SeeingBlack.com Community

[Charlene Marie Muhammad]

Back in the day, we as a collective had the good common sense to eat to live and not live to eat. Although we enjoyed the taste and sensation of food we did not rely on it for our overall emotional support and stability.

Back in the day, Mama used the kitchen like a science laboratory and work the food, herbs and spices to negotiate optimal health for her family.

In this modern day and time, we in the west appear to rely on the USDA and the NIH to provide the seal of nutritional approval on our food choices. Funny thing is, the secret behind these pristine institutions’ research is Mama’s good ole common sense.

Let’s consider one of our most beloved food staples, collard greens.

Collard greens or Brassica oleracea (variety) acephala as it is formally named, is a member of the Brassicaceae botanical family. The family of Brassicaceae is one of the oldest recorded living groups of vegetation on the planet earth. On virtually every continent, there is a member of the Brassica lineage. Collard greens are definitely one of the family members that rank Methuselah status, with origins being recorded as far back as Confucius and the Chou Dynasty.

With such an enduring history, the Brassicas have been providing mankind with sustenance since recorded time began. They were and remains a revered vegetable, having once been referred to as Cruiferaceae- a name chosen to depict its physical signature- a flowering presentation in the form of a cross or “crucifix.” African, European and Native American populations utilized collards medicinally for headaches, hangovers and digestive upsets.

Of all the Brassica family tree, Collards carry the most noted affinity to a specific race of people or culture. Everybody eats its kin broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage and kale. Although we may think “Asian” and bok choy, the association of such doesn’t leave one all warm and fuzzy inside like “Black folks” and collard greens does. And this includes Black folk in general, not simply African-Americans. In the West African nation of Kenya, Collards remain a staple for the common people and are affectionately called, “Sukuma Wiki”- “pushing through the week”- meaning having some collards guarantees your family will eat. In South America, “Couve” or collards are an Afro-Brazilian mainstay, as are “col berza” in Afro-Cuban culture and “couve-galega” in Cape Verdian and other Black Portuguese heritage.

The tragic chapter of this story is that each of these cultural groups of Blacks, are the descendents of the European slave trade. Brothers and sisters of one continent, find themselves helplessly dispersed throughout the planet against their will. However, what will was left intact in Black people, proved worthy to support their survival, and the story of the collard green walked with them throughout history, supporting their livelihood with sustenance and an economic commodity.

The 21century finds collard greens as endearing a plant as ever there was. How do you know that you ‘be down in the ‘hood’- meaning the coolest of the cool between your race and culture? Why call yourself “Collardgreens” as the rap artist, Adrian Taylor of South Carolina does. Other Rap groups, such as Eightball & MJG, Black Pohaic, and JOMICO also croon to musical cuts that include the theme “Collards.” Even though the language of their lyrics leaves a strong desire for parental discretion, the musical ideal carries collards as a cultural icon.

Contemporary Black literature also includes the notion of collards as a representation of the culture. A recent episode of the popular cartoon-Boondocks entitled Cornbread, fish and collard greens, provided a satirical look at the Black-American diet. In 2003, a popular Off-Broadway play was written to open a dialogue about inter-racial dating between Black and Latino cultures- Platanos and Collard Greens. The playwright, David Lamb, chose two popular cultural foods to represent their respective cultures and to add humor to a sensitive topic.

Around the United States, there are annual cultural and neighborhood festivals that have collards as their mascots. In East Palo Alto, California, The Collard Greens Cultural Festival is in its tenth year of celebration and people from around the United States travel to the Northern California city to enjoy the festivities. The festival features a unique one-of-a-kind homemade ice cream: collard green flavored! Most of the southern states too, have one form of harvesting or homecoming festival that features a collards growing or cooking contest.

How did a simple plant that grows seemingly absent-mindedly and profusely on nearly every continent on the planet earth become as endearing to mankind as to develop its own cultural identity? Possibly because collards-and Brassicas in general- has always been a good all-around medicinal plant and economic commodity, and a key staple for the nutritional survival of Blacks.

Collards are one of 3000 species within Brassicaceae found around the world, and may be one of the oldest known cultivated food crops. A hybridized version of wild cabbage, collards may have originated in Asia Minor or Turkey. European Ethno botanical researchers trace the cultivation of collards as early as the first century. The Greeks and Romans are the first known commercial cultivators of the crop and introduced it to their European neighbors in France and Great Britain. Collard greens subsequently spread throughout Southeast Asia (including Southern China), East and West Africa, the West Indies, South America and the southern United States.

