(bright orchestral music)
- [Sarah] In the U.S. food
system, communities of color
suffer disproportionately
from lack of access
to affordable, nutritious food.
But what happens when you connect growers
with their communities
or when communities grow their own food
on church owned land,
in Baltimore, Maryland,
and along the I-95 corridor in
the southeast United States.
You can see this happening
through the Black Church
Food Security Network.
Our next guest, on the
leading voices in food,
Rev. Dr. Heber Brown founded this network
with the goal of helping
churches to grow their own food
on church owned land and
to partner black farmers
and urban growers with historically
African-American congregations
to create pipelines
for fresh produce.
I'm Sarah Zubek, associate director
of the World Food Policy
Center at Duke University.
Rev. Dr. Heber Brown, III, calls himself
a community organizer and
a social entrepreneur.
In 2018, Baltimore magazine named him
a visionary of the city.
He is the senior pastor of
Pleasant Hope Baptist Church
and holds a doctor of ministry
from Wesley Theological Seminary.
Welcome Heber, and thank you
so much for taking the time
to join us today.
- [Heber] Great to be here.
And I'm excited to be here, my first time,
so glad to be here.
- [Sarah] All right, well, we're excited
and I wanna just jump right in with,
Heber, you advocate for systematic changes
to systematic problems, is that right?
- [Heber] Absolutely.
- Okay.
And the Black Church Food
Security Network is very much
about community controlled
alternative food systems based on
self-sufficiency and black
food and land sovereignty.
Could you help our listeners
understand this concept even of
you know, self-sufficiency,
black food, land sovereignty,
what do these things mean and
why is it so important today?
- [Heber] Absolutely.
So, in the context of my community
and my context of ministry
and in the city of Baltimore,
I have been exposed to many
food related initiatives
that have tried to address
the issue of food insecurity,
particularly in communities of color,
the African American community
in the context of Baltimore city.
And I've seen a lot of great work be done
through these organizations,
and I've worked for organizations
that also had some relationship
to providing direct service
to communities as well.
And so, from the inside I've
been able to see, not only
the high side and the benefits
of those kinds of approaches,
but also the limitations and shortcomings.
And one of the shortcomings I saw was that
when there was not an active
desire and intent to invest
in local communities agency,
then it furthered a dependency on charity.
And I think charity is great
for immediate emergency needs.
Charity is not a longterm
sustainable solution.
And so, that's where I
saw the big gaping holes
when it comes to food because food access
is all the craze right now.
Food security is a buzz word in a lot of
big important circles.
And while food access and
food security and nutrition
are all wonderful things
to be concerned about,
how are we staying equally
sensitive to investing in
community's desire to create
their own solutions, right?
So I know that, you know,
many people will say
those closest to the
problem are also closest
to the solution.
The question is, are we
listening to the solutions
that bubble up?
And are we privileging those solutions
over solutions that are kind
of lobbed into a community
from the outside.
So the Black Church Food Security Network
seeks to really honor and listen deeply
to what local communities
are creating for themselves
and what they already have in hand.
So much of looking at
communities that are challenged
by food insecurity, focuses
on deficiencies, right?
The community doesn't have
this and they don't have that,
and we become expert
and fluent in speaking,
articulating those deficiencies,
oftentimes, based out
of a need to get a grant
or to get some type of support,
you got to paint a terrible picture.
But when we just paint terrible pictures,
we can overlook what these
communities already have.
So in the context of my
community, we had the black church
and some of the listeners
may not be as familiar with
the black church community.
Well, I'll just say, since the late 1700s
with the founding of the African
Methodist Episcopal Church,
African American denominations
and churches have been around
in this country.
You're talking about from the
late 1700s to present day.
You don't get much more
sustainable than that, in my eyes,
when it comes to an institution
created by a historically
marginalized community.
And so it was important
for us to have our work
spring from the base of an institution
that black folk created for themselves
and have found a way to sustain
in the midst of ridiculous odds, right?
