A food festival accused of ignoring Black history is trying to change
CHARLESTON, S.C. - On a recent, balmy Saturday morning at the Charleston Wine and Food Festival, a man bearing an eerie resemblance to the rapper E-40 stood at the front of a tour trolley preparing to captain the Soul Stroll. For five hours, Michael "KJ" Kearney Jr. would lead 20 people on a tour to sample signature dishes at four Black-owned eateries.
The 38-year-old Kearney, a community organizer and former elementary school teacher, is a natural and engaging storyteller, dropping "Black food facts" about gentrification, economics, demography, migration patterns, nutrition and food deserts into a larger narrative about Charleston's culinary and racial history. He charms the audience, following his data dumps with jokes about his micro-celebrity and budding online fame, in hopes of expanding minds and palates.
But Kearney, who launched the website Black Food Fridays in 2020 to encourage people to patronize Black-owned products and restaurants during the coronavirus pandemic ("Think Taco Tuesday, but for Black people food"
, says he also wants to "work my way out of a job."
"I don't want to have to keep telling people to support Black people," he said while his tour group gobbled "boneless" cauliflower wings at a vegan soul food spot. "I shouldn't have to, especially with all the stuff that we've done for this country."
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/food-festival-accused-ignoring-black-110016922.html