Original subtitles

Downloaded from YTS.MX

[ Wind whipping ]

[ Buffalo rumbles ]

Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX

[ Ethereal tune plays ]

[ Flames crackling ]

♪♪

[ Piano plays blues ] [ Flames continue crackling ]

♪♪

[ Birds chirping ]

♪♪

Genesis41:52.

"God has caused me to prosper in the land of my affliction."

We remind you, as a child of God,

that your condition was not your position.

As a patriot, you kept

Thomas Jefferson's secret in Paris.

But your life and those that followed in your footsteps

should not and will not be secret.

We are thankful that we can share your story with the world.

Your life and your achievement matter.

[ Exhales forcefully ]

[woman] If it wasn't for memories, what would we have?

♪♪

People don't know who James Hemings is

because he was a slave and he did not fit the mold.

They could not put his face on a cereal box

or a rice box or waffle box

and leverage it into something that was a familiar trope.

In order for us to achieve any sort of healing,

any sort of redemption, as a nation,

we have to recognize our ancestors

and recognize that they are not the ancestors just

of the Black folks, but of everybody else.

Every Southern chef-- every single one of them--

has the granddaddy James Hemings.

Firm ice cream.

You like ice cream, Doc?

Macaroni & cheese.

Macaroni & cheese?

Hey, you know what I like!

Bless this highly nutritious,

microwavable macaroni & cheese dinner.

[McElveen] Whipped cream.

Yummy.

Crème brûlée.

You order crème brûlée for dessert.

French fries.

I really like fries.

I always save them for last.

It went from one slave kitchen

in Charlottesville

around the world.

Jefferson's kitchen was the premier kitchen in America,

and it all started with James Hemings...

...from that slave kitchen in Monticello.

My name is Ashbell McElveen.

I am a native of Sumter, South Carolina.

[ Cheering and applause ] I'm a chef.

I'm a patriot.

My story didn't start when I was born.

My story started in the 18th century.

I know that there's a ghost in America's kitchen.

Because he visited me.

James Hemings.

What he brought to American gastronomy

makes him the archetype for our agency

in this large sort of culinary project.

[McElveen] Not only was he trained as a chef,

he exhibited incredible patriotism

by protecting the American delegation in Paris.

James Hemings is a founding father of American cuisine,

full-stop.

[ Bright tune plays ]

♪♪

[McElveen] The things that I've learned about James Hemings,

everyone should know.

[Johnston] What was it about the cooking

of Black chefs like James Hemings?

Well, let's just keep it real.

James Hemings, alone,

they made some of these dishes so,

not only delectable, but put into scripture.

Nobody had more refined training.

Nobody had his palate.

Nobody had his experience.

And nobody had his blues.

[McElveen] James Hemings was

Thomas Jefferson's brother-in-law,

but also his enslaved property.

There's an old African proverb that says,

"Until the lion gets its own storytellers,

the story of the hunt will always glorify the hunter."

[ "Yankee Doodle Dandy" plays ]

♪♪

James Hemings, at 19,

an enslaved American from Virginia,

went to France with Thomas Jefferson

and not only excelled in the culinary arts,

he literally is America's culinary founding father.

James Hemings is one of those figures

that has always been with us,

always been present, and yet, invisible.

A ghost in the kitchen.

[Hopkins] He is part of the most documented families in America,

and we have no portrait of him.

We have supposedly just one thing written by his hand--

an inventory list of a kitchen.

I personally believe there are other things that he wrote.

He was literate-- English and in French.

I can't believe that there aren't letters

or things or journals or something, somewhere,

that may have gotten lost or ruined

or intentionally hidden because part of that time

that he came from was to never reveal

how brilliant and talented Black people were

because, if if other Americans, non-Black people, knew that,

how do you justify the conditions you put them in?

We have something that's--

I refer to it as societal institutionalized racism.

So that means the entire society is

wrought with institutionalized racism.

James Hemings is

the most overlooked...

...revolutionary figure in American history...

...particularly, for our foodways.

And he's been overlooked for a very, very basic reason--

racism.

Absolute culinary racism.

[Moe] Culinary arts.

Culinary arts, painting.

I always thought culinary arts was about cooking.

Shows you how wrong you can be.

Culinary arts has got to do with color.

[ Mellow tune plays ]

[McElveen] If you were dining fine in the South,

like they did on the plantations,

if a Black hand put it down on the table in front of you,

that was considered fine service.

In the counties where you had the greatest amount of--

of slavery in Virginia,

the population was 60%, 70%, 80% Black.

Williamsburg, the colonial capital of Virginia...

...52% people of color.

You couldn't live without enslavement.

You couldn't live without Black people.

You couldn't live without Black culture.

