- What are we doing today?
- That's Paola Velez,
a celebrated Afro-Dominican pastry chef
based in Washington, D.C.
- Hi Paola!
- Hi Yara!
- As protests grew over the killing
of George Floyd by police,
she started a fundraiser
that had a global impact:
Bakers Against Racism.
Paola and her fellow chefs
asked folks across the country
to host bake sales and donate the proceeds
to organizations fighting systemic racism.
What happened next was incredible.
Paola says they raised nearly
with bake sales at over
All in the name of Bakers Against Racism.
Hi, I'm Yara, and during
these strange times,
I was lucky enough to learn
about Bakers Against Racism
straight from the source.
With a mask, of course.
- Peaches, peaches, peaches!
- And how baking has
actually been a big part
of the historical fight for
racial justice in America.
So I got together with Paola at La Cosecha
in Washington, D.C., and by "together" ...
This is the most distant I've
ever been for an interview.
Dun, dun, dun, dun!
Alright, there is ventilation.
This is an initiative that grew
to something even beyond,
I assume, your expectations.
- Originally. I just wanted
80 bakers to participate.
Once I started,
we had maybe like
worldwide.
Paris, Kansas City, Chicago.
- Wow, it's starting to form branches
and people are doing this on their own.
- On their own.
- And so, if I wanted to participate.
- You would email us,
and we would send you this Google folder.
It had all of the graphics,
mission statements,
how to participate.
- And then I would sell it myself
and then they'll come pick
it up, they'll Venmo me,
I'll donate it to whatever organization-
- Yeah.
NAACP, Black Lives Matter.
- Right.
- That's so amazing!
- What I've learned is
that you can take $0
and make a worldwide movement
with a little bit of elbow grease.
- So in the spirit of
Bakers Against Racism,
Paola and I decided to
bake something together.
So what are we baking today?
- Today, we're going to
be making a peach cobbler.
- So, we are going to engage
in socially distant baking.
That looks like Raid.
- No, it's just canola oil spray.
We disinfect everything
and then whatever you're going to touch,
we would hand it off to each other.
- I will put it here.
This'll be the International
Space Station of peach cobbler.
- So I'm going to spray my pie dish.
Just give it a little
spray, just like I did.
Even coating.
So here we have some golden peaches.
- So I'm just going to chop
this into – I love this knife.
Oh my God!
(Paola laughing)
So why is it that we're
making peach cobbler today?
- I wanted to kind of
play like this homage
to the American South and
She was a hugely important figure
in the civil rights movement
that isn't really talked
about in history class.
At least not mine.
She was a cook in Alabama who lost her job
after testifying against segregation.
So she opened up her own restaurant
and organized bake sales
as a civil rights activist,
specifically during the
In December 1955, Rosa Parks
refuses to vacate her seat
for a white man
on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama.
And the police arrest
her because back then,
buses are segregated, meaning
there are separate sections
for white people and Black people.
Her arrest mobilizes the Black community
and sparks the Montgomery bus boycott,
led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
For 381 days, Black people in Montgomery
refuse to take public transit.
Instead, they set up an
alternative carpool system
that they run by themselves.
But that, of course, costs money.
So Georgia Gilmore finds a
way to raise a ton of cash
to keep the boycott going.
She rallies Black women in Montgomery
to cook meals or bake desserts,
like peach pies, and sell them
to fund the carpool.
But the cooking and baking
was all a covert operation.
Georgia Gilmore had to keep the identities
of her fellow cooks a secret
because there was a chance
their white employers might fire them.
And when people asked
where the money came from,
they would just say,
So they came to be known as, well,
Now here's what's ironic:
sometimes white Alabamans
who supported segregation
would actually be the ones
buying the pies and cookies.
So in a sense,
they were unknowingly supporting
the civil rights movement.
- Nobody would really understand
that she was baking for a cause.
- Right.
- They just saw a delicious pie.
- Anyway, the boycott leads
to the Supreme Court ruling
that segregation on buses
is unconstitutional.
A pivotal step in the
civil rights movement.
As for Georgia Gilmore,
she continued feeding fellow activists
until she died in 1990.
- She was like the O.G., right?
Because she funded the
civil rights movement
to allow us to even be
here, making these pies.
- You guys are carrying on her legacy.
- Exactly.
So what we're going to do now is
we're going to take
some of that brown sugar
and we're going to sprinkle it on
and do what feels right.
Over here in the middle of the table,
you have some nutmeg and clove.
For us, clove and nutmeg are
big staples of our cuisine.
- Dominican cuisine.
- Yes.
- I didn't know that actually.
- Lemon zest, salt, flour, butter, soft ...
- Squishy.
- Squishy! (Paola laughs)
Just mix everything –
- Together?
- Yeah.
- So I just do this?
- Yeah, and it's going to
start getting into like this,
like gooey, kind of like, sticky hot mess.
- Yes!
- So we're making a cookie crumble.
- Oh!
And I'm a little bit crazy, like a cookie.
I have my sugar. I have my
butter and my baking powder.
I have my flour.
So I'm going to actually just
eyeball how much poppy seeds,
and kind of give it that
like yummy, crunchy texture.
- I love this touch.
- So now what I'm doing is,
I'm just kind of like
mixing it all together.
You don't need a mixer to do this.
You just need a little bit of patience,
a little bit of love.
Now what I'm going to do
is I'm going to like ...
- Ooh, yeah! Ooh, yes!
Layer it on top.
- Oh my God. Beautiful.
Oh, it looks so, so attractive.
Oven is preheating to 350.
Now 6 feet away, and the
pie is also six feet away.
- Bakers Against Racism,
it was step one for the
restaurant industry.
Step two and three,
now again falls with the
ownership of the bakers themselves
on how they're going to
keep treating Black bodies
and brown bodies
and how they're going to dismantle
a very systemic racial system
within the restaurant industry.
As a woman of color,
it was hard to even
break into this industry.
- Did you see other people that -
- Looked like me?
- Looked like you?
- Absolutely not.
I was sometimes one of one in kitchens.
- One of how many?
- One.
I hope that the industry actually
does change for the better
and realize that maybe if I'm
a little rough around the edges,
maybe if my hair curls a certain way,
there's nothing I can do about that.
But what I know how to do is cook.
- We're gonna eat it over here.
- Now we have to get far away
from each other to eat it.
I want to heighten my sense of taste,
so I'm canceling my sense of vision.
Ooh, I can sense the
crunch of the poppy seeds,
and these peaches are so naturally tart.
- That comes from the skin.
The peaches are super soft and fluffy
and the crumble is just
enough salty cookie
without it being like super sweet.
I think I did OK.
- You did fantastic.
Fight racism.
- Fight racism,
one pie at a time.