From racism, terrorism, racist violence,
from the burning of crosses on our land,
arson and fires being
started at black churches,
from our pastors, like my classmate,
Clementa Pinckney being
murdered in Bible study.
All of those types of tragedies,
the four little girls who were bombed,
killed in Sunday school.
The black church has
shown a deep resiliency.
It bounces back no matter
what is thrown at it.
That's the kind of place
I wanted to anchor myself
in terms of creating what we organized
as a systemic solution
to a systemic problem.
So African American church
communities provide a base
of that kind of support and
have been a base of support
for black people in this
country since the late 1700s.
- [Sarah] And I think that's
such a different narrative
than we hear in this food space
of that incredible strength
of platform and the ability of a community
to solve its own problems.
And so, what does it
look like for a community
to have that agency?
- [Heber] It looks like
heaven (both laugh loudly).
I never been there, but it's
got to look something like that
because it's this beautiful
intergenerational,
I mean, in my church, at
Pleasant Hope Baptist Church,
I have people in my congregation
born in every decade
from 1920 to the present time.
And we all are together every weekend
for a few hours together,
eating together, laughing,
crying together, praying,
praising and dancing.
The full gamut of the human
experience finds a home
in the sanctuaries of black church spaces.
And so, it is powerful to see
that kind of connectedness,
especially in a time when we
are assessable to one another,
but not necessarily connected
to one another, right.
You wanna text me, you
wanna Facebook me, inbox me,
DM me, IG me, you can get at me.
But it doesn't mean we're connected.
I think church spaces,
whether the black church
or non-black church spaces
and faith communities
more broadly concerned, are
sacred spaces that still nurture
that connectiveness
between communities and so,
that's one thing.
The other thing that makes it special
in the context of the Black
Church Food Security Network is,
you're talking about local institutions
in a macro level kind
of networking community
that owns material assets, right?
So, you're talking about
churches that own commercial
or close to commercial
kitchens, 15 passenger vans,
big spacious parking lots that can be used
as staging grounds for
farmer's markets and the like,
classrooms, and a lot of
this goes under utilized
or unutilized from
Monday through Saturday.
And so, it is a part of my great joy
to go travel the country,
meet with bishops and pastors
and African American church
spaces and to tabulate,
you know, what are we
really talking about, right?
If we were to talk about
all the land in the country
owned by black churches,
what is that number?
'Cause that number will
change our narratives
around how we engage food
insecurity in black communities.
A lot of that land is sitting
there and a lot of churches,
all they do is cut the grass every week,
make sure it look pretty and holy.
But I talk to bishops and
religious leaders and say,
"Listen, that land looks nice,
"but what if you can see that
land as a partner in ministry
"in your community, to
meet a very real need
"and also serve as a launching
pad for the entrepreneurs
"in your church, for those
who are social innovators
"in your community.
"This is raw material that
if we just organized it
"a little bit better and aligned it,
"it can be a transformative
factor in our neighborhoods."
- [Sarah] That's so exciting
that you've seen the asset
that you have in those
communities, but then also
the greater asset of
amplifying that into a network.
So, I'd love to hear about
the Genesis of that network.
How did you get started
and what does it mean to have a network?
- [Heber] So, yeah, the
Genesis of it for us really
sprung from our churche's experience
at Pleasant Hope Baptist
Church in Baltimore.
I wanted to do something to
positively impact the health
of my congregants.
I was tired of going to visit
with them in the hospital
and they had diet related issues
and seminary just taught me
to give a prayer and
a scripture and leave.
I was like, no, I gotta do
something more than that.
I mean, I love prayer, I love scripture,
but what else can we do?
And that's where the idea came for us to
develop a connection with
controlling our food sources.
Initially I was gonna partner
with this fresh food market
across the street from our
church, but the prices were crazy
and I did not want to lead my congregation
in another partnership
that saw us subservient
to another community's, you know,
their desire or lack of desire to help.
