Martin Luther King and Southern Food: Montgomery’s “Club from No Where”

Recipe below

Yesterday I started talking about MLK, Georgia Gilmore, food, and the Montgomery Bus Boycott (see yesterdays post for background to this story). When Montgomery authorities arrested Rosa Parks for refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger, just about the entire black community of the city rallied to her aid. ED Nixon President of the Montgomery NAACP and active member of A Phillip Randolph’s Pullman Porter’s Union, organized a meeting of the city’s black leaders. To insure solidarity among this often fragmented group, they agreed on MLK, a newcomer with impeccable credentials (Morehouse grad, PhD from Boston University, Daddy King’s son, gifted orator) to serve as the president and therefore the voice of the newly established Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA). Women, who Nixon did not invite to the MIA organizing meeting, organized their own groups. Georgia Gilmore, who took the lead, called them the “Club from No Where.” They included black women from the south side and west side of the city who organized clubs dedicated to using their baking skills to raise money for the MIA and the success of the bus boycott. I'll have more tomorrow on the Club from No Where, MLK, and the bus boycott. Here’s a pound cake recipe like one members of the Club from No Where" would have used with my food translation.

Translated Simple Pound Cake Recipe:
1 pound butter substitute like Smart Balance
3 cups sugar
5 eggs (or egg substitute)
3 cups cake flour (you can get whole grain cake flour like baking with spelt flour)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup soy milk
A splash of vanilla, almond, or lemon extract

Method:
Mix butter, sugar, and eggs. Beat until light. Sift flour, baking powder, and salt. Add slowly to butter mixture alternating with milk. Bake f0r about an hour and some change at 325

Lecture and Book Signing: Frederick Douglass Opie, "Feeding the Revolution," A Discussion of the Foods of the Civil Rights Movement

Date: Sunday January 17, 2010
Time: 4:00pm - 6:00pm
Location: St. Augustine's Episcopal Church
Street: 6 Old Post Rd North
City/Town: Croton-on-Hudson, NY 10520

Phone: 914- 271-3501

Email: august@bestweb.net

Driving Directions to St. Augustine's
From the North or South:
Take Rte 9/9A.
Exit at the Croton exit labeled Rte 129.
At the end of the exit ramp, turn right, away from the river.
At the 2nd traffic light (you will be facing a CVS and post office parking lot), turn left onto Rte. 129, Maple Ave.
Turn left at the 1st traffic light onto Old Post Rd So.-- (Kathleen Reidy, Law Office is on the far lefthand corner.)
Go one block to "T" junction: there is a traffic light in the middle of the road.
Turn left onto Grand St.
Go one block to the corner of Grand St. & Old Post Road North.
There we are!

From the Taconic Parkway:
Take the Underhill Rd exit off the Taconic.
Turn West toward Croton-on-Hudson.
Turn Right onto Rte. 129 where Underhill dead-ends at the bottom of a steep hill.
Coming into Croton, there is a "Y" where Grand St. branches to the right off of 129. A sign for Perry Kennedy Real Estate sits in front of a small house that is in the fork of the "Y"
Take the Right fork of the "Y" onto Grand St.
Continue a short few