Author Talk: Power Hungry | Suzanne Cope in conversation with Tremaine Wright

In early 1969 Cleo Silvers and a few Black Panther Party members met at a community center laden with boxes of donated food to cook for the neighborhood children. By the end of the year, the Black Panthers would be feeding more children daily in all of their breakfast programs than the state of California was at that time. More than a thousand miles away, Aylene Quin had spent the decade using her restaurant in McComb, Mississippi, to host secret planning meetings of civil rights leaders and organizations, feed the hungry, and cement herself as a community leader who could bring people together—physically and philosophically—over a meal. These two women’s tales, separated by a handful of years, tell the same story: how food was used by women as a potent and necessary ideological tool in both the rural south and urban north to create lasting social and political change. The leadership of these women cooking and serving food in a safe space for their communities was so powerful, the FBI resorted to coordinated extensive and often illegal means to stop the efforts of these two women, and those using similar tactics, under COINTELPRO–turning a blind eye to the firebombing of the children of a restaurant owner, destroying food intended for poor kids, and declaring a community breakfast program a major threat to public safety. But of course, it was never just about the food.

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Suzanne Cope, PhD is a narrative journalist and food studies scholar with a focus on food as a tool for social and political change. She has written about food and culture for the New York Times, The Atlantic, CNN, BBC, among others. She also actively publishes and presents in academic forums and teaches writing and about food and politics at New York University. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and her two children.

Tremaine S. Wright is a former member of the New York State Assembly and currently serves as the first Chairperson of the NYS Cannabis Control Board.  Additionally, she previously served as the first Director of the DFS Statewide Office of Financial Inclusion and Empowerment. Ms. Wright is an attorney, entrepreneur, small business owner and activist who is a second-generation Bedford Stuyvesant resident invested in preserving the rich legacy of her community and building a strong foundation for the future. She has dedicated her career to empowering and creating opportunities for her neighbors and her community.