Like, that is dehumanizing and
toxic, that's a toxic charity
that I didn't wanna lead my church into.
So, instead of doing that, I said, listen,
I came back to the church,
God gave me this epiphany
and I was walking to the
front door of my congregation,
this little piece of our
front yard, I'd walked past it
hundreds of times, but that
one time I saw a vision
for a garden on that land.
And so, we started
growing eight years ago,
it's a 1500 square foot plot of land
and because of the leadership
of some beautiful people
in our church, we grow about
11 and 1200 pounds of produce
on a 1500 square foot
garden in the front yard.
So, I saw that and I saw,
and this is the first time I'm
sharing in an interview form
since the passing of
Sister Maxine Nicholas,
who was the patron Saint of our garden,
the mother of our garden.
God gave me this vision for a garden,
but I was born in Baltimore city.
My roots are here in North Carolina,
but I was born in West Baltimore,
I don't have a green thumb.
I spoke to vision and a
woman, a dynamic woman
by the name of Maxine
Nicholas stepped forward,
said, "Pastor, let me help you with that.
"You don't know what you're doing."
She grew up in Roanoke
Rapids, North Carolina
on a farm with 11 brothers and sisters
and moved up north during
the great migration,
but that knowledge and that history
and that background
experience stayed with her.
She transformed that garden,
and just last Friday, just last week,
we celebrated her life,
she passed away at 87 years old.
She was a member of
Pleasant Hope for 64 years
and she is a major part as to why and how
I dreamed of something bigger.
So I saw what she was able
to do at our one church,
and then I realized all these
African Americans that move
north during the great migration,
grew up on farms or grew
up in an agrarian society.
And while they may have came to Baltimore
and came up north to work in factories,
that knowledge was still in
them and they were sitting
in our pews in our
churches being good ushers,
good choir members, good musicians,
all that kind of good stuff.
But there was something more in them
that the church wasn't seeing.
So I am, again, excited
about ways to take our
one church's experience
and replicate it, scale it,
scale it up and scale it deep
in other churches knowing that
many of the people who
fit kind of the profile
of a Miss Maxine,
they're also at many of
these other churches as well,
looking for, and hungry for opportunities
to show that they still
got something to contribute
to all of this.
So, we come to these nice
conferences around food security
in the light and you see
a lot of younger people
and young professionals and
advocates and that's cool,
but the people that I
see on the front lines
of changing the material
conditions of their community
around food at these local black churches
are older African American
women in particular.
African American women, ages, 55 and older
are the ones who are on the
front lines of these churches
growing food, leading the
food initiatives and the like.
- [Sarah] Well, I wish
that we'd been able to meet
Miss Maxine, she sounds
like a firecracker.
What was she able to accomplish?
You know, I think it's
important for people to know
there's a garden,
but I think it sounds
like it's so much more.
And I'd love you to speak to that.
- [Heber] Yeah, oh, I'm
gonna cry, I miss my friend.
I never knew that, you
know, when God called me
to pastor a church, you
know, I had this idea,
you go in and you preach and
you teach and you go home,
but now, I've learned you
really fall in love with people
and I never knew that I
would have close friends
who are in the ARP club, right.
75, 80 years old, and they're my buddies,
Sister Maxine was my buddy.
She was the one who had the strength,
I would say she had the
strength of 10 teenagers.
She'd be in our church
garden, early 6:00 AM,
she's in the garden already.
And by the time I pull up to
start my day at the church,
she's leaving out, "Hi
pastor, have a good day."
She had that work ethic, that
tenacity around the garden.
She had a no nonsense way of, like,
she knew what she wanted in that garden
and you were gonna do it
the way Sister Maxine said
that you should do it.
And we learned to follow
and trust her leadership,
and it's yielded so many benefits for us.
But she brought that tenacity
to really grow out garden,
her life experience and
just that work ethic
to really just move it forward.
And here's the thing, she is
not unique, at least in that,
she's not unique in that.