[McElveen] And you won't find any influences

in Southern regional cooking

from colonial times to emancipation

where there was a white cook.

You know, the history of cooking in America,

for me, starts when I came here in 1959.

At that point, I work at the Pavillon

and move on to Howard Johnson's.

But when I work at the Pavilion,

I knew many, many of the chefs in New York,

of big hotel, restaurant, and so forth.

I did not know one white American chef.

Those first chefs that I met in America,

really American, were Black kid.

I've been very strongly influenced

by young American chef who Black,

who never get any recognition.

And we've been marginalized, we've been downgraded,

our contributions have been downgraded.

And African Americans have performed in a way

that is very similar to the way

our celebrity chefs perform today.

These are people who performed

at a particularly high level at work.

But when we have thought about African Americans

in the food world, the story has been

the reverse.

We have spent most of American history

focused on the food that African Americans

prepared at home in a survival kitchen,

in trying to make something from nothing,

as part of a marginalized community.

And what I'm saying is that, while we want to respect

and appreciate and honor people for that,

we also want to recognize that there was a group of people

that performed at a very high level

and are responsible for what we know as fine dining today

and we have not given them credit

for what they accomplished.

Fine food in America was associated with

having a Black hand lay food down on the table for you.

[Narrator] Today, if we visit a social gathering in the South,

we'll see the separation of society into distinct groups.

[Twitty] People who were in the upper-upper class

had an extraordinary dinner setting

around 2:00 to 3:00 in the afternoon in the summer

and maybe slightly earlier in the winter.

So, to be a cook for one of those

suites in tobacco, wealthy plantations,

we're talking about 12 dishes in two settings.

You were in a constant cycle when you were cooking.

It was never-- it was a never-ending process.

Selecting the food, ordering the food, slaughtering animals,

growing the food, purchasing food at market.

First of all, you got to raise the chicken, right?

You got to kill the chicken.

You have to kill the chicken

right before you cook the chicken

because you can't refrigerate the chicken.

Then you got to pluck the thing and then--

That's just onechicken.

It took daysto make a meal.

[Twitty] Somewhere in this hectic schedule

that our ancestors were forced to endure,

we not only created a culture for ourselves,

but a cuisine for the South.

We received, from the big house on down,

foods that, in our hands, tastes like nobody else

when we make them.

That's the Hemings legacy.

Blatant absence of people like Hemings

in historical records and archives

and-- and acknowledgments

is that we have to understand that we live in a world,

and, particularly, in a society, where...

...privilege is enjoyed,

to a largeextent,

by the convincing portrayal of...

...superiority over others.

When you talk about class, then the natural step is,

then, to talk about status.

And, when you talk about status,

then the next implication is who has less and then who has more.

Luxury is a weapon, it still is,

and I think luxury will always be a weapon.

What is being actually weaponized is scarcity.

Scarcity has always been weaponized,

the things that are few and far between.

With the world as we live in it now,

it's critical that, within each sector of our society,

that we maintain the tenets of

institutional racism.

It's a part of the business model

and, the more you start to point out

and illuminate those from other classes

that have equally accomplished things

to be at the same level of recognition,

then you open the door to the question

about why isn't everyone enjoying privilege?

So you disrupt the model.

And James Hemings is a disrupter.

Dinner is ready.

Won't you join us?

[ Whimsical tune plays ]

♪♪

[Twitty] When we talk about the Hemings story,

it's-- it's an-- it's an incredible amalgamation

of two very dedicated ways of looking at food.

You know, here I am, going, "Wow!", you know.

In the French system, look at the food in the market.

Is it peak? Is it good?

Is it tender enough?

When I cook it, you know, is it is going to--

is it going to sing on its own?

To translate one-pot meals into delicacies.

You notice a lot of those come over.

The-- The idea that we make big meals

from these grand preparations that, basically, is one pot.

There's all-- There's all these conversations

in the ma-- between enslaved people and free people of color,

in the mind of the enslaved that have to happen

that are gloriously important,

but we don't-- we've never focused on those things.

How do we pass on a legacy to our children?

Somebody had to have that conversation with each other.

Somebody had to laugh, for a change,

instead of just cry.

Somebody had to have a moment where

they were working with another African woman

and going, "Okay, we got to make this work,

so that our kids know what home tasted like."

[Conyers] Barbecue, for example.

I live in New Orleans, Louisiana.

I got homesick.

New Orleans got great food...

...but I wanted barbecue that I was accustomed to.

I couldn't get it.

Only way I could get it is I prepare it.

The food, the palate, is your way back home.

[McElveen] And that was kind of how a lot of culinary history

and recipes and et cetera

passed down in the African American community

because it was less about, "Write this down.

Keep this recipe in the Bible."

And many people did that.

