LISC's work on behalf of the racial equity goals that Juneteenth stands for have taught us many things. Like how supporting small, Black-owned businesses is a critical component of helping close racial wealth and opportunity gaps. And that celebrating African-cultural cultural inheritances, like the beloved Southern tea cake, is a beautiful way to mark this weekend's holiday and Black history and creativity.
Juneteenth: it is the oldest national commemoration of the ending of slavery in the United States, the country’s longest-running Black holiday, and one of the most important anniversaries in America’s history. Also known as “Emancipation Day,” “Freedom Day,” and “Second Independence Day,” Juneteenth marks the day in 1865 when enslaved people in Galveston, Texas learned that the Civil War was over and that they were free—nearly two and a half years after Abraham Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation. It celebrates freedom, yes, but also survival, resilience, empowerment, and hopefulness.
LISC is committed to upholding all that Juneteenth celebrates, and one way our 38 local offices and rural program do that is by connecting diverse communities with programs and resources that work to break down decades of accumulated disadvantage and nurture economic opportunity.
LISC LA, for example, supports “Main Street” mom and pop businesses, many of them Black-owned and –managed, through its Keep Our Shops on the Block initiative. As part of this work, LISC offers grant and technical assistance programs like the South LA Digital Literacy Mentorship Program, which provides BIPOC entrepreneurs in South LA with culturally appropriate and industry-specific one-on-one advising to help those businesses improve their digital and technological presence.
Lura's Kitchen is a multi-generational family baking company taking advantage of the mentorship program to bring its merchandising to the next level. Last fall, Lura’s also received a small business loan through the Los Angeles Kiva Hub, which LISC LA manages, and which helped fund the business’s first run of its gourmet cookie baking mixes and kick-start a new phase for the enterprise.
Lura Daniels-Ball, founder/owner of Lura's Kitchen
And that’s where another poignant link to Juneteenth comes in: of all Lura’s Kitchen’s cookie mixes, the most beloved and historically significant has to be Madear’s Old Fashion Teacakes. It’s a recipe named for owner Lura Daniels-Ball’s mother, Mary Lee Daniels, who was affectionately called “Madear” and was renowned among family and friends for her sublime version of this archetypal Southern cookie.
Steeped in African-American history and culture, teacakes in America date back more than 250 years. They were prepared by enslaved people in the southeastern United States, and although plantation cooks developed this soft, aromatic cookie as an accompaniment for tea, often served to the guests of slaveholders, it was not “slave food,” as slaves did not have access to white flour or sugar. In enslaved households, molasses and other ingredients took the place of sugar and white flour in teacakes, and each family developed its own closely guarded recipe.
Over time, teacakes become inextricably linked with Southern African American culture. There are poems, songs and countless stories celebrating the cookie. They are at the heart of one of the most important and liberatory passages in poet Maya Angelou’s autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings: “When I was a lonely, scared and scarred eight year old, Mrs. Bertha Flowers, a lean, Black teacher invited me to her house and made tea cakes,” she wrote. “The aroma of the freshly baked cookies merged with the rich sound of her voice as she read to me.” For Angelou, teacakes became synonymous with the power of language, and a life-saving sense of self-worth and dignity.
During the Great Migration, Black people left the South, eager to leave the worst of their experiences behind and in search of opportunity. They carried the tradition of teacakes with them. Almost everyone with a Southern heritage had a family member that made the “best” teacakes. And so the tradition continued. But through the decades of moves and transitions, says Daniels-Ball, teacakes are in jeopardy of being forgotten. Which is one reason Lura’s Kitchen offers a teacake mix today.
This cookie, which became a treasured delicacy of the African American community, as Daniels-Ball puts it, is transformed into “a positive icon [that] survives the horrors of slavery, replacing some of the bad memories with love.”