Celebrating Our Equality: A Cookbook With Recipes and Remembrances from Howard University [Hardcover]

Carolyn Quick Tillery (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Citadel Press (November 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0806525088
• ISBN-13: 978-0806525082
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 9 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #988,957 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Carolyn Quick Tillery
It was about a decade ago that Carolyn Quick Tillery married two of her passions - history and food - to create a "pick up and go" career for herself. In 1994, she decided to write a book about the history of her alma mater, Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. And from the beginning, she decided to fold in food stories and recipes. Tillery was influenced by food and a powerful oral tradition as a child. A year and a half after beginning, Tillery published The African-American Heritage Cookbook acclaimed for its lively storytelling and Sweet Potato Soup, Mom's Devilish Catfish Stew, Smothered Yard Bird and more than 200 other recipes, rich in flavor and tradition. This was soon followed by the Military Wives Cookbook, which offers readers rare and fascinating tidbits of U.S. history from the perspective of America's military wives while framing nearly 50 sets of recipes with quotes, stories and vintage photographs, in such chapters as "An Independence Tea Party," "Yankee Doodle Pot Roast Dinner," "A Colonial Thanksgiving" and "Christmas in the Confederate White House." Martha Washington, Libbie Custer and Jefferson Davis' wife, Varina, are among the women who share their stories.
A former judicial law clerk, prosecuting attorney and United States Air Force Officer, Ms. Tillery currently manages the United States Central Command Personal & Family Readiness Program, which prepares military families for all phases of deployment and provides them with information to enhance the quality of their lives. She is the author of "A Taste of Freedom," "The African-American History Cookbook" and "Southern Homecoming Traditions," which was a finalist for the prestigious NAACP Image Award.
Southern Homecoming Traditions, the fourth installment in Tillery's African-American Heritage Cookbook series is similar in tone and style: each is really two books in one, a collection of regional recipes as well as a detailed examination of a particular facet of African-American history. Her most recent book is a celebration of the five historic black colleges and one university that comprise the Atlanta University Center: Morehouse, Spelman, and Morris Brown Colleges, Morehouse School of Medicine, Interdenominational Theological Center, and Clark-Atlanta University. Author Carolyn Quick Tillery uses the evocative power of food to take us back to the institutions where so many great African-American leaders were educated, and the region where so many great dishes were created.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars celebrating our equality, April 21, 2011

By 

H. Michael Harvey (Atlanta, Ga, US) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Celebrating Our Equality: A Cookbook With Recipes and Remembrances from Howard University (Hardcover)

Carolyn Quick Tillery has served up a sumptuously delicious book of Southern recipes and along with it a bit of history, some well known and some obscure nuggets.

In CELEBRATING OUR EQUALITY, Ms. Tillery a former Air Force officer and a prosecuting attorney combines her two loves of cooking and history to tease the pallet with delicious food and prick the brain with events of significance at Howard University.

Tillery is as comfortable spending a day out crabbing for her dinner as she is adept at preparing mouthwatering dishes. Inside CELEBRATING OUR EQUALITY, 262 pages, Citadel Press, she has pulled together a splendid array of culinary delights. From a sparkling strawberry-mint lemonade to watermelon margaritas to get you in the mood for some smothered cabbage, okra fitters, smothered quail and pinto bean pie.

Along the way Tillery seasons her recipes with a sprinkle of history she has learned along the way. For instance, did you know Howard University boast of having the first law school to educate freed slaves?

That's right. For years I thought I had graduated from the oldest night law school in the western world, Atlanta Law School, which opened its doors in 1895, just five years after a night law school had been started in Russia. Little did I know until looking for a recipe for fried eggplant that the "Howard University Law Department was open on January 6, 1869, with six students...." "In the early days classes met three nights a week in the homes and offices of the four instructors."

This book is rich in history . It's rich and hearty meals celebrates the uniqueness of American; both culturally and historically. This one gets a big thumbs up and is recommended for anyone who likes to cook, but especially for students of history.

1 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Similar to Others in Series, October 21, 2005

By 

NuJoi "Create with me" (Chicago, IL United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Celebrating Our Equality: A Cookbook With Recipes and Remembrances from Howard University (Hardcover)

I have the other two books in this series. These books offer some historical background on the recipes. I like them more for the historical value than I do the recipes. Love the pictures. I wish there was historic info behind all of the recipes.

Beware when authors review their own books.

2 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A TASTY SLICE OF HBCU HISTORY, November 24, 2005

By 

C. Tillery "ZetaKitten" (Florida) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Celebrating Our Equality: A Cookbook With Recipes and Remembrances from Howard University (Hardcover)

If you liked the African American Heritage Cookbook: Recipes and Remembrances From Tuskegee Institute and A Taste of Freedom: Recipes and Remembrances From Hampton Institute, you will love, CELEBRATING OUR EQUALITY another cookbook in this, recently branded, African American Heritage Cookbook Series.

Selected by book of the month clubs and organizations such as Reading is Fundamental, books in this series are more than just cookbooks. They also trace the unique history, heritage and contibutions of historic black colleges and universities (HBCUs). And the recipes, which, for the most part, are regional to each area, are as delectable as the history. CELEBRATING OUR EQUALITY concentrates on the delicious offerings of Washington D.C., home of Howard University. Where available recipes unique to the college or university are used and clearly identified.

Otherwise, the history of the recipes is the collective history of a courageous race of people who took the scraps offered to them and built an enduring monument to survival and a legacy of learning.

Aptly titled, "CELEBRATING OUR EQUALITY," the third cookbook in this series focuses upon the contributions of Howard university, the nation's first black university. Where A Taste of Freedom explored the historic black struggle for freedom and education, CELEBRATING OUR EQUALITY chronicles a newly freed people's continuing battle for equality and justice.

Established in 1867 to educate African-Americans freed by the Civil War, Howard University is credited with being at the forefront of the civil rights struggle. Nine of the ten attorneys who argued Brown v. Board of Education, which ended public school segregation, were either Howard University professors or Howard Law School graduates. Most noted among the latter group was Thurgood Marshall, the first African-American to sit on the United States Supreme Court.

Founders, supporters, students and teachers lend their vivid accounts of life in the early years at Howard. And interwoven into this fascinating history are recipes that are sure to warm the heart and nurture the soul. Filled with intriguing anecdotes, and accompanied by over fifty vintage photographs and illustrations, CELEBRATING OUR EQUALITY is at once a powerful tribute to a venerable American institution and a salute to the accomplishments made by a people who turned their hard-won freedom into a chance to change the course of history.

Watch for the next cookbook in this series, which pays tasty tribute to our nation's historic black colleges and universities.