Hamburgers, hot dogs, plenty of red sodas on ice: That was the chef Lana Lagomarsini’s Juneteenth menu for years as she celebrated with her cousins in Harlem. But over time, her celebrations evolved, especially when it came to food.
For the past four years, along with the chefs Nana Araba Wilmot and Deborah Jean, she’s hosted a Juneteenth cookout in Brooklyn for a couple hundred guests. Its atmosphere is familiar: A DJ plays music, guests mingle. But the menu, a mix of contributions from all three chefs, tells a story that starts in West Africa and winds through the Caribbean and the Americas before stopping in New York City.
Juneteenth commemorates June 19, 1865, when the last enslaved African Americans, in Galveston, Texas, were told they were freed, about two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation was issued. The holiday became a national focal point in 2020 amid protests spurred by the killing of George Floyd and was declared a national holiday in 2021.
Now, the traditional foods of the holiday, like barbecue and red food and drink, meant to symbolize the blood of enslaved ancestors, are sharing space with dishes that represent the diverse histories and regional differences of Black American cooking. In the hands of some chefs and home cooks, the Juneteenth table continues to grow, reflecting its celebrants’ histories and backgrounds.
“I want to make dishes that represent my ancestors, for sure, and what I’ve learned as a chef,” Ms. Lagomarsini said.
Recipe: Tamarind Glazed Oxtails
This year, she’s making her oxtails, braised with tamarind paste and guava, ingredients that speak to her time spent in the Caribbean. A green tomato chow chow highlights her ties to the American South and grilled vegetables with a sassafras chimichurri add a North American accent to a South American sauce that she learned while working in Patagonia. Red drinks will still have a place at the table, in the form of a sparkling hibiscus punch.
For some, like Tonya Abari, the holiday presents an opportunity to both honor past generations and teach future ones. Mrs. Abari, a home cook, didn’t grow up celebrating the holiday. In fact, she wasn’t even introduced to it until she was in her 20s, visiting Houston with friends.
“Initially I felt really embarrassed,” she said. “How did my schools growing up and the college I went to not tell me about this holiday?”
She began looking into the holiday for herself, even writing a children’s book, “Let’s Celebrate Juneteenth.” Now, she shapes her holiday around her 3- and 10-year-old daughters, serving a mix of foods she and her Nigerian-American husband hold dear. Their table includes jollof rice, tea cakes and magenta-colored hibiscus tea. Last year, they made ice cream sandwiches with red velvet cake.
Her Juneteenth also starts early.
“We do a ‘noon-teenth’ celebration,” she said, “because the kids are usually in bed by the time fireworks happen.”
Warren Luckett, the founder and managing partner of Black Restaurant Week who grew up celebrating the holiday in Houston — Juneteenth legally became a Texas holiday in 1980 — now incorporates nontraditional dishes into his spreads. For him, Juneteenth looked like family barbecues or going to Martin Luther King Boulevard and “seeing Black cowboys, or playing dominoes.”
His Juneteenth table still includes the boiled crawfish, beef brisket, watermelon and sausages of his family’s celebrations, but it also presents a way “to celebrate the culinary contributions of Black people across the African diaspora,” so he brings in vegan, Caribbean and West African dishes.
Mr. Luckett said he hoped that more and more people would honor the holiday, but with a spirit of remembrance. “While we want the country to celebrate,” he said, “we want to make sure people know the history.”
For Mrs. Abari, that knowledge was a gift.
“I was able to release the shame and guilt around not knowing and focus on making sure my kids know,” she said, adding that readers have begun sending photos of their celebrations and spreads.
“Learning that history can be like a homecoming,” Mrs. Abari said, “but you’re coming home to who you are.”
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