SFA Founders - Home

INTERVIEWS
Ben Barker
Karen Barker
Leah Chase
Norma Jean Darden
John Egerton
Jessica B. Harris
Ronni Lundy
Louis & Marlene Osteen
Marie Rudisill
Frank & Pardis Stitt

SFA Founding Members
Ann Abadie
Kaye Adams
Jim Auchmutey
Marilou Awiakta
Ben Barker
Karen Barker
Ella Brennan
Ann Brewer
Karen Cathey
Leah Chase
Al Clayton
Mary Ann Clayton
Shirley Corriher
Norma Jean Darden
Crescent Dragonwagon
Nathalie Dupree
John T. Edge
John Egerton
Lolis Eric Elie
John Folse
Terry Ford
Psyche Williams-Forson
Damon Lee Fowler
Vertamae Grosvenor
Jessica B. Harris
Cynthia Hizer
Portia James
Martha Johnston
Sally Belk King
Sarah Labensky
Edna Lewis
Rudy Lombard
Ronni Lundy
Louis Osteen
Marlene Osteen
Timothy W. Patridge
Paul Prudhomme
Joe Randall
Marie Rudisill
Dori Sanders
Richard Schweid
Ned Shank
Kathy Starr
Frank Stitt
Pardis Stitt
Marion Sullivan
Van Sykes
John Martin Taylor
Toni Tipton-Martin
Jeanne Voltz
Charles Reagan Wilson

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Interviews by SFA Members and Friends

Project sponsored by Jim 'N Nick's Bar-B-Q

SFA Founders Oral History Project

We all know that this is the finest regional food in America, yesterday and today and forever. Here is our chance to keep it vibrant and to share it with one another and the rest of the world.

     – John Egerton, from his 1999 SFA recruitment letter

In the fall of 2004, through generous support from Jim 'N Nick's Bar-B-Q of Birmingham, Alabama, the SFA launched its Founders Oral History Project. This important undertaking will forever preserve the history of the SFA through interviews with the organization's fifty founding members. By recruiting SFA members and friends in locations across the country to conduct the interviews, SFA supporters have had the opportunity to be more actively involved in the SFA's mission--and its history. To date, more than forty interviews have been collected, and some of them can be found here. Completed interviews will be added regularly so please check back often.

Below is an excerpt from John Egerton’s original letter to folks far and wide, inviting them to gather around the table of Southern Foodways. A handful of years later, we feel that these words still serve as the cornerstone of this organization, along with the fifty fine folks who heeded the call. We thank you.

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[Edited for length]

June 16, 1999

Dear Friend,

As you know, a new effort is emerging to establish an organization that would bring together people from all over the region and beyond who grow, process, prepare, write about, study, or organize around the distinctive foods of the South. The principal base for this comprehensive and inclusive group will be in the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi in Oxford. They are offering us an opportunity to use their tax-exempt, non-profit status and their support staff like a greenhouse to grow this new organization, which will have its own officers and board, a self-generated budget, and an independent mission: to preserve and enhance the great food heritage of the South.

To get the pot boiling, I've been asked to send this letter of invitation to 50 people whose interest in such an organization is widely known. We request the honor of your participation in a "founders' meeting" at Southern Living magazine on Thursday, July 22. We will meet all day and then adjourn to Highlands Bar & Grill, where Chef Frank Stitt and his wife Pardis will be our hosts for drinks and dinner. From 9 until noon the next morning, we'll gather again at Southern Living to complete our work.

You will appreciate, I'm sure, the spirit of inclusiveness that is driving this effort. The time has come for all of us--traditional and nouvelle cooks and diners, up-scale and down-home devotees, meat-eaters and vegetarians, drinkers and abstainers, growers and processors, scholars and foodlorists, gourmands and the health-conscious, women and men, blacks and whites and other identity groups, one and all--to sit down and break bread together around one great Southern table. We all know that this is the finest regional food in America, yesterday and today and forever. Here is our chance to keep it vibrant and to share it with one another and the rest of the world. We sincerely hope you'll agree to come to Birmingham and help us.

Most cordially yours,

John Egerton
for the "add-hock" organizers

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