Carla Hall - Black Farmers Urban Gardeners Conference 2026 Keynote Speaker

Carla Hall, African American food history, and the importance of Black farmers. The 2026 Black Farmers Urban Gardeners Conference at Dillard University in New Orleans - Keynote speaker 

Carla Hall, African American Food History, and the Legacy of Black Farmers

Food Is More Than What We Eat

When we talk about African American food, we often think about soul food: collard greens, cornbread, black-eyed peas, sweet potatoes, fried chicken, and other familiar dishes. But there is a much larger story behind these foods. It is a story about African agricultural knowledge, Black farmers, cultural survival, entrepreneurship, and the passing of knowledge from one generation to another.

Chef Carla Hall has helped bring this history to a wider audience through her cooking, television appearances, and cookbook, Carla Hall's Soul Food: Everyday and Celebration.

In 2026, Hall will be the Black Farmers Urban Gardeners Conference Keynote Speaker. She will bring her interest in African American food traditions to New Orleans at  Dillard University. Her participation provides an opportunity to connect the history of African American cuisine with the people who grow food and sustain agricultural traditions today.

African Roots of African American Food

The history of African American cuisine begins long before the development of the United States.

Africans brought extensive agricultural and culinary knowledge to the Americas. During the transatlantic slave trade, enslaved Africans were forcibly transported from different parts of Africa, including regions of West and Central Africa. They carried knowledge of cultivating crops, preparing food, preserving ingredients, and adapting meals to local environments.

African foodways contributed to the development of American cuisine through ingredients and culinary traditions associated with okra, black-eyed peas, rice, and other foods.

Okra, for example, became an important ingredient in Southern cooking. Black-eyed peas remain popular in African American households, particularly in traditional New Year's meals.

Rice has a particularly significant history in coastal South Carolina and Georgia. Historians have documented the importance of African knowledge and experience in the development of the region's rice economy, although the specific contributions of different African peoples and individuals varied.

Other ingredients became part of African American cooking through exchanges among African, Indigenous American, and European food traditions.

The result was not simply the preservation of African recipes. It was the development of new food traditions shaped by African knowledge, local ingredients, changing circumstances, and the experiences of African Americans over generations.

Black Farmers and the Development of Southern Cuisine

Food history cannot be separated from farming.

Enslaved Africans and their descendants performed much of the labor that sustained Southern agriculture. They worked in rice fields, tobacco fields, cotton fields, sugar plantations, and other agricultural enterprises.

Under slavery, their labor and knowledge generated wealth for others. Yet African Americans also maintained food traditions and, in some circumstances, cultivated personal gardens, raised poultry, fished, or sold produce.

These activities varied according to location and the restrictions imposed by enslavers. Nevertheless, gardening and other forms of food production could help supplement household food supplies and preserve some agricultural practices.

After emancipation, many African Americans continued farming as landowners, tenants, sharecroppers, and agricultural laborers. Some acquired land and established farms, while others faced discriminatory laws, unequal access to credit, violence, and other barriers to economic independence.

Black farmers contributed to the agricultural development of the United States, but their history has not always received the recognition it deserves.

Their story is connected to the food served on American tables, the development of regional cuisines, and the economic struggles surrounding land ownership.

Soul Food Is More Than Fried Chicken

The term soul food became widely associated with African American cultural pride during the 1960s and 1970s. However, African American food traditions existed long before the term became popular.

Soul food encompasses everyday meals as well as dishes prepared for holidays, family reunions, church gatherings, and other special occasions.

Traditional meals might include greens, beans, peas, sweet potatoes, cornmeal dishes, rice, fish, vegetables, and meat when available.

The ingredients and cooking methods differed from one region to another. African American food in Louisiana, for example, reflects the state's distinctive Creole, African, Indigenous, French, Spanish, and other cultural influences.

It is also important to distinguish between foods that families ate regularly and foods prepared for celebrations. Everyday cooking often depended on what people could grow, obtain, preserve, or afford.

In her cookbook Carla Hall's Soul Food: Everyday and Celebration, Hall explores this broader culinary heritage.

Her work encourages readers to consider the stories behind familiar dishes and to recognize African American cooking as a rich culinary tradition rather than a narrow collection of stereotypical foods.

The Gullah Geechee Connection

One particularly important example of African American food heritage can be found among the Gullah Geechee people of the coastal Carolinas, Georgia, and northeastern Florida.

Gullah Geechee communities developed distinctive cultural traditions shaped by African ancestry, the coastal environment, rice cultivation, fishing, and generations of community life.

Rice became a central ingredient in many Lowcountry dishes. Seafood, vegetables, peas, and beans also feature prominently in regional cooking.

These traditions demonstrate how African knowledge and cultural practices survived and evolved in the Americas.

The work of Gullah Geechee writers and food historians has helped preserve this knowledge. Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor's book Vibration Cooking: Or, The Travel Notes of a Geechee Girl, for example, connects cooking with cultural identity, family memories, and the experiences of growing up in the South Carolina Sea Islands.