During the 1600s, the Europeans turned colonialists, brought collards to the Americas believing that the hearty staple would prove beneficial, as the new land’s food source was still a mystery. By the 19th century, Brassicas were staple vegetables in America for all of her inhabitants-European, African and the Native people of the Americas.


In early 17th, 18th and 19th century societies, it is believed that collards and its botanical family members were cultivated primarily for medicinal purposes and were used therapeutically to support headaches, deafness, diarrhea, gout and other stomach disorders.

African ancestry maintained a spiritual view of health and therefore relied on plants for medicine as plants too had spirits. In traditional African medicine, collard juice (“pot likker”) was known for its universal use in digestive upsets.

The Native American Cherokee were known to use collards as a topical aid. Poultices of collard greens were used for boils, to alleviate headaches and as a natural sun screen by packing leaves under hats to protect one from summer sunrays.

Collard greens remained an agricultural commodity because it was inexpensive to grow and harvest. Originally cultivated for animals and other farming livestock, collards doubled as a food source used to feed the Black slaves. Legend has it, that Blacks hid collards amongst themselves to sustain them through the journey of the middle passage across the Atlantic Ocean. More likely, Africans were introduced to the actual species of the American collard green variety when they arrived. Since its taste was similar to Brassicas on the African continent, collards became an easily adopted staple.

It is from this tradition that African-Americans acquired a taste and affinity for the Brassica oleracea L. variety now known as collard greens. During the Diaspora experience, Blacks truly looked to collards as their “Sukuma wiki”- the food that pushed them and sustained them through the week, months, years and centuries.

Although sufficient to sustain life, the original Black cultural diet was not optimal. Black slaves were forced to subsist on table scrapes and garbage. For centuries, African-Americans embraced poor dietary habits out of necessity. Collards and other vegetables may have been good sources of important vitamins and minerals but the cooking tradition of the Black kitchen was to laden their greens with the cheap saturated fat, pork, and to over-cook their vegetables to discourage the tough, fibrous texture.

During the Emancipation era and beyond, Black cultural knowledge and education increased. The history of Black health became synonymous with socio-economic status. African-Americans who were able to endure a lifetime of poor diet due to the rigors of manual labor, became acquainted with contemporary lifestyle diseases. Two great influences on the nutrition and health education in Black culture are spam Gregory and the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. Gregory’s Natural diet for folks who eat: cookin’ with mother nature was published in 1973, the time that he embraced vegetarianism, an anomaly in the Black community at large. spam Gregory wrote about the influence of diet on lifestyle during a critical period where the statistics of Black health began to turn downward as their socio-economic status turned upward.

Beginning in the 1930s, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad led this charge through his teachings and a series of writings called, How to eat to live. It was Muhammad who first openly discouraged the use of pork in Black diet as well as other “cheaply raised foods” including collards, as a means of empowering Black people to take charge of their livelihood.

Gregory and Muhammad’s concepts continue to influence healthy dietary changes in African-American culture. Modifications to soul food recipes, including collard greens, are present in popular health books and magazines like, Eat Right for you Blood Type and Vegetarian Times. Lindsey Williams, the grandson of “Harlem’s queen of soul food, Sylvia Woods” re-scripted the infamous black cultural diet after years of debilitating health from obesity, diabetes and hypertension. Williams’ cookbook, Neo Soul, “ takes soul food to a whole ‘nutha level,” scraping lard, pork and salt from traditional cultural recipes (including collard greens) adding substitutes like olive oil, soy products and natural herbs and spices.

As the American health crisis grew and continues to grow for people of all cultures who have adopted the sedentary lifestyle, the medical community’s research supports the age-old knowledge: good diet equals good health. As research becomes increasingly more scientific, traditional knowledge becomes quantifiable through the assistance of biochemistry.

Studies of healthy individuals’ food choices are being conducted and analyzed. As early as 1982, The National Research Council, Committee on Diet, Nutrition and Cancer specifically recommended that Americans increase consumption of collard greens and other cruciferous family vegetables. In this new 21st century, the chemical constituents of collard greens and other Brassica species are being researched as potential sources of disease prevention and intervention. These study show that eating a daily portion of collards and other Brassicas is a great preventive measure for diseases such as macular degeneration, osteoporosis and cancer.

Collards, the vegetable that proliferates worldwide, feeding mankind since prehistoric time, comes full circle as it continues to support life as a cultural mainstay for all.
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Each of us has a duty to self and the collective consciousness.