Memory, Meals, & Sustaining Love: Reflections on Mosaic’s ReStory US Pilgrimage

By Ryan Pemberton

November 25, 2025

Crispy fried chicken, hearty jambalaya, creamy macaroni and cheese, earthy collard greens, fried okra, corn bread—these are some of the mouth-watering dishes our Mosaic cohort of pastors and church leaders were treated to on our recent ReStory US pilgrimage through the American South. Around a stretched dining table on the third floor of a Bourbon Street restaurant in New Orleans, pop-up tables at a reconciliation center in Selma, and sitting side-by-side at a hardwood table in a barbecue joint basement in Montgomery, Alabama, our group was offered generous meal after generous meal of traditional southern cooking.

At Dooky Chase’s Restaurant in New Orleans’ Tremé neighborhood, we enjoyed the most delicious fried chicken I’ve ever eaten. It was followed by a plate of peach cobbler that called into question every other cobbler I’ve enjoyed. Between dishes, our group took in walls lined with beautiful artwork and photos of esteemed guests, including former US presidents, dining at Dooky Chase’s. We learned about how this former sandwich shop from the early 1940s became an important stop for Civil Rights leaders traveling through New Orleans.

These hearty dishes were more than hospitality for our group, however; they were a reminder of the survival, creativity, and resilient love of a people who have endured our nation’s deepest legacy of injustice.

Centering Enslaved Narratives: Touring the Whitney Plantation

On just the second day of our Mosaic ReStory US pilgrimage, we participated in a walking tour of the Whitney Plantation—about an hour’s drive west of New Orleans. Justin, a twenty-something man from the area, generously served as our historic translator for the tour. In our two-hour experience of Whitney, Justin masterfully wove together local history, politics, economics, and lived experiences of enslaved Africans who spent their days on the plantation, including members of his own family.

In Whitney Plantation’s intentional effort to center the experiences of those who were enslaved on the plantation, we began not in the fields, but in a church: Antioch Baptist Church (a.k.a. “Anti-Yoke Baptist”). Terracotta statues of enslaved children dressed in overalls and sundresses, sculpted by artist Woodrow Nash, populate Antioch Baptist: standing by the front door, at the end of pews, and gathered along the front of the church. So lifelike, the children demand a double take. They also serve as a reminder of the wide range of ages and fullness of life that populated these grounds not so long ago.

From the church, we made our way to the Wall of Honor, where Justin pointed out several names and shared the personal history of particular people who lived and worked on the plantation, including his “grandfather’s great grandfather.” The names of those on the wall, including “Justin,” were often given by their owner. Dates and tribe of origin were recorded from purchase receipts and baptismal records. Up to 130 enslaved Africans lived and worked on the Whitney Plantation at any one time.

Originally just a raised cottage, the Whitney Plantation was one of the first colonial homes built along the Mississippi River. The bricks that made up the floor of the home were built and laid by hand by the children who lived and worked on the plantation, Justin explained.

Following our tour of the “Big House,” Justin led us to the rear of the home, and to a small building where enslaved African women tasked with feeding the plantation workers, as well as the plantation owner’s family, spent their days. Dishes such as gumbo, jambalaya, étouffée—all recipes that can be traced back to Africa—were prepared and enjoyed by those who lived and worked at Whitney. Recipes for these meals would be passed down to the cooks’ children, Justin mentioned, as a means of survival if they were to wake and find that they had been taken from their mother.

Justin continued our tour, leading us down a sun-bathed, tree-lined gravel path through fields of sugarcane. He recounted the grueling harvesting experience, in which women and men were consistently forced to work twenty-hour days for weeks on end.

“When enslaved Africans stepped foot on the plantation,” Justin explained, “their life expectancy was reduced to ten years.”

As we concluded our tour with a stop at the memorial to those brave souls who took part in the January 1811 uprising, the largest revolt of enslaved people in U.S. history, one story continued to haunt me: mothers committing recipes to their children’s memory, ensuring their survival if stripped from their family.

Remembering the Meals of My Youth

From a young age, I have loved to cook. After a long day of school and sports, I’d lie on my stomach on our living room floor and pore over recipes in my mother’s cooking magazines. Taking note of novel ingredients and cooking styles, I’d prepare feasts in my mind for family members and friends.

I come from a long line of amateur cooks. My grandfather, who grew up in South Carolina in the Great Depression, regularly prepared large meals for our extended family. Shaped by memories of going to school without breakfast, because there simply was not enough food, my grandfather would often tell us, “I would rather you have too much than not enough.”

Holiday dinners at Grandpa’s house meant dining room tables and kitchen counters overflowing with dishes of grilled salmon, roasted chicken, baked beans, breads, and pies. The same held true for breakfast, where bowls of grits would sit alongside plates piled high with pancakes (brimming with blueberries from the garden, come summertime), patty sausage, and crisp strips of bacon, as well as generously buttered slices of toast.