Again, there's a profile
of these kinds of people
and particularly these women, black women,
who were at all these churches.
And I know the nation is just mesmerized
by charismatic black male leaders, right?
Dr. King, we have Jesse
Jackson, much respect,
just in case they're listening,
much respect to you, Rev.
Jackson and all the rest.
And there's another part
of that story that without
a Ella Baker, without a Fannie Lou Hamer,
without a Maxine Nicholas,
these historic moments
in our history where the
black church communities
were concerned or connected
would not have happened.
Charismatic male leaders and personalities
and programmatic ideas
just don't do it alone.
And so I really think that, you know,
a lot of people are
talking about black women
when it comes to politics
right now, right?
And so, looking at the
way black women vote
and how that makes a difference
in different elections,
watching and studying and
seeing and honoring black women,
how they move in black church spaces.
So it might be a majority
men at the mic, but be clear,
without the women, it don't work.
And so, that holds
across different churches
and I'm just so honored
to go and sit at the feet
of many of these dynamic
women and hear their stories
because just like I can tell
you about Maxine Nicholas
at our church, I can tell
you about Patsy Appleberry
in Ohio at her church,
I can tell you about
Sister Marie Edwards at her
church in Richmond, Virginia.
These are dynamic women who, I
think we need to do much more
in the way of listening
to and heeding and hearing
while they're here because they have some
ingredients and insight to
the topic of food equality
and food equity that we
need to be sensitive to.
- [Sarah] Yeah, and a deep human capital.
- [Heber] Deep human capital.
- Yeah.
- [Heber] Deep human capital.
- [Sarah] Well, I wanna make
sure I also hit another topic,
as much as I would love to
visit Sister Maxine (murmurs)
but I wanted to ask also,
I've seen you talk about
food apartheid and I think
that might be a pretty new term
for a lot of folks.
So, could you define that for our audience
and how that manifest in Baltimore?
- [Heber] Yeah, really.
It really is just a challenge to the term,
food deserts, right?
Food deserts, you know, a
desert, for the most part,
is a naturally occurring phenomenon.
It's something that's a part
of our lived experience, right?
And if you're not careful,
you can conclude that
food deserts, quote unquote, just happen.
Like, all of a sudden it just
happened out of the blue.
And that's really just not the case.
Food apartheid points to the policies,
points to the specific behavior
of local municipalities
to create neighborhoods that
don't have access to resources
or control over their resources,
it didn't just happen.
So, what I see with the
word food apartheid is
one, an attempt to rightly
name and target the dynamics
that created the outcome.
And then, two, to really
give it the weightiness
that it needs, right?
The word apartheid hits
and lands a certain way
in our hearing,
and apartheid has that
weightiness and that heaviness
that really describes, for
me, the severity and urgency
of this issue.
It has, not only health
ramifications, but economic,
environmental, going down the line.
There's something we need to
figure out and we need to honor
the weightiness of the issue,
and a food apartheid, for me,
does more right now, and to honor that.
- [Sarah] Is that a
conversation that you have
within your own congregation?
- [Heber] Well, there's a term that I use,
I've actually had a sermon,
redeeming the deserts,
where I talk about, you know,
I challenge the term, food deserts,
using scripture and Jesus
performed a miracle one time
in a desert and life was there
that this was not recognized easily,
and in these, quote unquote,
food desert communities,
we run the risk of
labeling them and saying
there's nothing of value
there, and it's just not true.
And so, it is a term that we utilize,
it's one that I preach
about and teach about
in my congregation as well.
- [Sarah] Well, I'm curious,
there's such momentum here
and it seems like you've
been able to do so much
in growing the network, but what's next?
What are you most excited about
and what are some next steps?
- [Heber] Oh, well, what's next is
I'm working with my
congregation to help groom up
young adults in our
church to really grab this
and see this black food
and land sovereignty
as an aspect and dimension
of their spirituality
and faith formation.
Not just as an aside or just
something that is purely
about my professional career.
