Barbeque: A Story of Resilience, Authenticity, and Community in Black North Carolina
Written by Katie Grotewiel
Let’s talk barbeque. I’m not talking Kansas City style. I’m not talking Texas brisket. I’m not talking Memphis dry rub. We’re talking North Carolina style (or Eastern style, depending on your persuasion). That means whole-hog barbeque. That means vinegar sauce. That means pig pickin’.
But in North Carolina, barbeque is much more than just the pig itself. In North Carolina, barbeque means taking care of your neighbors. It means all-day effort so your community can have a good, hot meal. Even in New Bern, once North Carolina’s capital city, the quarterly newsletter New Bern Now regularly features restaurant recommendations, often with an entire section dedicated to barbeque. [1]
North Carolina is absolutely full of restaurants, pitmasters, and customers everywhere claiming that they know where the “real” stuff is. Driving down I-40 will show you just that—billboards for Hursey’s “Real” North Carolina BBQ. There are even groups like True ‘Cue, organized with statewide chapters, that are committed to promoting restaurants that serve an authentic barbeque in their Campaign for Real Barbecue. True ‘Cue has an extensive website with restaurant recommendations, reserved specifically for businesses that “serve barbecue cooked in the traditional way solely with wood coals.” [2] In my own conversations with people, folks from other states with their own woodfired traditions will accuse North Carolina of having the “wrong” kind of barbeque… all because of the trademark hot pepper-vinegar sauce.
But for Black North Carolinians in a country, a region, and a state that has struggled and frequently failed to meet the moment to pursue progress and justice, barbeque often serves as a way to find, build, and strengthen the community.
Of course, this is not limited to just barbeque. Today, it can be easy for us to think of food as simply bringing people of all backgrounds together. But that has certainly not always been true. Legacies of slavery and segregation permeate every aspect of our society today: what parts of town people live in, the company they keep, which churches they worship at, the schools they and their children attend, and which food is on their table when they come together to celebrate, mourn, or just be with each other. In North Carolina specifically, food is a core feature of the ways we relate to one another. And that means food can also be the main vehicle for building a just community.
Food, Resistance, and Civil Rights History
Food in central North Carolina figures heavily in the history of the Civil Rights Movement of the mid-twentieth century. Sit-ins at Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro were among the first nonviolent actions in early 1960 and facilitated the creation of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, whose papers are digitized at the Freedom Archives and held in archives at Duke University Libraries, UNC Chapel Hill, and other historical institutions. [3] These sit-ins were organized by four Black freshmen at North Carolina A&T in Greensboro who all lived in the same dorm building their first year on campus. Their names are Joseph McNeil, Franklin McCain, Ezell Blair Jr. (later known as Jibreel Khazan), and David Richmond. Today, the Woolworth’s building houses the International Civil Rights Center and Museum, which gives tours every day and still works to offer thoughtful perspectives on our shared history. [4] The Center even managed to retain the lunch counter at which these college freshmen risked their lives for the sake of access to public spaces and services.
In America, and especially in the South, Black history is embedded in our ways of eating, cooking, and knowing. It is inextricable from our ways of finding and building community. Woolworth’s was a lunch counter—a lunch counter that refused to serve Black patrons. Every day, these students sat at the counter and demanded service. And every day, they were refused. And every day, more people joined in. The backlash was swift: the Ku Klux Klan chaplain showed up, and there were dozens of pro-segregation counter-protesters. But the sit-in movement spread to other cities in other states. [5] Soon, students across Greensboro began boycotting all segregated lunch counters. Sales plummeted so greatly that businesses were forced to reevaluate their segregation policies. They did not reevaluate their segregation policies because they believed it was amoral, unethical, or wrong to discriminate. Instead, they made a business calculation.
In 1964, the Civil Rights Act was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson. [6] By this time, all of the Greensboro Four had left A&T with more access to public spaces than when they entered university life. But this was certainly not the end of it.
Much of the resistance during the Civil Rights Movement took place in cities like Jackson, [7] Birmingham, [8] Nashville, [9] and Greensboro. But the resistance to segregation did not end at the city limits, and it certainly did not end in 1968 with the Fair Housing Act. [10] In rural North Carolina, in towns like Wilson, located just outside Raleigh, resistance still happens every day. It happens in the grocery store, in corner stores, in schools. It happens in church, and it happens at the dinner table.