My mother inherited my grandfather’s predilection for generous cooking. She is known for making far more than could ever be eaten in one sitting, no matter how many are gathered. I often joke that, if asked, my mother can never offer a recipe for the dishes she prepares. The reason: she always cooks by feel, not recipe.

On the other side of our group’s experience at the Whitney Plantation and Justin’s masterful tour, I’m thinking differently about my lack of family recipes. Apart from a Dutch family cookbook passed down by my maternal grandmother, I cannot recreate the most beloved meals of my childhood.

Something happens to the integrity of our memory when food is no longer tied to survival.

“One of the Good Ones”

Growing up, I was told stories of the Kinsey plantation in my grandfather’s family. More than anything else, I remember being told that our ancestor, who owned enslaved Africans, was “one of the good ones.”

“He always made sure all of his slaves ate first,” I was told, always with a note of pride. This story from my childhood followed me on our group’s tour of the Whitney Plantation, forming itself into a pit in my stomach.

While Justin led our group, a story from the book our Mosaic cohort had been reading, How the Word is Passed, came to mind, from author Clint Smith’s own experience on the Whitney Plantation. In particular, my mind drifted to a question Smith had asked Yvonne Holden, Director of Operations & Visitor Experience at the Whitney Plantation: “What’s the most common question you get from white visitors?”

The way Smith tells it, Yvonne’s entire demeanor changed at this question.

“Number one question [we get from white visitors],” Yvonne says, exhaustion and frustration now visible, “‘Were there any good slave owners?’”

Yvonne offers a pointed response.

“Regardless of how these individuals fed the people that they owed, regardless of how they clothed them, regardless of if they never laid a hand on them, they were still sanctioning the system . . . You can’t say, ‘Hey, this person kidnapped your child, but they fed them well. They were a good person.’ How absurd does that sound?” (How the Word is Passed, 70).

In my family’s efforts to recount our ancestor as “one of the good ones,” an entire people’s experience of torturous kidnapping, removal from their homeland, ruinous transport across the Atlantic, reduction to property, and much more has been subtly defended and ignored, hidden in plain sight.

This is how justice is denied. This is how injustice is perpetuated. These are the stories we inherit that shape our minds and hearts in diseased ways, offering a narrative of our nation, our families, and ourselves that fails to give an honest account of who we are and how we got here.

“For the horrors of the American Negro’s life” James Baldwin writes, “there has been almost no language” (The Fire Next Time, 69).

And yet, as Justin’s stories shared with our group at the Whitney Plantation make clear, in the face of shamefully inhumane systems, so many enslaved Africans lived lives that transcended their circumstances. The lives of these women and men who were treated as property shone with persistent creativity, resilient faith, and unimaginable strength, dignity, and integrity. These lives have not only contributed in profound ways to our nation’s wealth and rich culture, but to the sustaining love that has fueled the most exemplary moral imaginations in this country.

And in the form of food, beloved family recipes, and memory, these enslaved African mothers maintained a loving, sustaining connection with their children—even where physical connection was refused. This life-sustaining connection through food continues to haunt my imagination, recalling a particular practice in my own faith community.

Shared Meal, Shared Memory

Around a table, Christians are invited to remember the first disciples’ final night with their Lord.

On the night that he was wrongfully incarcerated, as my friend Pastor Kelly reminds her congregation, Jesus was sharing dinner with his friends. During their meal, Jesus took bread, and, after giving thanks to God, he broke it into pieces. He then offered it to his disciples, saying, “Take and eat. This is my body, given for you. Do this in remembrance of me” (1 Corinthians 11:24).

Likewise, when he was mere hours from being taken from his community, Jesus lifted the cup to those in need, saying, “This cup is the new covenant, poured out for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins. Whenever you drink it, do this in remembrance of me” (11:25).

Every time we participate in this meal, we’re reminded, we proclaim with our lives the reconciling work of our risen Lord—until he is reunited with his children.

Memory, then, is central to our formation as a reconciled and reconciling people. Remembering and participating in this meal is essential for our discipleship.

Memory is an identity issue. It is also a justice issue. “Justice is at heart an act of remembrance, an act of memory,” author Greg Thompson recently told our Mosaic pastors cohort.

When we remember rightly, those memories demand something of us. “To leave [these experiences] stagnant in the past is something we’re being called out of,” DeSean Dyson, Director of US Programming for Telos, said on our way out of the Whitney Plantation.

In our memory of this meal, our Lord’s criminal treatment is not forgotten; it is honored and transformed. When we commit to remembering truthfully, injustice has the potential to be transformed into justice. And when we gather around this meal to remember, our Lord’s sustaining love grounds, connects, and promises to keep his beloved children in peace, no matter what comes.