Juneteenth, a portmanteau of June and Nineteenth, is finally gaining traction as a national holiday in the United States. The occasion commemorates  the day in 1865 when Union general Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston to issue General Order No. 3, marking the end of slavery in the state of Texas, two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation and two months after Robert E. Lee surrendered.

While Juneteenth is commonly thought of as “Black Independence Day,” it’s important to recognize its origins and center individuals who experience this annual day as both Black Americans and as Texans.

MOFAD is proud to host a virtual Juneteenth conversation and cooking demo from the perspective of those who are deeply invested in teaching the history and promoting the food and drink traditions of the holiday: Dr. Carol Bunch Davis of Texas A & M University at Galveston,  Joi Chevalier, founder of The Cook’s Nook in Austin, and Chef Chris Williams of the legendary Lucille’s in Houston.

In addition to a conversation led by Dr. Davis, Chef Williams and Chef Chevalier will be sharing two dishes that speak to the legacy and traditions of their families who, despite having different migration stories, both ultimately planted roots in Houston.

JOI CHEVALIER

Joi Chevalier is the CEO of The Cook’s Nook, a culinary incubator that provides kitchen production space, co-working, business and entrepreneur development, corporate services, food service, and channel and capital access for food entrepreneurs in the food+tech space.

Joi works with the City of Austin’s Office of Sustainability’s Central Texas Regional Food Systems Organizing Committee. Shei has been a member of the Chefs Collaborative; Women in Food, Farming, and Food Technology; Women Chefs and Restaurateurs; and is currently a member of Les Dames d’Escoffier (Austin Chapter), and Google’s national Refresh Working Group, focused on solving challenges in food+tech ecosystem. She is a founder and culinary lead for Greater Austin Black Chamber of Commerce’s Taste of Black Austin and a member of the City of Austin/Travis County Food Policy Board. She is a two-time Austin Food and Wine Alliance Grant recipient (2017, 2019) and received the 2018 City of Austin Small Business Award for Excellence in Community Business Leadership.  

CAROL BUNCH DAVIS

Dr. Carol Bunch Davis is Assistant Vice President of Academic Affairs and Associate Professor of English at Texas A & M at Galveston.

She is the author of Prefiguring Postblackness: Cultural Memory, Drama and the African American Freedom Struggle of the 1960s and her recent essay "Always on Duty: Galveston’s African American Beaches and Lifeguards” appears in Narrating and Constructing the Beach: An Interdisciplinary Approach. Her current book project explores the cultural production of Black places in Galveston.

She is an Islander By Choice.

CHRIS WILLAMS

Drawn to food from a young age, Chef Chris Williams attended Le Cordon Bleu in Austin, Texas and soon began traveling around the world, working in eateries from Lithuania to England to the U.S. His insatiable hunger to learn everything about world cuisine unexpectedly led him back to his own family tree. Chef Williams heard bits and pieces about his great-grandmother, Lucille Bishop Smith, but it wasn’t until he began developing his own restaurant concept that he discovered a family history steeped in mouthwatering Southern cuisine.

In August 2012, Williams opened Lucille’s in a 1923 Mission-style home in Houston’s Museum District. Pairing his great-grandmother’s ingenuity and Southern flair with flavors from his travels, Williams treats diners to well-refined Southern cuisine enhanced by international flavors and techniques. Nearly a decade in the making, the namesake restaurant has since morphed into Lucille’s Hospitality Group — a culmination of concepts that channel the matriarch’s historic legacy.

Williams' most recent endeavor — his non-profit Lucille’s 1913 — mimics the ethos of his restaurant group and its namesake, functioning as a conscious community collective that is building a vertically integrated ecosystem to combat food insecurity and waste; create training and employment opportunities in traditionally under-resourced neighborhoods; and empower communities to discover a self-sustainable livelihood through food. To date, Chef Chris and the Lucille’s 1913 team have provided more than 200,000 meals to Houstonians in need since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.