Community, Love, and the Pig
I had the true honor and pleasure of sitting down with Ryan Mitchell, a James Beard Finalist, pitmaster and entrepreneur based out of Wilson. He and I met at a cafe in North Raleigh, where he shared with me some key memories from his youth and his entry into the barbeque business. When I visited Wilson Special Collections at UNC, I had encountered the book in the North Carolina Collection that he and his father, Ed (Mr. Mitchell, in this piece), wrote together and published just a few years ago. When I met with Ryan, I hadn’t realized our interview was on the second anniversary of the book’s publication. Ed Mitchell’s Barbeque is a compelling and powerful history of barbeque in the American South. It has foolproof recipes to fill your own kitchen table and backyard gatherings with good food that feels, tastes, and smells like love.
An archival project on its own, the book also trusts the reader with stories from Mitchell family history, the beginnings of the family store and the various evolutions it went through. It also discusses the parts of life that are more grim than a barbeque-filled celebration, like when Mr. Mitchell was drafted and sent to Da Nang, Vietnam. When he was deployed, Mr. Mitchell had been playing football at Fayetteville State University. Being in school should have prevented his being drafted and subsequent deployment, but it didn’t. And this wasn’t uncommon: Andrew Chow and Josiah Bates write in Time Magazine that “In Vietnam, [Black Americans] were disproportionately sent to the front lines, jailed or disciplined at higher rates.” [11]
So he went overseas, unsure of how many in his group would make it through and in what condition they would emerge. In his book, he recalls that, when his platoon was sent to the Marble Mountains, they came under a “barrage of mortar attacks. The nine recruits who were there before me were killed.” [12]
In Barbeque, Mr. Mitchell’s younger brother Aubrey writes about the fear he and his brother Stevie felt as their older brother was sent overseas: “Our cousin Gaskin was going to join Ed’s platoon. He jumped out of a plane and was shot dead immediately. It was an eerie time.” [13] Aubrey remarks that he “still [doesn’t] understand how he was drafted—he was going to college and playing football. They still took him from us.” [14]
But, in Vietnam, the unity among his fellow draftees reminded him of the unity around the dinner table when there’s pulled pork in front of you. After all, the war in Vietnam was the first American war that was truly integrated. [15] In the introduction to Barbeque, sampled by Walter Magazine in 2023 as a promotion for the book’s publication, Mr. Mitchell recounts his time overseas:
“[Barbeque] was the only time during my childhood when Blacks and whites ate side by side. For a brief moment, we were colorblind, and I never forgot that feeling. The next time I experienced it was in Vietnam, when guys around me were being wounded and killed. The only way we were going to get home alive, besides our prayers, was by watching one another’s backs.” [16]
As Mr. Mitchell tells it, barbeque had been a way for multiracial community building. But it also was a way for his family and loved ones to reconnect after a loss like his deployment.
When Mr. Mitchell came back from combat after 18 months, his family hosted a pig pickin’ to celebrate his homecoming. [17] Once again, barbeque is on the table to commemorate another journey of survival against the odds.
Aubrey reflects on this pig pickin’ as well, writing, “What I remember most was the feast we had when he came home. My parents’ firstborn son was home, and they made sure they fed him well.” [18]
Hospitality, Entrepreneurship, and Resilience
When I met with Ryan Mitchell, the first question I asked him was about how he grew up–did he grow up in Wilson? Where did he spend his childhood? He jumped straight into his experience with true Southern hospitality, right from when he was a child. His grandparents had opened a supermarket in Wilson, NC, and Ryan was tasked with working the register and stocking the shelves:
“So, you know, from the time I was six, seven years old, you know, like my granddad used to take the old Pepsi crates that we used to go get the sodas in and put them in the machine and put ‘em in the cooler, take the old Pepsi crate, flip it over, and I would stand on top of that and run the cash register, you know, in the summer or when I got out of school.”
For Black small business owners like the Mitchells, this kind of resourcefulness was both typical and essential for survival. Relying on family so that everyone can work together, even if the youngest in the room has to stand on a Pepsi crate, can be critical for a family to survive and stay financially afloat. In Barbeque, Mr. Mitchell writes, “Now that Mitchell’s BBQ was a full-time job, we needed all hands on deck. I insisted that he [Ryan] learn the craft and earn those Air Jordans his generation loved to wear.” [19] Ryan confirmed this himself, telling me, “If I wanted new Jordans, you know what I had to do? Go in the smokehouse, I had to go stand on that cash register.”
Ryan also spoke candidly about the necessity for his grandparents to open Mitchell’s Supermarket:
“My grandparents became entrepreneurs, not because they had some million-dollar business plan, they just were not gonna go back to work and be emotionally and verbally abused anymore from the hands of, you know, people that didn’t look like them saying different things. There was no HR or anything to stop any of that stuff. So my grandparents retired and opened up Mitchell’s Supermarket just out of sheer defiance and survival, you know, so that’s how we entered into business.”
