A Taste Of Freedom : Code Switch

A Taste Of Freedom Enlarge this image toggle caption LA Johnson/NPR LA Johnson/NPR Juneteenth commemorates the day that enslaved Texans found out — more than two years after Emancipation Day — that they were free. Plus: In this week's episode of the podcast, you'll hear Code Switch correspondent Karen Grigsby Bates and food historian Rafia Zafar reference some of their favorite Black cookbooks. Sponsor Message Beloved Black cook books for Juneteenth The Taste of Country Cooking, Edna Lewis Lewis writes lovingly of her childhood in Freetown, a small Virginia hamlet founded by the formerly enslaved, and proudly shares the history and recipes her family and other Freetown residents enjoyed through the years. But Bryant Terry's Vegan Soul Kitchen explores the literal "roots" of Black cooking by dreaming up traditional Black Southern recipes that are plant-based, and no less delicious than the originals. "Black Joy—Not Corporate Acknowledgment—Is the Heart of Juneteenth" is the argument Wellesley professor Kellie Carter Jackson made last summer for the Atlantic, after lots of companies and states recognized the day as a holiday for the first time during 2020's "racial reckoning."