Documenting these traditions is important because food knowledge is often passed down orally. Recipes, stories, gardening practices, and techniques for preparing ingredients may survive within families without ever appearing in a formal publication.

African American Women as Keepers of Food Knowledge

Women have played a major role in preserving African American food traditions.

They have grown vegetables, prepared meals, saved seeds, preserved seasonal produce, passed recipes to younger generations, and adapted cooking methods to the ingredients available to them.

Some women also turned their culinary knowledge into businesses. They sold meals, baked goods, seafood, and produce, creating opportunities for economic independence in circumstances shaped by racial discrimination.

African American women have also made important contributions as professional chefs, cookbook authors, restaurant owners, and culinary educators.

Their stories remind us that food knowledge is a form of expertise. The ability to grow, select, prepare, preserve, and share food involves practical skills developed through experience and transmitted across generations.

Black Culinary Pioneers

Carla Hall is part of a much longer history of African American culinary achievement.

Leah Chase, the celebrated New Orleans chef and longtime proprietor of Dooky Chase's Restaurant, helped establish her restaurant as a center of Creole cooking and an important gathering place during the civil rights movement.

Edna Lewis brought national attention to Southern cooking through her writing about seasonal ingredients, rural life, and the food traditions of her Virginia childhood.

Lena Richard built a culinary career in segregated New Orleans. She operated food businesses, taught cooking, published a cookbook, and hosted a television cooking program.

Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor documented Gullah Geechee food traditions through writing and broadcasting.

These women demonstrated that African American culinary traditions encompass far more than recipes. They include agricultural knowledge, regional history, business ownership, creativity, and cultural preservation.

Carla Hall: Connecting Food, Culture, and History

Carla Hall's career has introduced her cooking and personality to audiences through television, cookbooks, and public appearances.

She first became widely known through the television competition Top Chef and later co-hosted the daytime program The Chew.

Her interest in soul food has helped bring attention to the cultural meaning of African American cuisine. Through her work, she explores the relationship between food, memory, family, and identity.

Food can also serve as an entry point for exploring ancestry. A familiar dish may lead to questions about where an ingredient originated, how it was cultivated, and how a particular cooking method traveled across generations.

These questions can open a door to a broader understanding of African American history.

Carla Hall and the Black Farmers Urban Gardeners Conference in New Orleans

In 2026, Carla Hall is the keynote speaker at the Black Farmers Urban Gardeners Conference at Dillard University in New Orleans.

The conference brings an important opportunity to connect culinary traditions with the people who grow food.

Black farmers and urban gardeners are part of a continuing story. They cultivate crops, maintain gardens, share growing knowledge, and work to strengthen food production in their communities.

The connection between chefs and farmers is especially important. Chefs depend on the work of agricultural producers, while farmers benefit when consumers understand the value of locally grown food and the knowledge required to produce it.

A discussion of African American food history at a gathering of Black farmers and urban gardeners can go beyond the preparation of traditional dishes. It can explore the origins of ingredients, the importance of land, the history of Black agricultural enterprise, and the role of food production in community development.

New Orleans is a fitting setting for this conversation. Louisiana's food traditions reflect a complex history of African, Indigenous, European, Caribbean, and other influences. Its culinary heritage demonstrates how communities adapt ingredients and techniques to create distinctive regional foods.

Bringing a prominent chef into conversation with Black farmers and gardeners can help connect this cultural history with contemporary agricultural work.

Food, Farming, and the Preservation of Knowledge

There is another dimension to African American food history: the preservation of agricultural and environmental knowledge.

A recipe tells us how to prepare a dish, but a fuller history asks additional questions.

Where did the ingredients originate?

Who cultivated them?

What growing methods were used?

How did families preserve food for later use?

Which traditions survived migration and economic change?

How did Black farmers, gardeners, cooks, vendors, and restaurant owners contribute to local economies?

These questions connect food history with agricultural history, environmental knowledge, and community development.

They also create opportunities to document the experiences of people whose knowledge may never have appeared in a cookbook or formal historical record.

The same questions can be explored in African communities, where traditional farmingCcsr systems, local crops, food preservation, and environmental knowledge remain important subjects of study.

Comparing African and African American food traditions can reveal meaningful cultural connections. Such comparisons should also recognize the differences among African societies and the distinct histories that developed in the Americas.

Preserving the Story for Future Generations

African American food history deserves to be documented as part of the larger history of agriculture, culture, and economic development.

Recipes are one part of that history. The people who cultivated the ingredients, maintained family gardens, preserved seeds, prepared meals, and established food businesses are equally important.

Carla Hall's participation in the Black Farmers Urban Gardeners Conference in New Orleans offers an opportunity to bring these subjects together.

It also reminds us that food can be a starting point for conversations about land, farming, family, cultural identity, and the knowledge passed from one generation to another.

When we preserve food traditions, we preserve more than recipes. We preserve stories about how people lived, worked, adapted, and created a culture that continues to influence American life.

Food is history. Farming is knowledge. And preserving both helps future generations understand the people and experiences that shaped the world they inherited.