Hospitality seemed to be par for the course when anyone was around Ryan’s grandmother, Doretha:
“Watching my grandmother spread love to everybody, regardless of race, color, creed, you know, regardless of anything… she just put her arms around everyone through her food and hospitality. And so that was kinda like the family mantra going into business.”
This mission, to take care of people with food and hospitality, has never been cast aside. It was there at the beginning. One day in the early 1990s, shortly after Ryan’s grandfather passed, the family decided to have a classic, home cooked meal of pulled pork. She stayed inside and ran the store. Once the pig was prepared, and it was time to close the store, a patron came into the store, grabbed a few things and went to the counter to check out. He spied the pulled pork and asked for a sandwich.
True to form, Ryan’s grandmother chimed in, telling her son to just give the patron a sandwich. The customer leaves, and as the family is heading out for the night, more customers show up.
So the next day, they made another pig, and more people came. [20]
To be clear, barbeque was a regular meal in the Mitchell household: “my grandmother made the very best pork shoulders in the oven. Because that was the Sunday tradition, the pork shoulder coming out of the oven was like a Sunday tradition, it was a holiday tradition.” (PSA: An oven-cooked pork shoulder recipe is Ed Mitchell’s Barbeque. Check page 55.)
After a series of legal issues, Mitchell’s Ribs, Chicken & Barbeque closed in 2004, but the Mitchell family kept barbequing.
Barbeque, Reclamation, and Pride
When I met with Ryan Mitchell, I asked him about how the Mitchell family and their family business adapted after the restaurant closed:
“After the store closed? You know, it was… so, there’s been a couple of different iterations of Mitchell’s Ribs, Chicken and Barbeque… when we left Wilson to come to Raleigh, you know, that was probably one of these emotional cleansings, ‘cause there’s opportunity on one side, but there's so much legacy and history on the other side. So, you know, we dealt with, you know, a little bit of survivor's remorse for being able to do that. We built that place right there in Wilson, right there in the heart of the community, and on a side of town we were hoping to inspire, you know what I’m saying. For a long time, we had the largest square footage of any Black-owned establishment for like almost 20+ years, you know. And I hate to have to put it in that way, but the second-largest square footage of anything that was put on our side of town was like a Food Lion, like a grocery store, or a tobacco warehouse. And we were pushing, like, 16,000 square feet of restaurant facility. Cooking food, restaurant on the bottom, catering facilities on top, Hoping to be, you know, an inspiration for other businesses, or for other commercial ideas to be able to consider that side of town worthy. But you know, gentrification is happening on the other side of the town. Real estate, location, it’s gonna do what it’s gonna do sometimes. You just have to be able to pivot. The beauty of it all was we were able to take that idea and create another opportunity in Raleigh.”
But it wasn’t just in North Carolina that they were able to create other opportunities for business, culinary adventures, and community. Barbeque took Ryan and his father to New York City for a barbeque festival, and that was a big deal for Mr. Mitchell, who hadn’t felt truly recognized for his craft before.
Mr. Mitchell writes in Barbeque that, “In our culture, you were considered a loser if you were making barbeque. Then these guys let us know that we were sitting on a gold mine that had been lost and was nothing we should be ashamed of. That moment was a game changer for me and my family.” [21]
Ryan spoke with me about this period as well:
“So, 2002 to 2017, my dad’s one of the founding members of the Big Apple Barbecue Block Party. So I am from a festival barbeque culture. So for seventeen years, we took over Madison Square Park in New York City for every summer for three days. We did an average of about 25 whole hogs in a weekend. And you know, I hear this… it tickles me when I hear people say “We’re outside,” because like, nah, man, you’re not outside, not no more. Nobody’s outside like we used to be outside. I mean, you talk about almost 100,000 people in a weekend at an outdoor food event. It was unprecedented to be able to create that much food, and we started out with three pitmasters and by year fifteen we were at fifteen, twenty pitmasters and it just kept growing year after year. But my point to that is, it was my first time, you know, growing up in the South, barbeque being in a position of a cherished delicacy of a craft was not a thing. So, we get to New York City and they have taken this poor man’s meal and they’ve turned it into a $75 plate, which was unreal to me. You’d go into Blue Smoke and they’ve taken our little barbeque sandwiches that we have in the South and our little checkered tablecloth in every hole-in-the-wall type of Southern place, they’ve put it into… lights on the ceiling and wine tastings and, you know, bar and, you know, the lights are low, the jazz band is playing. You have servers and waiters and waitresses and you have people who are treating this particular cuisine like it is a hundred-dollar Tomahawk steak or something like that, right? And so it was like… holy crap! It was the first time to where I actually saw the pitmaster be turned into a rockstar or an executive chef level of respect.”
