YSK: the abolitionist history of pumpkin pie

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/food/2021/11/24/pumpkin-pie-thanksgiving-abolitionist-history-united-states/8755627002/

YSK: there was a time when pumpkin pie was comparitively niche as fall holiday foods go. People would make sweet potatoe pie. However, it was essentially impossible to source sweet potatoes in the USA that were not made via slave labor, and so abolitionists pushed for an alternative: pumpkin pie. It's interesting what boycotts and politics are baked into culture (and ovens), and how we forget about their origins.

258 points · 10 comments · view on lemmy.world

10 Comments

Fredselfish@lemmy.world · 51 pts · 283d

Thanks for sharing, find it funny especially being a southern man born and raised in Texas. Had no clue that at one time my ancestors would of hated us celebrating Thanksgiving.

Makes me want to celebrate it harder.

DagwoodIII@piefed.social · 43 pts · 283d (5 replies)

[off topic]

Someone posted that so many early cartoons [Mickey Mouse in particular] wore white gloves because they were modeled on minstrel show characters. You can't look at American history for more than a minute before something like this pops up.

OpticalMoose@discuss.tchncs.de · 12 pts · 282d (1 reply)
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DagwoodIII@piefed.social · 13 pts · 282d

On that note.

"Black people can't swim."

The masters used to beat all the slaves if they saw any of the kids swimming. Going across a river was the best way to throw off the blood hounds, so it was a good idea for the owners to keep the property out of the water.

Diving With a Purpose. Black scuba divers searching sunken slave ships.

https://divingwithapurpose.org/

shalafi@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 283d (2 replies)

Wait till you hear where ice cream truck music comes from.

DagwoodIII@piefed.social · 8 pts · 283d

Agatha Christie has entered the chat

orwellianlocksmith@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 282d

Go on...

Scubus@sh.itjust.works · 20 pts · 282d (2 replies)

Dang, turns out my hatred of sweet potato was actually a hatred of colonialism lol

TwoBeeSan@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 282d

I'm just that compassionate.

Time to send this to every sweet potato lover and call them racist. I have my black Friday planned.

MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip · 1 pts · 282d
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cymbal_king@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 282d (1 reply)

Thanks for sharing. I had never even heard of sweet potato pie and just assumed pumpkin pie was a Thanksgiving tradition all over the US

dan1101@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 282d

You have to be careful in grocery stores, sweet potato pie looks like pumpkin pie.