Joe turner's Come and Gone - Center Stage

American South. As
Sarah Belk states,
“eggs fried in bacon
drippings, escorted
by country ham,
hot biscuits, grits
with butter and
red-eye gravy, and
a cup of coffee so
hot that the less
acquainted might
term it ‘scalding’—
aren’t merely
the makings
of a Southern
breakfast, they’re
the substance of a Southern lifeblood.” 2 We learn little, if
anything, about Bertha’s origins. But years of operating a
rooming house have made her aware of the ways in which
certain foods help to bring comfort and a touch of the
familiar to weary migrants. Regardless of the assimilation
processes that migrants were forced to undergo, and the
changes that they were encouraged to make, they also
needed something solidly Southern to remain in place.
Bertha offers this refuge in her food and in her home.
For a family like the Hollys, taking in boarders provided
a way to augment their income. With that extra income,
though, came extra effort, largely at Bertha’s expense; for
what was not produced at home still had to be prepared.
Chickens from the market had to be killed or plucked, fish
had to be scaled, and hams—for those who could afford
them—had to be soaked to remove the salt. Despite the
availability of mass-produced items, coffee still had to be
ground and roasted, sugar pounded, and flour sifted to
remove particles. Whether from the garden or the market,
the labor-intensive nature of food preparation cannot be
underestimated. No wonder Bertha is glad of the help
young Zonia Loomis can offer.
Hidden in the folds of Bertha’s culinary talents, recipes,
and social graces are the stories of those who used
their domestic skills in an informal market economy to
provide goods and services—legal and illegal—to make
a life for their families, buy their freedom, or simply
provide enough to eat. Faced with difficult economic
circumstances and seeing a niche in the market, many
Blacks turned to the underground economy for security.
With industrial expansion came a need for living spaces
for more mobile populations. For African Americans, the
search for housing was made more difficult by race and
gender considerations. So African American women and
men opened makeshift motels and boarding houses, whose
tenants would otherwise have nowhere to live in the Jim
Crow North. Some found their way to these houses through
advertisements in such Black-owned newspapers as the
Pittsburgh Courier or by using The Negro Motorist Green
Book; 3 but most would have arrived by word-of-mouth.
In exchange for cash and the latest news from the wider
world, they would receive food, bed, and perhaps a touch
of home; providing entertainment and liquor along with
a plate of chicken and collard greens was as much a part
of the exchange as the overnight fee. These Black boarding
houses became part of the network that humanized
the African American travel experience throughout the
Great Migration.
While the meals and domestic skills provided by Bertha
might seem incidental to the larger workings of Joe Turner’s
Come and Gone, they deserve better and closer attention.
The work of Black women like Bertha helped to maintain
Southern traditions and establish continuity for new
migrants in a strange land. Through her biscuits and her
hospitality, Bertha becomes a reminder of the left-behind
Southern culture, a binding agent against the fractures of
the Black diaspora. She affirms her position not only as a
cultural worker, but also as a cultural transmitter.•
1
Bernice Johnson Reagon, “African Diaspora Women: The
Making of Cultural Workers,” in Women in Africa and the
African Diaspora, ed. Rosalyn Terborg-Penn, et. al., pp. 168-69.
2
Sarah Belk, Around the Southern Table, p. 335.
3
The Negro Motorist Green Book was a guide or pamphlet
issued by the United States Travel Bureau that contained a list
of designations (bars, service stations, lodgings) which were
amenable to African American patrons.
Above: Romare Bearden’s
schematic drawing of
three floors of his maternal
grandmother’s boarding house
in Lawrenceville, Pennsylvania.
Right: Evening Meal of the
Prophet Peterson, 1964.
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