Whoa, it’s been a full year since Racist Sandwich switched off the lights and took what was, then, an indefinite hiatus. We’re so glad we made the decision to come back. We may be down two essential members, but we’re stronger and hungrier than ever! To celebrate how far we’ve come, we wanted to highlight one of our proudest moments of the past year: getting nominated for a James Beard Award for our episode on the erasure of barbecue’s Black roots in America.

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We’re talking barbecue. It’s delicious, it’s trendy, it’s decidedly American. But barbecue’s story today has pretty huge holes. Over the past several years, joints like Franklin Barbecue in Austin have commandeered the barbecue narrative, and mainstream food media have fallen over themselves to give Aaron Franklin and Central Texas pitmasters like him their spotlight — largely ignoring the regional diversity of barbecue in Texas (and across the South) and ultimately erasing the Black and Brown folks who created it and built its legacy. For this reported episode, Stephanie talks to Soul Food Scholar Adrian Miller, Texas Monthly barbecue editor Daniel Vaughn; Brent and Juan Reaves, co-owners of Smokey John’s Bar-B-Que in Dallas; and Johnny Walker, owner and pitmaster at Momma Jean’s BBQ in Lampasas, Texas.

Produced by Stephanie Kuo. Music by Robert Earl Keen, Pierce Murphy, AF the Naysayer, Blue Dot Sessions and Brad Turner.

LINKS DU JOUR

• Grease Balls of Southeast Texas by Daniel Vaughn (Texas Monthly)

• The List: The Top 50 Barbecue Joints in Texas (Texas Monthly)

• How the Texas BBQ Boom Marginalizes Its African-American Roots by Robb Walsh (First We Feast)

• Barbecue is an American tradition – of enslaved Africans and Native Americans by Michael Twitty