‘Shucking Corn and All That Good Stuff’: Black Foodways, Migration, and Food Sovereignty in Colorado Springs

• In Event: Inequality, Poverty, and Mobility Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): 18. Race, Class, and Gender

Abstract

Black communities across the U.S. have long worked to reclaim control over their food systems as a
path toward justice, health, and cultural survival. In Colorado Springs, the historically Black Hillside
neighborhood has a rich legacy of such activism and self-determination—though decades of
segregation, disinvestment, and gentrification have reshaped its food landscape. This paper builds on
a seven-year multi-pronged community-based participatory research (CBPR) partnership with
Hillside food justice organization Food to Power (FTP). We engage life-history interviews with eight
Black elders, conducted by stipended Hillside residents, to document the neighborhood’s
intergenerational foodways and mobilize history to strengthen food sovereignty. Findings reveal
how individual life histories map on to broader histories of Black farming, the Great Migration, and
neighborhood change. We emphasize the connections between cultural foodways and food
sovereignty, acknowledging histories of community resistance, geographies of self-reliance, and
community strategies for securing food (Gripper et al., 2022).

Authors

• Florencia Rojo, Michigan State University

• Cayce C. Hughes, Colorado College