How Black Families Honor Red Drink and Texas Barbecue

The menu at this year's Juneteenth celebrations is packed with flavor—and meaning.

Fact checked by Karen Cilli

Juneteenth is one of many “freedom days” celebrated by Black communities commemorating the end of enslavement and the liberation of our people. Juneteenth is a holiday that celebrates the day Union troops arrived in Galveston Bay, Texas on June 19th, 1865, and announced to over 250,000 enslaved people that they were free. The holiday, at its core, is uniquely familial and Texan. Following that decree, thousands of people convened in what is now known as Emancipation Park to attempt to find and reconnect with the loved ones they were separated from. Therefore, it’s no regular summer kickback.

Everything, down to the very food served on Juneteenth has meaning and intention around it. Even the very color of the food. The color red plays an especially key role in Juneteenth celebrations. Culinary historian and author, Michael Twitty, explains the cultural connection to red. "Texas was at the end of the world to the Antebellum South. There were a lot of enslaved Africans who were coming to Texas from the continent and through the Caribbean. The color red is highly associated with the cultures that would've come through the later years of the trade, which would have been Yoruba and Kongo.”

Chef Kenyatta Ashford agrees. “It’s tied to tradition versus anything else, and that just has a lot to do with our history and the things that we learned from our [ancestors].” Brightly colored foods like watermelon and hibiscus were brought over from West Africa to the United States during the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and were used as celebratory foods for the enslaved.

Others say that the color red is to honor the blood of those who endured centuries of enslavement. Chef Millie Peartree wrote, “Enslaved people who were freed celebrated by drinking red soda—yes, a luxury, but also the color symbolizes and is the representation of the bloodshed and resilience of enslaved people.”

The color red is brought into one of the first portions of the Juneteenth celebrations, the communal drink. As Nicole A. Taylor, author of Watermelon and Red Birds, the first Juneteenth cookbook, says “No party, no Black celebration period, including Juneteenth, gets started unless you have a communal drink.” And “red drinks” are the drink of the day.

As Taylor writes in Watermelon and Red Birds, “The tradition of red drinks began mostly with the parts of two plants: the kola nut, the seed of the cola plant, and the hibiscus pod, the innermost part of the roselle flower…the drinking tradition of seeds steeped in water became incised into Black people’s DNA.”

But kola nuts and hibiscus aren’t the only common red drink options. Common red drinks are strawberry soda, “red” lemonade, and “Juneteenth punch.” But of course, any other red-colored drink will do, since red drinks are essential to the Juneteenth celebration.

Another staple for Juneteenth is barbecue. Quintessentially Texan, smokey, sauce-covered BBQ is another red food that is vital for Juneteenth celebrations. However, not just any barbecue will do. The Juneteenth BBQ is communal, with families and friends often gathered around the fire, a tradition that is an ode to open-pit cooking in West Africa. The point is in the gathering, in the laughter, in the celebration of community, life, and freedom.

Other foods for the celebration are commonly referred to in Black culture as “prosperity” foods. Sides like cornbread which symbolizes gold, black-eyed peas and pork which carry the symbolism of wealth, and leafy greens—the favorite being collard greens—which symbolize money. Sweet potatoes also are a common Juneteenth food, popular because they and collard greens were some of the easiest produce enslaved people could harvest and store.

As for sweets, a frequent dessert of Juneteenth is the red velvet cake due to its red hue, although there is a spread of various sweets in honor of the sweetness of liberation.

Through Juneteenth’s food traditions, we have the opportunity to relish the strength, resourcefulness, creativity, and endurance of our people. It is a chance to appreciate our rich and dynamic history, savor its legacy and meaning, and appreciate how our ancestors took morsels of injustice and turned them into banquets of joy and liberation.

And my, oh my, freedom tastes sweet.

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