A Road Scholar Program by Donna Pierce

Several Illinois cities have come to be known as destinations of the Great Migration including Alton, Peoria, and Chicago, where Pierce currently serves as the Assistant Food Editor and Test Kitchen Director at the Chicago Tribune. Using cookbooks and oral history, explore migrated recipes such as smothered chicken, chitterlings, black-eyed peas, barbecue, biscuits, grits, greens, banana pudding, caramel cake, and peach cobbler. For many Illinois children and grandchildren of uprooted families, these recipes transplant them back to a South (with ties to Africa) many of them have never known, except through stories and photographs.

This event is Free and Open to the public. For more information, please contact Berniece T. Tobiaski, 815.344.4385.