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Category: Foodways

A man playing a guitar and singing to a close crowd of a dozen or so men and women

Filling the Cornucopia

Posted by: Stephanie Hall

At this time of year we gather to give thanks, for many things that have been important to us during the year, but a common theme is thanks for our food. The holiday falls in the time of the harvest. Different cultural groups around the world also celebrate the harvest with a variety of customs …

A man playing a guitar and singing to a close crowd of a dozen or so men and women

Politics and Possum Feasts: Presidents Who Ate Opossums

Posted by: Stephen Winick

A photo in the Library of Congress’s Prints and Photographs Division (known colloquially around the institution as P & P) shows white men in formal attire, sitting row upon row at tables, apparently waiting to be served. The caption, which came to us with the photo itself, is “’Possum’ dinner tendered to President-elect William Howard …

A man playing a guitar and singing to a close crowd of a dozen or so men and women

A Possum Crisp and Brown: The Opossum and American Foodways

Posted by: Stephen Winick

This is the third in a series of posts about folklife related to the Virginia Opossum, the only marsupial native to the United States.  Find the series here! In 1910, Maggie Pogue Johnson, an African American woman from Virginia, published a dialect poem about classic African American cuisine, or what we would today call “soul food.” …