Shrimp Boat ‘Maryland’, “to Frances Ellen Watkins Harper”

The 1958 “Historical Cookbook of the American Negro” proves that a cookbook can be an object of delight without being full of glossy photos of food. The recipes in the book, interspersed with history and reproduced ephemera, take on new significance, offered as tributes to historical figures or events.

The cookbook’s editor, civil rights activist Sue Bailey Thurman, knew exactly what she was doing. As the founder and editor of the Aframerican Women’s Journal, she spearheaded publications efforts for the National Council of Negro Women, including this innovative cookbook. Recipes were solicited from different regional sections of the NCNW, and arranged in a chronological format around important dates. Thurman was a historian and she wove biographies throughout the book – including Maryland natives Harriet Tubman and Benjamin Banneker- as well as (of course) NCNW founder Mary McLeod Bethune and many other contemporary and historical figures.

In the preface, Thurman called the book a “palatable approach to history” – it was a way to celebrate food and cooking, while also presenting a summary of neglected aspects of black history.

Sadly, some of that history remains neglected today. While my grade schooling did include a fair amount of Langston Hughes (and this unforgettable, heartbreaking poem about Baltimore by Countee Cullen), I don’t recall reading the poetry of Frances Harper or even learning about her activism.

Harper was born in Baltimore to free parents in 1825. After being orphaned at age three, she was raised by her aunt and uncle, Henrietta and William Watkins. William was himself an activist, orator and writer who founded the Watkins Academy for Negro Youth where Frances was educated.

Frances was a teenager when she began getting her antislavery writing – fiction and nonfiction- published. Her first volume of poetry was published in 1845 – a rare copy is now housed at the Maryland Historical Society. Her second book, Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects (1854), made her the most popular black poet of the era.

The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 forced the Watkins family to flee Baltimore, and eventually led Frances to the community of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society. Frances Watkins soon began traveling as an anti-slavery lecturer. She continued to write novels, stories and poems.

In 1858, she wrote her most famous poem, “Bury Me in a Free Land”:

Make me a grave where’er you will,
In a lowly plain, or a lofty hill;
Make it among earth’s humblest graves,
But not in a land where men are slaves.

I could not rest if around my grave
I heard the steps of a trembling slave;
His shadow above my silent tomb
Would make it a place of fearful gloom.

I could not rest if I heard the tread
Of a coffle gang to the shambles led,
And the mother’s shriek of wild despair
Rise like a curse on the trembling air.

I could not sleep if I saw the lash
Drinking her blood at each fearful gash,
And I saw her babes torn from her breast,
Like trembling doves from their parent nest.

I’d shudder and start if I heard the bay
Of bloodhounds seizing their human prey,
And I heard the captive plead in vain
As they bound afresh his galling chain.

If I saw young girls from their mother’s arms
Bartered and sold for their youthful charms,
My eye would flash with a mournful flame,
My death-paled cheek grow red with shame.

I would sleep, dear friends, where bloated might
Can rob no man of his dearest right;
My rest shall be calm in any grave
Where none can call his brother a slave.

I ask no monument, proud and high,
To arrest the gaze of the passers-by;
All that my yearning spirit craves,
Is bury me not in a land of slaves

– Frances Harper, written for The Anti-Slavery Bugle in 1858

Frances married Fenton Harper in 1860, and continued lecturing into old age. When she passed away in 1911, the Afro-American wrote that she had “lived to enjoy the result of her labors,” referring in part to her role in “moulding sentiment against the institution of slavery.”

The Baltimore Section of the National Council of Negro Women shared a recipe for “Shrimp Boat Maryland” to honor Frances Ellen Watkins Harper. Alongside the recipe is printed an excerpt of Harper’s letter to John Brown’s wife, written while Brown awaited trial and execution.

Although the shrimp boat recipe is in the aspic family, it wasn’t anything too strange when served on some buttery crackers. Similar recipes for aspics circulated in newspapers in the 1940’s, but the shrimp appears to be a unique (and welcome) addition.

At first, it seemed a little un-fitting for a 1950’s aspic to be associated with such a prolific and famous 19th-century poet & orator. But gelatin or no gelatin, it resulted in me sitting in the library and getting overwhelmed by Frances Harper’s powerful poems, so I think it is safe to say that Sue Bailey Thurman’s unique cookbook presentation is still working its magic today.

Recipe:

• 1.5 Tablespoons gelatin
• 1 Cup boiling water
• .5 Cup mayonnaise
• 1 Cup evaporated milk
• .25 Teaspoon salt
• .25 Teaspoon paprika
• 2 Tb vinegar
• 2 Teaspoons mustard
• 1 Tablespoon grated onion
• 2 Tablespoons minced green pepper
• .5 Cup finely chopped celery
• 2 cans of shrimp, finely chopped

Soften gelatin in water and allow to cool. Mix other ingredients and stir into gelatin. Chill in refrigerator until just cooled (I left it too long that’s why my loaf has pits!), then pour into mold. Chill at least 3 hours.

Recipe adapted from “The Historical Cookbook of the American Negro”, contributed by the Baltimore Council of the National Council of Negro Women