The Island’s Juneteenth festivities concluded Sunday at Taste of Juneteenth, where a culinary celebration of Black liberation went hand in hand with support for Island youth.
Sponsored by the MV NAACP, the event brought a slate of Island chefs to the PA Club to serve food from the Black diaspora and raise money for the organization’s scholarship fund.
The day featured fare from Ackee Tree, Black Joy Kitchen, Chef Lori Edmonds, Seasoned With Soul, Winston’s Kitchen, Vineyard Caribbean Cuisine and Sweet Bites. There was also a keynote address from culinary journalist, historian and two-time James Beard Award winner Jessica B. Harris. Ms. Harris’s book, High on the Hog: A Culinary Journey from Africa to America, became a Netflix series in 2021.
For MV NAACP president Shawn Ramoutar, Taste of Juneteenth is about unity, community and supporting young Islanders.
“This is one of our big fundraisers over the year to raise money for our kids here, maybe about five scholarships,” he told the Gazette. “Hopefully it will be more, the bigger this event becomes.”
Chefs and volunteers served food buffet-style, and while guests waited in line, Black Joy Kitchen’s Chef Ting passed out double-fried suya honey wings, tossed in a sauce made of honey from Rwanda and suya powder from Ghana.
“Our food perspective is the food of the entire Black diaspora,” Chef Ting told the Gazette. “It’s really about each one of us, no matter who we are and where we come from, connecting more deeply with the fact that our families come from the whole world.”
Chef Ting’s other dish, called Peach Party in Your Mouth, combined fresh peaches with cilantro, scallions and a goat cheese mousse — an homage to the flavors of the Vineyard, made with Island-sourced ingredients.
“I always want to make sure that our food reflects this incredible place where we get to live and cook and feed people,” Chef Ting said.
At the head of the buffet stood Chef Edmonds, spooning plates high with seasonal garden salad made with cabbage, carrots, red onion, microgreens, peppers, raisins, feta and five kinds of gourmet lettuce.
“It’s a very diverse group of ingredients, and I’m all about diversity and culture,” she said.
Seasoned With Soul dished out pulled pork and collard greens, and Vineyard Caribbean Cuisine offered an assortment of escovitch fish, pepper steak and steamed cabbage.
Mr. Ramoutar manned the buffet’s final stop — the cornbread station — wearing a Vineyard Caribbean Cuisine ballcap. He brought the cornbread himself, along with barbecue chicken and mac and cheese.
“There are a lot of things going on in the country right now that we cannot face alone. We have to face it together,” he said from behind the row of food trays. “This is the real Fourth of July. This is a day of freedom.”
Food’s power to unify and mobilize was top of mind for Ms. Harris, who began her keynote address with an artifact: a spiral-bound MV NAACP cookbook, undated but filled with names of chapter members from across its history. She read off recipes for quick cheddar biscuits and sweet potato pie, and guests cheered when they heard members’ names they recognized.
“We’re a community that’s almost like family, and we fight like family too,” Ms. Harris said. “We fight, we scrap, we argue and we love each other.... The NAACP was, is and I suspect will always be a living testimonial to that love, to those things that connect us, to those things that make us better.”
MV NAACP executive committee members Toni Kauffman and Grace Robinson extolled Dolores Allen Littles and Jim Brannon for their years of service to the branch, including to the scholarship committee.
Scholarship recipients from this year and last year were also honored to thunderous applause.
In her closing toast, Ms. Harris captured the day’s tenor in just a few words.
“To NAACP, to Juneteenth, long may y’all both live,” she said.
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