Bobby J. Smith II

“Food Power Politics” examines the interaction between conflicting practices of food power as exercised in the Mississippi Delta from the civil rights era to today. Using a multi-methodological approach, my book offers a new line of inquiry that uncovers a neglected period of the movement when activists expanded the meaning of civil rights to address food as integral to sociopolitical and economic conditions. This meaning-making process is used as a model by Black communities today that mobilize around the food justice movement. By making such connections, “Food Power Politics” brings together histories of civil rights with food justice studies to illuminate how the struggle for civil rights in the Mississippi Delta informs and shapes current struggles for food security in Black communities.