The Big Apple Barbecue Block Party in 2002 in New York City’s Madison Square Park changed a lot for the Mitchell family and their business. For both Ryan and Mr. Mitchell, the issue of race was always on their mind. Speaking about the Big Apple Barbeque Block Party, Ryan told me:
“So we knew, ah, something is changing. Because, to be fair, I grew up in a time to where, quite honestly, this craft, being able to do this, was very emotionally charged, very racially charged, you know. Learning how to do this, and knowing how to do this in the South was not actually some sort of badge of honor to the public. But so, in the city, in New York City specifically, they had completely changed the perception of what it meant to be a pitmaster and to be cooking in general, right. So it was like ‘Holy crap.’”
For Black pitmasters descended from sharecroppers, [22] like Mr. Mitchell, the legacies of slavery are front-of-mind: “Being a Black pitmaster in New York City on a world stage less than 150 years after slavery ended was something we didn’t take for granted.” [23]
Even down to his barbequing uniform, Mr. Mitchell is thinking about tradition in the barbeque industry: “Today I barbeque to show young African Americans that our history lies in those embers. I wear overalls and a baseball cap, like those worn by my grandfather Lawyer Sandars and other Black men from previous generations, to remind me of the sacrifices of the men who wore this uniform, who worked the land and provided for their families. It makes me realize that the work I do, while it can seem futile at times, is important. After all, I am one of the last barbeque pitmasters who knows how to cook a whole hog like my ancestors do.” [24]
Mr. Mitchell went on to say that John T. Edge of the Southern Foodways Alliance was “trying to find the origins and authenticity of barbeque.” Mr. Mitchell explains, “Black folks did the work—the enslaved, the cotton pickers, it was us. The culture of that time period was making barbeque.” [25] Mr. Mitchell writes, to honor his ancestry at the Big Apple Barbeque Block Party, “We held our heads high and knew that we were not only representing our family, but all those Black pitmasters who went nameless and worked for pennies in the back of the house.”
The Big Apple Barbeque Block Party event series and subsequent business opportunities opened up the entire world to Mitchell’s Barbeque.
I asked Ryan about his experiences abroad, and he shared with me two memorable trips he took– one to Australia and one to Nigeria–where he was able to make connections, learn new ways of cooking, and spend time with other culinary-inclined communities.
“My first international experience was Melbourne, Australia. So we got a chance to cook in Melbourne, Australia, and it was at a barbeque festival, food and wine festival mixed with a barbeque festival. Fire festival. Being able to be, not just recognized in that way, but also being able to be around other natives who have been cooking like that their entire lives and that’s really all they care to do. That was probably the most humbling, you know what I mean? For me, my greatest experience was being able to get to Nigeria last year. I spent four days in Lagos and participated in a food festival, but barbeque was… it was so intimidating because like we got it from here! So for you to want me to be here, is like, you know, I don’t even know what to do! I got all my inspiration from you guys, you know what I mean, or from this region, this country, this continent. So… but the love and the connectivity that they have with the animal is so different. And we got a chance to… you want to talk about farm-to-table?”
Ryan went on to talk about how, within 45 minutes, he could see a goat be transformed from a living animal into food for a community for several days. That kind of skill and care was inspiring. He told me, “Every house has a high-level chef, you know, they just aren’t publicized as such. Their ingenuity with food and preparing dishes, it was just such an incredible way to work.” This also echoes Mr. Mitchell’s constant reminder that African American history lies in those embers. In Lagos, Nigeria, Ryan was able to connect with not only Black culinary history but also the persistent tradition of feeding those you love with good food.
Family Business, Community, and Facing Forward
When I met with Ryan, he was in between deliveries of his family’s new condiment line to local area grocery stores. The new business endeavor, True Made Foods, appears in Whole Foods, the Fresh Market, and other commercial retailers. Obviously, there is a set of barbeque sauces by Mr. Mitchell himself (which is always in high demand–so if you see they’re restocked, now’s your time to strike). They also sell ketchup, hot sauces, mustards, and rubs. In the spirit of serving your loved ones good food, all their products are sugar-free. This is the new iteration of the Mitchell family’s barbeque tradition, and it means that their craft can be present in supermarkets and homes around the Triangle.
