individuals range from abolitionist Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman — an African-American “conductor” who escorted more than 300 slaves to freedom — to elderly members of Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church of Lancaster, Pa., who passed on tales of slavery and freedom handed down from previous generations.

One member, Elizabeth McGill, recalled how her mother would tell her three children stories of “the Old Times” and read from the Bible. She recalled, too, how her mother used flour to patch wall cracks to keep out the cold in a home not much improved from slave quarters.“We had no ceiling and no water,” McGill said. “It was normal to look at the stars at night.”

In Pennsylvania, Bailey Whitcomb — who co-pastors with her husband at a church in Athens, Texas — served as writer, director and actor of “Living the Experience,” an interactive reenactment of the Underground Railroad.

In her book, lyrics of spirituals serve as prefaces to recipe sections. “Such spirituals often carried code languages for enslaved Africans,” she said. “In ‘Wade in the Water,’ the code was to go to the river, where water would cover the fleeing Africans’ scent and tracks, making it difficult for bloodhounds to track them.”

Individuals or “conductors” in the network provided food, money and “stations” — hiding places in homes, barns and out-of-the-way spots —as well as aid in nighttime travels, sometimes by boat, sometimes by train, and very often on foot. Besides the conductors, “there were free communities of Africans that had never been enslaved, so they were a wonderful drop-off” for escapees, Bailey Whitcomb said. Many who championed the effort helped escapees find jobs, even providing letters of recommendation.

As for the recipes, many included food that slaves were given by their owners.“They were given what was undesirable by the white people – but they worked,” Bailey Whitcomb said. “Chitlins and pigs’ feet. They made it, and it tasted gourmet.”*The book is available on amazon.com

ABOUT BAYLOR UNIVERSITYBaylor University is a private Christian university and a nationally ranked research institution, characterized as having “high research activity” by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. The university provides a vibrant campus community for approximately 15,000 students by blending interdisciplinary research with an international reputation for educational excellence and a faculty commitment to teaching and scholarship. Chartered in 1845 by the Republic of Texas through the efforts of Baptist pioneers, Baylor is the oldest continually operating university in Texas. Located in Waco, Baylor welcomes students from all 50 states and more than 80 countries to study a broad range of degrees among its 11 nationally recognized academic divisions. It sponsors 19 varsity athletic teams and is a founding member of the Big 12 Conference.

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