But, in most families, it was, "Look at what I'm doing."

I had wonderful examples to learn from.

There were two working chefs in my family.

My Uncle William, a World War II vet,

when he came back as a GI,

he went to dental school.

But he couldn't get a job, after graduating,

as a dentist.

He couldn't get a job, so he became a chef...

...at a whites-only country club.

[Narrator] Many of the ideas that we still associate

with the people of the South came from the days

when plantation life was in full flower.

The food was always the solace.

My mother, Retha Ludd McElveen,

was executive chef at Gladys [Indistinct].

Back in those days, you were just the cook.

My mother was the head cook at the restaurant.

So food was everywhere.

It was home.

It was community.

It was work.

My personal history's--

is kind of like American history--

there's so much inspiration,

but there's also so much pain.

I was 13 years old when my mother had a heart attack.

And she was denied being put in an ambulance

because the ambulance was

the segregated, whites-only ambulance.

And we watched her die there for over an hour.

That is, you know,

one of the leftovers from the Jeffersonian theories

of the differences between the Blacks and the whites.

Thomas Jefferson is directly related

to the person driving the ambulance

[ Siren wailing ] that denied my mother's

literal humanity.

And so all of these stories are common during segregation.

And all of this just-- just has a root in America

that I think started in colonial times.

The references that Jefferson made

in "Notes on Virginia,"

way back in the 18th century,

which really codified racism and Jim Crow

and extending that whole bondage of slavery,

Many people using his example of, you know,

the differences between Blacks and whites is

that whites could have taste,

but Blacks could not.

It's the argument that's been used and overused

for racist pretensions to this day.

What enslavement really translates out to--

"I have you in bondage.

I own you.

But I have to have you cook my food.

Now, any point in time, you could decide

to make my food a special way

and interrupt my life existence or my digestive process,

but I'm going to cede to you something incredibly personal."

[ Blues plays ]

♪♪

My mother, if we were eating dinner--

and, back then, there were homeless people

show up on the back porch,

she'd take a spoon of food from every plate

and make a plate for whomever that was on the back porch.

That's why I have an open table,

where all races are welcome

to break bread with me,

and I got that from my mother.

I left South Carolina when my mother died, at age 13,

and we moved to Connecticut, where my father was.

I had an image of being...

...Black and whole,

but I did not feel I was an American.

And it wasn't until I was 19,

the same age as James was when we went to Paris,

when I actually felt like I was American.

In 1970, when I first went to France,

I didn't know that I was walking

in the parallel footsteps of James Hemings,

who didn't have a developed culinary training

in Virginia cooking at the time,

but came back to America,

as an accomplished and talented French chef.

Over my career in the culinary field,

I first learned from master cooks and chefs in my family

in South Carolina and Virginia

and spent about ten years

living in France,

as well as about 15 years living in the UK,

where I opened a restaurant and was blessed enough

to have a four-star review of American Southern cooking

from the London Sunday Times.

[ Upbeat hip hop plays ]

♪♪

That's what I'm doing.

[ Static crackles ]

[ Scratching ]

My spiritual encounter with James

was after I had drank the Jefferson Kool-Aid

and did a dinner in 1993 at the Beard House,

as a tribute to Jefferson

and the Africans that "cooked in his kitchen," okay?

I didn't know anything about James Hemings.

Since Jefferson was so enamored of the French,

it is rumored that his-- even his brother's son,

who was half Black and half white,

was sent to culinary school in France.

A meal set for Jefferson on the table

on an antique platter,

right from the era.

[ Applause ]

I had heard a rumor that,

one of Jefferson's uncle's or brother's son

had accompanied him to Paris to learn to be a chef

and that's all I knew.

I had no inkling

that James Hemings was, indeed,

the half brother of--

of Jefferson's wife, Martha.

After that dinner, I was in bed, asleep,

and I woke up in a cold sweat.

And my ears were ringing and all I heard was,

"How could you, of all people, forget me?"

And I didn't quite understand what was happening,

but I knewit was a spirit.

It was so...

scary.

[Narrator] You cannot know your country

unless your country knows you.

In our culture, food isn't just

something I eat because I'm hungry.

Food is something that provides a communication,

a mystical experience between the living,

the dead, and those who are to be born.

When we eat the food of our ancestors,

we're experiencing their world.

A little, tiny piece of them is speaking back to us...

...in a way that was never supposed to happen.

I have been in spaces where I've cooked,

18th- and 19th-century spaces,

where I have had spirit encounters.

At first, it's-- it's alarming and it's unnerving

and then, once you get the hang of it

and you know what you're doing, you go, "Okay, well, you know,

before I even begin cooking,

I need to have a conversation with you."

He saw the facility to contact me, as a spirit,

to say, "Wake up, guy.