I'm really working with them to see
the ministry implications of all of this
and at least put it on their radar
that they can be a
different kind of minister.
So (mumbles) see me preaching
every Sunday and say,
well, no, I've not been called to that.
I say, listen, every minister
doesn't preach on Sunday.
We need ministers of information,
ministers of research,
ministers of public
policy, ministers who have,
I don't know if I
created this term or not,
but we need more congregational organizers
as opposed to just community organizers.
Those who are sensitive to the nuances
of congregational life
and can bring community
organizing principles
and congregational mobilization
principles together,
and move congregations toward you know,
grab a hold of and securing
different objectives and aims.
And so, I'm really investing
in our young adults.
I'm going big next year
in our church's budget
to invest and to create
employment opportunities
for our young adults.
Our church owns a house as well.
We wanna get into intentional community
and give the young adults a house.
We wanna put all the supports in place
that they don't have to worry about
so they can bend their
genius and their creativity
in the direction of
figuring out the problem
of food inequity and have
a church support that.
So, this is a gamble, I'm not
saying churches, you know,
creates cold storage units on their land
and give young adults houses
and steer the budget
toward employing them,
but I'm trying to do everything I can
to inspire young adults to
really grab hold of this
while we have the elders still with us.
I need the elders and these
young adults to be together
and I see that the investment financially
that we're making in young adults can help
make that more possible.
And so, we'll see how it goes,
but that's the big
thing I'm excited about.
If it doesn't go well, I come
back next time and tell you
it failed, don't do this
(both laugh loudly).
- [Sarah] Now I think that's fascinating.
We often hear of the youth
engagement, but it's never tied
to trying to engage them
with the elders, I think
as far as the dialogues I'm familiar with.
(mumbles), if you could quickly mention,
what is the difference between
community organizing principles
and congregational organizing principles?
- [Heber] It's a sensitivity to just
the mores and the characteristics
of congregational life.
So, if you work in,
like, corporate America,
or if you work at a university
even, there's a certain way
that the university or
the corporation moves.
There's certain, you know, behaviors,
there's certain, you know,
all of that is a part of it,
the church has that too.
And so, you know, while I
have a lot of friends of mine
who will come to church and
call me Heber and I'm cool,
that's my name, I'm Heber,
that will row the nerves of
the mothers of my church,
because you do not call the pastor
by the pastor's first name, at
least, in a lot of, you know,
black church traditions,
you don't do that.
Somebody is sensitive
to that kind of stuff.
And it might seem small, but
that might be the difference
between whether or not mother
works with you on your project
or not or whether they return your call
or they do your survey.
And so, I see there's
some work to be done there
to grow up congregational organizers
who know about that kind of stuff.
Where are the landmines in churches?
Where do you wanna stay away from?
What language do you wanna use?
Even if you prefer to
use a different language,
how do you bend your tongue
to speak the language
that's most familiar to
the people in front of you
so that you can get to where
you're trynna go, right?
As opposed to trynna make
70 year old Miss Maxine,
you're gonna make them
do or make them line up
with your understanding, good
luck with that, you know.
It's better, in my view,
to be more sensitive
to where that community is
and it's those kinds of sensitivities
that I'd love to help inspire
in our young people today.
- [Sarah] Oh, Rev. Heber, I wish we could
(Heber laughs)
lock you in here all day.
Thank you so much for
your energy and passion
and for joining us here
today for the podcast
and coming down all the way to Duke,
so, we really appreciate
having you here, thank you.
- [Heber] Thank you, this
was amazing, I appreciate it.
- [Sarah] Well, I just wanna
thank also our listeners,
today we've had Rev. Dr. Heber Brown,
founder of the Black Church
Food Security Network,
and senior pastor
of Pleasant Hope Baptist
Church in Baltimore.
Please subscribe to our
leading voices in food podcast
at soundcloud.com or by
visiting our website,
Duke World Food Policy Center.
This is Sarah Zubek.
(bright orchestral music)
