Black people have a deep love for the tradition of Thanksgiving. Even during slavery, they took time to be thankful for the little they had. So, what did the enslaved eat on Thanksgiving Day? The enslaved who worked in the fields would hunt wild game for their families, while the women prepared cornmeal cakes to go along with what was caught.
In October 1863, President Abraham Lincoln signed a proclamation to officially celebrate the holiday, months after signing the Emancipation Proclamation earlier that same year. Thanksgiving was usually a time when the enslaved planned escapes, due to the ending of crop season. With the new law, it transformed into a time where newly freed Blacks could actually come together.
In the Black community, Thanksgiving began in the church. Black pastors preached about struggles, hopes, and fears. These sermons usually denounced the institution of slavery and carried the belief that a slave-free America would one day be a reality.
For many of us, Thanksgiving means spending time traveling to visit family and friends. Growing up, Thanksgiving was one of my favorite holidays, simply because my whole family was together. The turkey, dressing, collard greens, sweet potatoes, and Nana’s cherry cobbler were what we all looked forward to.
But let’s be clear: The images of Pilgrims, in big hats, large belt buckles, and heavy black shoes, breaking bread with Indigenous American presents a broken view of the founding of this country. The local Indians taught the Pilgrims how to plant and hunt; a tenuous peace seemed possible, until things took a horrendous turn. The American colonies expanded; Indigenous people were slaughtered for their land and driven thousands of miles from their home. The truth is that the watered-down version in the history books masks the violence and oppression, and it manages to both legitimize and whitewash our country’s terrible actions against Indigenous people.
During the peak of the civil rights movement in 1964 speech, Malcolm X delivered a speech with a famous line: “We didn’t land on Plymouth Rock. The rock landed on us.”
This line has withstood the test of time because it exposes the long history of injustice towards Black people and marginalized communities that predates the writing of America’s Constitution. Initially, the line drew laughter and applause from the audience, but sometimes it takes dark wit and irony to shed light on the truth of a situation. It makes us stop and think about what is actually going on.
In 2020, the toll of COVID-19 and the struggle over racial inequity made it a perfect time to reevaluate the Thanksgiving holiday for many Indigenous Americans. Along with teachers and professors, they rethought the holiday that has marginalized the United States’ violence and cruelty against Native Americans, with names like “Takesgiving” and “The Thanksgiving Massacre.”
On the National Day of Mourning, Native Americans gather in Plymouth, Massachusetts, for a day of remembrance for the millions of Indigenous people who were killed by European colonists. Prayers and speeches take place along with beating drums before participants march through the Plymouth Historic District.
Thanksgiving is complicated. The special place that Thanksgiving holds with Black people and religious tradition is full of the same contradictions of pain and joy. For Black people, celebrating Thanksgiving is similar to celebrating Independence Day — they are both rooted in oppression but we have found ways to infuse our own spirit into it. Even religious holidays at the center of Black culture carry the complex past of both salvation and enslavement. The fact that we celebrate and participate in so many traditions that are burdened with these contradictions is a central part of our complicated story.
I think about my nieces, who are five and seven years old, and what they are learning (and not learning) in today’s history books at school. I think about how necessary it is for them to know the truth about their history, even if it’s difficult and complicated. Our children deserve to know the history behind why we do the things we do. More importantly, we have to make a concerted effort to know the truth so we can teach them. It’s really a matter of building our own family traditions that will pass down through generations, essentially reframing the narrative.
So, here we are at another Thanksgiving. We know that scraps became soul food; spirituals born of out of pain and struggle became jazz, gospel, and blues. Religious holidays became reasons to escape from the hardships of slavery, then from Jim Crow. We know how to survive because we know where our help comes from.
Perhaps one day we’ll come to terms with the shared history of holiday contradiction and complicated feelings with many of the practices that we know as American. But until then, the secret to Nana’s cherry cobbler? Now that’s rebellion. You can’t help but go back for more.
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