Fredrick Douglas Opie, associate professor of history and director of the African Diaspora Studies Program at Marist College, discusses his book, *Hog and Hominy: Soul Food from Africa to America*. Opie’s culinary history is a portrait of the social and religious relationship between African Americans and their cuisine. It begins with the Atlantic slave trade and concludes with the Black Power movement of the 1960s and 1970s.
Frederick Douglass Opie serves as the Associate Professor of History and Director of the African Diaspora Program Marist College. Previously he was an Assistant Professor of History, focusing on Latin American and Caribbean Studies, at Morehouse College from 2000- 2003. His focus of study includes American and African history, race relations, labor history, and the cultural hybridizations of food and music. Throughout his career Professor Opie has written several books, the first of which, *Hog and Hominy *, concerns African American foodways. His second book, *Black Labor Migration in Caribbean Guatemala*, tells the story of a turn of the century frontier region with railroad and banana plantation towns populated by Black Americans, West Indians, and Latin American workers. His current book project is an examination grounded in the everyday experiences of African Americans and Latinos in metro New York City from 1959 to 2008. The book is a study of the inter-ethnic relationships which developed between African Americans and Latinos in working class and lower income communities of metro New York City.