The year
was 1854. Tensions were especially high in Chickasaw, Mississippi. The autumn air
wasn’t as crispy as it usually was, and the colonizers couldn’t stand it. Sweaty and upset, they didn’t enjoy finding their Jack O’Lanterns already
starting to rot on November 1st. Usually, the families would leave their
pumpkins out on the porch to scare the slaves all November until they got a
taste for something seasonally sweet that apples wouldn’t satisfy. Preserving
the innards from the ice box, the h’whites would still drag the jack o’lanterns
inside to scoop any remaining meat out for their pumpkin pie filling.
After smelling sweet pies on the window sill autumn after autumn, the slaves had enough of being jealous. Unaware most of the pumpkin was already emptied out, one night, Cletus and Fletus stole three four pumpkins from Massa Winston’s porch. Unfortunately, Cletus was caught by the overseers’ dogs, but he wasn’t no snitch. He destroyed the evidence and let Fletus return to the slave quarters.
“I thought they seemed kinda light,” said Fletus when they finally inspected the pumpkins.
“Wells, whats wes gonna dos now?” said his brother Plebus.
That’s when Auntie Ruth had an idea. “Go out and fetch me a few of them yams.” Usually stewed, Ruth figured they were just as orange on the inside as a pumpkin. So she skinned and boiled the yams, mashed em up good, added some milk from the cow down the road, and some spices - including nutmeg - they hid from their owners. Crumbling stale bread to make a crust, she put it in the furnace and made something incredible.
“Damn,” Fletus said. “I think Cletus mighta got whooped for nothing.”
“No,” Ruth said. “Without ya’lls courage, I might not have had this idea.”
And that’s how the first sweet potato pie was made. To this day, black people prefer it over pumpkin pie even though they almost taste the same because making pies outta gourds is some white people shit.
Word
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