Here's what really happened."

And it put me on that path of discovery.

In the process of finding myself, and James Hemings,

I found out Thomas Jefferson never cooked an effing thing.

It's an amazing story of historical culinary theft.

"Virginia Housewife," the first--

the "first Southern cookbook," as they like to say.

[McElveen] Thomas Jefferson and his daughters

claim authorship of their favorite dishes. [ Scoff ]

Think about Mary Randolph for a moment.

She was called the queen of the kitchen.

It's no accident that Mary Randolph

is also kin to Thomas Jefferson.

So, in the "Virginia Housewife" cookbook

are all of these French recipes

attributed to Jefferson's granddaughter?

This man's favorite, you know,

delicacy meat was guinea fowl,

an African bird.

People like him and Washington

loved their hominy for breakfast,

and hoecakes.

That was our hardtack.

They didn't have to eat hoecakes.

But, apparently, somebody made that stuff

taste so good, that's what they wanted.

They wanted their hominy, they wanted their grits,

they wanted their hoecake

for breakfast.

Setting a tone for other Southerners.

And, if you ever want to think about

who put the first French fries into your mouth,

macaroni & cheese, firm ice cream.

I'll travel anywhere

and I'll talk to anyone...

Meringues. Crème brûlée.

...about James Hemings...

Nobody's giving him that credit.

And he's never gotten the credit for achieving that thing.

...and I will question anyhistorian's view

of what Jefferson wrote down.

French fries and macaroni & cheese

didn't go from the country of origin around the world.

It went from that slave kitchen in Monticello

around the world.

There's this kind of

separation of Black identity

from the rest of American history

and American culinary identity

that is disingenuous because you can't tell

honest stories about American foodways

without telling the Black culinary parts of it.

They don't exist separately

and, when you're honest about this history,

this rich, ethnic, complicated history,

all of a sudden, this American narrative makes more sense.

[Twitty] Virginia's imports of Africans

were about 40% to 50% from Nigeria

and then, beneath the James are more Congo Angolans

and a mixture of Ghanaians,

like the Akan, the Ashanti, the Fante, et cetera,

the Ewe, the Ga.

And the other groups.

And some of those people filter into North Carolina

because North Carolina has no

slave trading ports

that actually can-- can hold that many ships

because it was the graveyard of the Atlantic.

But I say that to say that there is a greater Virginia...

...and a greater Virginia food culture--

and you can say Chesapeake, you can say Tidewater,

you can say greater Virginia, it's all same thing--

that goes from, let's say, Baltimore

all the way down to even to North Carolina

and west to Charlottesville and Albemarle County,

where James Hemings was enslaved.

[ Mellow jazz plays ]

♪♪

[ Scratching ]

♪♪

Betty Hemings was the property of John Wayles,

who was Jefferson's wife's father.

Betty Hemings had six children with John Wayles,

including James Hemings and Sally Hemings,

and, when John Wayles died,

Jefferson was married to his daughter Martha Wayles,

and so he, as the male, he inherited her property.

And, at that time, slaves were like Lexuses and BMWs, so,

you didn't throw them away.

You sold them. You traded them.

It was real wealth.

When Wayles died, James was about nine years old.

He was brought with the entire family of Betty Hemings

to Monticello.

In 1784, three of America's signers

of the Declaration of Independence,

John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Ben Franklin, were in Paris.

James Hemings was the culinary founding father

who was there at that time.

When Jefferson was given the appointment by Washington,

he took James for the express purpose

of learning to be a French chef.

[ Scratching ]

So, James Hemings is

the first American

trained classically as a chef.

He Tiger Woods'd it over in Paris

and, you know, in terms of like

even doing better than the French people

that he was learning from and learning with.

Hemings became chef de cuisine,

speaking French, in another language,

in like less than three years or so.

And this is absolutely amazing, to be able to do that,

so he must have been a very bright, intelligent man

and learning very fast,

certainly, to manage a group in the kitchen

and to do all of the basics of cooking,

to use technique and all that.

It took me much longer than it did for him. [ Chuckle ]

[Miller] I think James Hemings is definitely

a missing figure in our history.

He did so much to shape the, I think,

entertaining reputation of Thomas Jefferson.

Food becomes this narrative that shifts the paradigm

around how we think of the life of the enslaved.

We're part of the power broking of American society,

along with our food, as the lubricant

that makes everybody, makes it all go around,

makes everybody work with each other.

[ Flames crackling ] [Conyers] You can't understand America

without understanding our agricultural history.

I bled. I cut my hand building a pit.

And, every time I look at my middle finger,

I see the laceration from that cut.

When I cook that cow, I sweat over it for 20-something hours.

I look at every shovel of coals went underneath that cow

and knew I had certain placement, that only I knew.

