Food Politics celebrates Martin Luther King Day

Today is Martin Luther King Day and it’s worth thinking about what he stood for as we inaugurate a new President.

Nneka M. Okona writing in Food & Wine tells us: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Taste in Food Shows Us Who He Was: Sunday suppers at home and simple meals in restaurants give insight into the man behind the speeches.

I found that eating and following his tastes is as central to understanding him as a human and a thinker as his ideologies for the liberation of Black people and the poor. For King, eating was sustenance but also importantly, a time to pause, to take a reprieve, to be still, to connect with the most primal, urgent needs of his body. To experience pleasure while ensconced in the pain of racism’s brutalities.