Business opportunities come and go. People and places evolve. But communities endure, and the history remains. By supporting Black businesses and traditional ways of cooking, we can bring that history to our kitchen tables every day.
Projects like Black Wide-Awake, based out of Wilson, do the work of confronting legacies of slavery, segregation, and inequality in the American South every day. And so do Black entrepreneurs like the Mitchell family.
About halfway through our meeting, Ryan gave me some words of wisdom that I haven’t stopped thinking about since:
“People ask me all the time, ‘What does it take to be a good pitmaster? What does it take to be a pitmaster?’ And I’m like, man, any man or woman who’s looking to go into their backyard and put that amount of effort into feeding somebody, when the air fryer is literally sitting on the freakin’ counter, you a pitmaster, man. You’re still willing to give that amount of love and effort to put in food out to people, when you can pop a bag of wings in that airfryer and put seasoning on it and be done in fifteen minutes, you are the man. It’s the love and the effort, that’s what makes a good pitmaster.”
[1] New Bern Now & New Bern Now Ledger & NewBernNow.com Ledger at the Digital Collections Repository at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. See issues Spring-Summer 2016, p. 9; Jan-Mar 2017, p. 9; Apr-June 2017, p. 9; Jan-Mar 2018, p. 9; July-September 2018, p.9; and Apr-June 2019, p. 11.
[2] True ‘Cue USA, https://www.truecue.org/true-cue-usa.
[3] “Digital Primary Sources,” SNCC Digital Gateway, May 20, 2025, https://snccdigital.org/resources/digital-primary-sources/.
[4] The International Civil Rights Center & Museum, https://www.sitinmovement.org/.
[5] “Explore Greensboro’s Civil Rights History,” US Civil Rights Trail, March 7, 2023, https://civilrightstrail.com/destination/greensboro/.
[6] “Civil Rights Act (1964),” National Archives and Records Administration, accessed May 2025, https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/civil-rights-act.
[7] “Explore Jackson’s Civil Rights History,” US Civil Rights Trail, October 7, 2024, https://civilrightstrail.com/destination/jackson/.
[8] “Explore Birmingham’s Civil Rights History,” US Civil Rights Trail, October 7, 2024, https://civilrightstrail.com/destination/birmingham/.
[9] “Explore Nashville’s Civil Rights History,” US Civil Rights Trail, March 7, 2023, https://civilrightstrail.com/destination/nashville/.
[10] “The Fair Housing Act,” Civil Rights Division, June 22, 2023, https://www.justice.gov/crt/fair-housing-act-1.
[11] Andrew R. Chow and Josiah Bates, “Black Vietnam Veterans on Injustices They Faced: Da 5 Bloods,” Time, June 12, 2020, https://time.com/5852476/da-5-bloods-black-vietnam-veterans/.
[12] Ed Mitchell, Ryan Mitchell, and Zella Palmer, Ed Mitchell’s Barbeque, Ecco Publishing (New York, 2023), 92.
[13] Ibid.
[14] Ibid.
[15] Andrew R. Chow and Josiah Bates, “Black Vietnam Veterans” Time.
[16] Ed Mitchell, “I Can’t Give up,” WALTER Magazine, June 1, 2023, https://waltermagazine.com/food/i-cant-give-up-by-ed-mitchell/.https://waltermagazine.com/food/i-cant-give-up-by-ed-mitchell/
[17] Ed Mitchell, Ryan Mitchell, and Zella Palmer, Ed Mitchell’s Barbeque, 92.
[18] Ibid.
[19] Ed Mitchell, Ryan Mitchell, and Zella Palmer, Ed Mitchell’s Barbeque, 6.
[20] “Pitmaster Ryan Mitchell on America’s Complicated History with Barbeque,” WLRN, June 23, 2023, https://www.wlrn.org/2023-06-28/pitmaster-ryan-mitchell-on-americas-complicated-history-with-barbeque.
[21] Ed Mitchell, Ryan Mitchell, and Zella Palmer, Ed Mitchell’s Barbeque, 148.
[22] Ed Mitchell, Ryan Mitchell, and Zella Palmer, Ed Mitchell’s Barbeque, 26.
[23] Ed Mitchell, Ryan Mitchell, and Zella Palmer, Ed Mitchell’s Barbeque, 148
[24] Ed Mitchell, Ryan Mitchell, and Zella Palmer, Ed Mitchell’s Barbeque, 7.
[25] Ed Mitchell, Ryan Mitchell, and Zella Palmer, Ed Mitchell’s Barbeque, 148.