And I cried at the end.

I cry because I don't know how many African Americans

have done a whole cow in 100-and-something years

and made it to serve a bunch of majority-Black folks.

Because I look at the literature,

Black folks were cooking barbecue,

but they were doing it for political rallies.

Barbecue-- a barbecue wasn't just like, "Hey,

we want to have some fun." A barbecue was,

"Let me get your vote."

Who was doing the barbecuing?

A Black man.

And it was the food of politics.

[Johnston] Thomas Jefferson understood the elegance of a table

and what that can do, in terms of diplomacy.

I mean, this is a man from Virginia, right?

He's-- He's a country bumpkin, relatively speaking.

And I'm sure his eyes were opened

in his travels, tremendously,

and so, his-- his brilliance is that he was like,

"Well, what if I did this back in Virginia?

I could negotiate and navigate and impress and create

and I can do this because I own

a talented family member, [ Laughs ] basically,

who I can train and who is-- is, obviously, gifted at it."

Good food puts people in the mood to negotiate.

Leaders that were very savvy about the use of foods

were able to get their political agendas implemented

because they had a charm offensive using food,

and Thomas Jefferson was one of the best at that.

I had the privilege of being chef

to three different French presidents in France

and this is what Hemings did also.

So, the complexity of the work, when you work for the president,

is quite a lot.

For him to be able to cook at Chantilly,

you know, which was the place where Vatel died;

and cook for the king of France,

it is amazing for him to have been able

to manage and control

the complexity of the food and the team in the kitchen

in that little amount of time, in another language. Wow.

At this very important point in American history,

there was an enormous debt to French bankers.

The American Revolution would not have succeeded,

if France had not financed.

All of the money for arms,

cannons, came from France

and they were figuring out how to keep the balance

of America's credit standing in the world.

[ Scratching ] James Hemings is

the older brother of Sally Hemings

and Sally came to Paris with Jefferson's youngest daughter.

She and Jefferson apparently started some kind of romance

because, when she returned to America with him,

she was pregnant.

That child was lost,

but she subsequently had six children by Jefferson.

It was the age of enlightenment

and Jefferson was the darling of enlightenment

because of how he wrote about the rights of man.

But he did not say, to anyone,

that he owned slaves in America.

In fact, he hired a lawyer to advise him

on how to proceed with James and Sally,

with them being undeclared in France

because he never declared them, either,

which he was supposed to do by law.

All James had to do was to walk into the admiralty court

and declare his freedom.

But, if he had done that,

he would have ruined

the credit of the United States,

and he knew that.

He didn't insert himself, declare his freedom.

He came back to America for family, and country.

[ Sizzling ]

Hemings coming back to the United States with Jefferson

was always a puzzle for me.

He got recognition in France.

He work in great restaurant.

He could have gotten his freedom

and his French nationality from the government in France,

but I guess the love of his country

and his family were stronger.

He came back to America

with the training that, basically,

no American chef at the time.

[ Suspenseful music plays ] [ Sloop!]

♪♪

[ Thunder crashing ]

A lot of times, I thought, "Why would you do that?

Why would you actually come back to slavery?"

And it's the act of a patriot.

I believe that Thomas Jefferson,

the central powerful figure in his life,

would, somehow, miraculously,

believe the stuff that he espoused in France

about the equality of man

and the nature of freedom.

Being Black and loving this country

is probably one of the most patriotic things,

the most patriotic acts, right?

Like in the midst of such a complicated relationship

with the country, that

you could easily write off as [ Sigh ]

negative, holistically negative.

If we confront the truth of our relationship with this country

and are still able to be patriotic

and still love where we're from

and see value and power in our legacy in this country,

that is the very definition of patriotism.

♪♪

[ Playing march ]

[Narrator] The way of life our forefathers established

on this foundation of freedoms

drew people from the far corners of the Earth.

And all those who stepped foot on these shores

had the opportunity to build a better life for themselves.

[McElveen] Soon after their return to New York from France,

James Hemings would cook the most important dinner

in early American history.

[ Scratching ] The Assumption Dinner in 1790,

where James cooked the meal

that reconciled Hamilton, Madison,

and Jefferson.

In a back-rooms deal, they decided

how the debt from the colonial war would be repaid.

And the debtors were all French bankers and aristocrats

and they were clamoring for the money back.

And that dinner, that balm

that James provided with good food,

allowed this agreement to happen.

[ Scratching ]

It was a hot June day.

He'd served the monumental dessert--

vanilla ice cream wrapped in warm pastry.

It took me two years to figure out how he did it.

I kept saying, "It's a fireplace.

He's cooking all of this in a fireplace.

How did he make this happen?"

And he made it happen with two new things to America.

One were copper pots-- would conduct heat very evenly.

And he learned how to make meringues in France.

They are, whipped egg whites, are insulators.

So, when you make a firm bowl of ice cream,

you can coat that in meringue,

wrap pastry around it, and bake it.

And, once it's done, you don't taste the meringue.

You only taste the vanilla ice cream and the warm pastry.

And, to bake it, James, very cleverly,

took two of those pots,

turned them on top of each other,

put a spoon in the middle,

and it was an instant oven.

An instant oven.

And it was not until 1845, at Delmonico's...

[ Laughs ]

...that "meringue" and baked Alaska was invented.

But James had done that

and brought it into America for the first time,

but used it in a novel way,

to make this dessert for this meeting.

You talk about the-- the compromise dinner we cooked.

Food is this, you know, sort of unifier,

this, this sort of, the table becoming this battleground

for hard conversations, but also widely productive,

cutting out all kinds of foolishness

and just getting down to what makes us equal and human.

Food is at the center.

And so, to me, especially as a professional chef,

thinking about the power that Black chefs have always wielded.

You had at your fingertips the-- the potential,

the sort of, the power to change minds.

When you bring two people in front of a good meal

that tastes good, not only does it taste good,

but your olfactory senses are stimulated

and your olfaction has great memory.

Of anything that you experience in your lifetime,

your sense of smell will be the least impacted by age.

So, in addition to the visual representation,

you know, of the food, the smell, in itself,

does wonders for the brains and it,

you know, activates those neurotransmitters

that send the message that this is a safe place,

this is a feel-good place, you can relax.

It's very disarming.

Food and just dining, in itself, is a very communal activity,

so, it puts people at a place and a position

where they are not on a defensive, they can enjoy,

and I think that allows for kind of

processing and digesting information that they

would otherwise disagree with.

So, it's a multifaceted experience.

And we know, from Hemings' life, that he was an eyewitness

to very important moments in U.S. history,

so, the fact that his food facilitated

some key events in U.S. history,

I think, speaks to his prowess as a cook.

Under the balm of James Hemings' impeccable taste and execution,

it was agreed how that the states would pay most

of the debt left over from the colonial war.

And they also decided

that Washington, D.C. would be the capital,

that it would be on the banks of the Potomac,

instead of Philadelphia.

Then, on to Philadelphia.

And, by this time, Jefferson was secretary of state

and Philadelphia was the temporary capital.

This was the White House.

In the 1790s, a plague forced

Washington and Jefferson and others

to flee Center City, Philadelphia.

To Germantown.

One of the men who came through this house

was James Hemings,

our culinary founding father.

Fine dining was brought to Philadelphia

by enslaved Black chefs.

It's so critical that we look at this whole development

from an Afro-Atlantic perspective,

which means Europe, Africa, and the Americas in exchange.

There were lots of Black people who were in exchange.

The stereotype that we have received is,

once you were Black and exiled,

you were Black, exiled, and you just, you know,

you were just locked into a certain part of the system.

And that's not true.

Urban centers, like Philadelphia,

were especially important because, you know,

you could come on a ship. You could be--

You could be from a farm in Delaware.

You could be an escaped, enslaved prisoner from Maryland.

You could be coming with your slaveholder from Virginia

because, you know, there's all this

Continental Congress stuff going on.

All these things were possible.

Or from the Caribbean and they're all mixing

and conversing with each other, exchanging culture.

And, somehow, some way,

a paradigm of the cultures evening out

and thus having a collective expression emerges.

Just like language, music, spirituality...

...a collective expression emerges

and that becomes the African American way.

[Narrator] The United States of America,

youngest, by far, of the world's great nations,

stands today the envy of the civilized world.

Its more than 130 million free people.

Its 33 million homes.

Its seven million farms.

Its vast panorama of other resources.

Industry and commerce.

Machines and structures

beyond the dreams, even, of our own fathers.

And, above all the material blessings,

government by consent of the governed.

And so, three years were spent in Philadelphia

and James was reluctant to come back to Monticello

because Philadelphia had abolished slavery

and he feared that, if he went to Virginia,

he wouldn't be able to leave again.

So, Jefferson made a written contract with him.

[As Jefferson] Having been at great expense

in having James Hemings taught the art of cookery,

desiring to befriend him

and require of him as little in return as possible,

I hereby do promise and declare,

that if the said James [should] go with me to Monticello

in the course of the ensuing winter,

when I go to reside there myself,

and shall there continue

until he shall have taught such person[s]

as I shall place under him for that purpose to be a good cook,

[his] previous condition being performed,

he shall thereupon be made free."

[McElveen] And that's been a constant theme in Black America--

litigating and pressing for our own rights,

that actually helped this country

become a democratic republic.

♪♪

Three years were spent in Philadelphia

and then they came back to Monticello in '93,

where that agreement was put in place.

What's so important about this agreement,

which frames a cooking tradition in America

that's been picked up by the culinary schools,

but the first one was created

by an enslaved chef, James Hemings,

because, as a condition of his freedom

was that he was to teach his brother Peter

all he knew and had learned in France.

The first cooking school in America.

James trained in France for five years.

He comes back to America and trains his brother Peter.

Peter never becomes James.

Peter has other talents that he excels at,

but he never quite achieves

the cookery mastery that-- that James achieved,

so innovative and almost like a perfectionist,

in terms of how he worked at things

and different recipes until-- until he figured it out.

And then he was just very generous.

Yes, it was at the behest of Jefferson

that he trained his brother and that he trained

the Monticello cooks and that he trained

other cooks at other plantations,

but that was who he was.

There's a sense of generosity that comes through that,

a sense of-- of mastery.

Somehow, the macaroni pie that James would've made

became staple to Americans

and-- and at-- at its best form in our hands.

That's the amazing part about it.

There is this--

We-- We made these African traditions--

frying, barbecuing, the way we spice our food--

the ingredients essential to being a Southerner.

[Narrator] We planned this kitchen to take care of the preparation of food,

eating, clearing, and some food preservation.

[Twitty] You know, Patrick Henry's famous statement

about Thomas Jefferson's kitchen,

which was really James Hemings' kitchen at the time,

was that it was "half French [and] half Virginian..."

[ Film projector rattling ]

"...served in good taste and abundance."

Well, what's half Virginian mean?

We know what the hell [ Laughing ] that means.

It's Afro-Virginian.

When you say American, you're talking about

all kinds of people from all over the Earth.

We live under one flag, but,

we have the right to see things and express ideas

each in our own way.

That's why we set it up.

That's what our revolution was all about.

[ Whistling march plays ]

And the heart of those ideals rings

in a single sentence of Thomas Jefferson's.

I don't know how anybody could say it better.

[ As Jefferson] I have sworn upon the altar of God

eternal hostility against every form of tyranny

over the mind of man.

[ Scratching ]

[McElveen] On February 5, 1796,

James Hemings received his freedom from Thomas Jefferson

and returned to Philadelphia.

It would not be long before he would hear

from Thomas Jefferson again.

He was sent for by Thomas Jefferson

to come to the White House

to be the first chef in the White House.

And he refused.

Unless he was written a letter,

like Jefferson would write any free man.

And his words were, when he was summonsed,

the way he was summonsed when he was a slave,

he said, "If he wants me, he can ask me himself,"

and exhibiting the first bit of African American pride

and presence

and actually challenging the most famous

and powerful man in his universe

to actually respect him

as a free man and not as a slave.

You must really consider the types of

inner dialogue you have to tell yourself.

Can you imagine? To tell yourself that,

"In spite of what I see--" because we're visual creatures--

that, "In spite of what I see, this is not my reality."

It's more natural to give in to what you see

and it would be very logical and expected

for you to respond

to what your environment tells you you should be.

But it's a different kind of person to look at

and be in your environment and to defy it.

It is an act of defiance.

So, he was standing up for his freedom

in-- in asking Jefferson to write this letter.

And Jefferson viewed it as a letter to a Black man,

so he never wrote it.

That refusal was literally Jefferson's way of

assassinating James Hemings.

He, instead, wrote that letter

to a white French chef, Julien,

who became the first official chef at the White House.

[ Suspenseful music plays ]

James went and got a job

at a tavern in Baltimore,

where he is said to have drank himself to death.

This is a shame and--

because he was really, uniquely qualified

to run a great restaurant in America.

[McElveen] James Hemings' death in 1801

was mysterious and poorly documented.

I don't believe he drank himself to death.

A Black man standing out of the ordinary

has always been a threat.

Racial profiling existed in 1801 as it exists today.

[ Scratching ]

I pose this question--

in Baltimore at a tavern,

cooking, where, undoubtedly,

there were many poor white people

and here's a man in the finest clothes in the world

and he's Black.

And, plus, he was free.

That had to be an incredible invitation

to do all kinds of things to him.

And so, I don't think that it was as straightforward

as he drank himself to death.

I think he was murdered.

[ Birds chirping ]

You know, I'll-- I'll never forget the time

that I was in the-- the bathroom...

...what used to be the bathroom at Monticello at that level.

Now, it's excavated.

And I was in my white chef's getup

and I'm cooking with Leni Sorensen that day.

And I took a selfie in the bathroom.

It was me. My head was up

and I'm in my clothes and I'm looking good.

I mean, that was only time I was all in white.

And, you know, white is the color

of spiritual transformation

and spirit presence in African culture.

And I swear to God, I wasn't the only person in that space.

It was weird. It was-- It wasn't weird.

It was actually kind of comforting.

And it was almost like arms around me.

And I walked out, totally ignorant of the fact

that I was in the space of the original kitchen.

So I walk out and Leni's like, "Yeah, that was the space."

And it was almost like, "Okay, now I know why I felt that way."

I had never been to that area before.

I'd never been to the bathroom before, ever.

I never even heard of it.

I never been in that space.

But I'm in that and I was like, "Somebody else was with me."

[ Tender tune plays ]

[McElveen] The kitchen at Monticello,

this ominous, historical place, this ominous kitchen.

I was sitting alone on a wooden bench

in the causeway outside the kitchen

and there was nobody around.

And I'm sitting there just collecting my thoughts

and looking into the kitchen

and what I

understood [ Laughs ] clearly coming back to me was,

"What we did here, we did with pride,

in spite of our circumstances."

Love is an ingredient you can't make.

It either have to be in you, or not.

And I'm saying, "So, when we had creative spirits,

like Hemings, and so many others,

all throughout our history,

they would just manifest in their highest potential

in being decent human beings, unselfishly.

Because, if he was that smart--

and he was-- as he was reported to be...

and as educated and all of the other things,

had he chosen,

he could've orchestrated what was necessary

to get his name in a book, somewhere, or in a picture.

But it wasn't even on his radar screen, I believe.

I think he was oblivious. I think he was saying,

just saying, "I got access to the resources

that will allow me to manifest my highest potential

with this craft and this gift that I have."

I think about the plantation life

and what being able to cook meant for you in that space,

what it meant for your life, what it meant for

your own family, that you could,

in the mid-- in the midst of

the most unimaginable inequity,

you could find one place, one moment, Sunday dinner,

that you could find some kind of dignity,

that your ability to bake a perfect caramel cake

could literally shift how you felt about yourself.

Food is the center of our humanity.

It's really the simplest way to sort of boil it down,

but your ability as a chef to wield that power is,

I think, a huge responsibility.

Effects of slavery and the whole ram-- social ramifications

that still exist today is-- is palpable.

And I am faced with the cost of the ignorance, the racism.

And today, visiting my mother's grave,

a woman who lost her life because she was not allowed

to ride in a whites-only ambulance.

This is my first time seeing her headstone...

...and the first time that I've visited her grave in 25 years.

♪♪

And I'm...

...I'm so blessed that I got her spirit

and not a spirit of bitterness

and, in spite of what happened to her.

It's vitally important to understand

where we come from...

...and what influenced our lives.

James Hemings is an example of the kind of role models

that we need to hear more and more about.

There are just so many opportunities and places

where our young people could be getting involved

and if they see more people who look like themselves.

It's motivational because, as I go forward,

and people like me and my generation,

they're like, "Oh, James Hemings did that

during these conditions."

Not just did it, but he was in slavery, during oppression.

We're now, I will say, "free,"

but we still have a lot of oppression,

but we have a lot of resources, a lot of--

we have gotten farther, as a people.

And so we can be-- we can do first

and we can do innovative and groundbreaking things

to change society.

You can have modern figures, not just a hidden figure.

[Woman] Hello, everyone.

We are now down to our sweet ending

that Chef Ashbell McElveen.

[ Applause ]

[McElveen] Jefferson has been sucking up all the air in the room.

[ Laughter and applause ]

And James Hemings

has been enslaved to the Jefferson myth of fine food

for over 225 years,

[ Laughing ] okay? [ Applause ]

I came to the food-- the American food space

feeling very much like an outsider,

not seeing myself represented,

not sort of understanding the historical context,

sort of my physical presence, my ethnic presence,

in this very white, American narrative.

And then you find James, you find this fully formed,

autonomous, French-trained chef.

This-- This person who represents

the exact embodiment of the kind of chef

that you're told you're supposed to be,

in the form of this fully formed Black man.

He, all of a sudden, straightens your spine.

He tells you that you are a uniquely American chef,

just by virtue of your-- your ethnic identity.

James Hemings represents

that first generation of revolutionary era cooks.

Chefs who, despite their status as enslaved Black men,

enslaved Black people...

...create a revolution on the plantation.

Their knowledge, their skills, and abilities

will be passed down and will be spread throughout the community

as a means and force of liberation.

Economic, spiritual, cultural, mental, professional liberation.

And that's why they're so important.

That's why the narrative of James Hemings is so important.

And those that came after him.

[McElveen] James, your achievements have made the world a better place.

We recognize all of the unnamed,

enslaved peoples who toiled with you

and we thank you all for showing us

the template for fine dining in America.

May you find peace.

Your life and your achievement matter.

♪♪