Transcript

8.6.26 · Smithsonian Magazine

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Speaker 1: Welcome. This is Rebecca Shore for Radio Eye and to
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Speaker 1: day I will be reading from a special edition of
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Speaker 1: Smithsonian Magazine America at two fifty the Revolutionary Spark. As
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Speaker 1: a reminder, Radio I is a reading service intended for
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Speaker 1: people who are blind or have other disabilities that make
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Speaker 1: it difficult to read printed material. Please join me now
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Speaker 1: for the first article, titled Harriet beecher Stowe wrote a
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Speaker 1: work of fiction that seemed so real that it changed
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Speaker 1: the history of the country. To fight against slavery, the
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Speaker 1: author collected true stories, then picked up a pen and
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Speaker 1: distilled them into Uncle Tom's cabin. By Geraldine Brooks, no
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Speaker 1: one can have this system of slavery brought before him
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Speaker 1: without an irrepressible desire to do something, and what is
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Speaker 1: there to be done? Harriet Beecher Stowe was twenty six
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Speaker 1: when she posed that frustrated question and a letter to
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Speaker 1: her husband. She had been married only a had just
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Speaker 1: given birth to twins, and didn't care much for the
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Speaker 1: abolitionists she'd encountered, calling them unfashionable persons and moral monomaniacs.
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Speaker 1: But if she could not join their movement, what could
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Speaker 1: she do? Fifteen years later, she gave her answer. Her
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Speaker 1: debut novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin or Life among the Lowly,
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Speaker 1: was published in March eighteen fifty two. In its first week,
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Speaker 1: it sold ten thousand copies in the United States. By
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Speaker 1: year's end, three hundred thousand in the US and more
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Speaker 1: than a million in Britain. It was the best selling
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Speaker 1: book released in the nineteenth century, second only to The Bible,
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Speaker 1: and the first American novel translated into Chinese. It was
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Speaker 1: a radical, innovative book. Stowe had diligently gathered shards of
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Speaker 1: factual evidence from multiple sources and painstakingly forged her fictional
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Speaker 1: account from them. What she created was a story that
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Speaker 1: moved people more profoundly than bare fact alone had. Its
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Speaker 1: impact was enormous, galvanizing anti slavery sentiment in the North,
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Speaker 1: infuriating the South, priming public opinion for the election of
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Speaker 1: an anti slavery Republican president, and widening the divisions that
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Speaker 1: brought about the Civil War. The novel made this Connecticut
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Speaker 1: born preacher's daughter and minister's wife and mother of seven,
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Speaker 1: previously a little known author of short stories and educational tracts,
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Speaker 1: the most famous and influential woman in America is this
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Speaker 1: the little woman who made this great war. Abraham Lincoln
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Speaker 1: is reported to have said on meeting the five foot
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Speaker 1: tall author at the White House in eighteen sixty two,
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Speaker 1: where she had come to lobby for the Emancipation Proclamation.
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Speaker 1: Stowe had grown up in a family disinclined toward orthodoxy.
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Speaker 1: Her father, the preacher Lyman Beecher, had discarded the angry
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Speaker 1: God of New England Calvinism in favor of a more
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Speaker 1: inclusive faith, and Harriet's brother, Henry Ward Beecher, refined this
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Speaker 1: further into the Gospel of Love, a term he coined
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Speaker 1: in a series of lectures at Yale University. Uncle Tom's
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Speaker 1: cabin is suffused with Henry's ideal of loving kindness. Tom
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Speaker 1: himself is a christ like figure who dies to protect
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Speaker 1: others and forgives the overseers ordered to lash him to
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Speaker 1: death for refusing to divulge the whereabouts of two escaped women.
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Speaker 1: Stowe's anti slavery passions intensified when she moved from Connecticut
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Speaker 1: to Cincinnati, where her father had been appointed president of
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Speaker 1: the New Lane Theological Seminary. There, she witnessed slave catchers
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Speaker 1: enabled by the eighteen fifty fugitive slave Act, requiring northerners
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Speaker 1: to aid in capturing and returning enslaved people to their enslavers,
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Speaker 1: actively hunting escapees who'd made it across the Ohio River.
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Speaker 1: She was appalled when a pro slavery mob sacked the
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Speaker 1: premises of an abolitionist newspaper and vandalized the homes of
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Speaker 1: free black people in the city. A year later, Elijah P. Lovejoy,
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Speaker 1: another anti slavery editor and a friend of the Beechers,
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Speaker 1: was murdered by a riotous mob in Alton, Illinois. In
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Speaker 1: her novel's concluding remarks, Stowe discloses that for many years
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Speaker 1: she considered the subject of enslavement quote too painful to
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Speaker 1: be inquired into end quote. In fact, the passage of
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Speaker 1: the Fugitive Slave Act impelled her. She was appalled by
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Speaker 1: the cowed complicity she witnessed among her neighbors and friends,
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Speaker 1: But a more personal loss pervades her novel too. When
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Speaker 1: her son Charlie died of cholera at eighteen months in
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Speaker 1: eighteen forty nine, she wrote, it was at his dying
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Speaker 1: bed and at his grave, that I learned what a
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Speaker 1: poor slave mother may feel when her child is torn
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Speaker 1: away from her thereafter, she decided she would work to
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Speaker 1: show slavery quote in living dramatic reality end quote. Uncle
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Speaker 1: Tom's Cabin is a deeply researched book. Its fictional plot
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Speaker 1: lines draw directly from narratives of escapees, as well as
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Speaker 1: from Henry's accounts of his encounters in slave states, from
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Speaker 1: reporting in the abolitionist press, and from interviews with black
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Speaker 1: people Stowe employed as domestic servants and those she met
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Speaker 1: in academic and religious circles. She credits the inspiration for
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Speaker 1: Tom's character to the experience of her cook, a free
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Speaker 1: black woman whose enslaved husband in Kentucky quote with such
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Speaker 1: a Christian I could not get him to run away
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Speaker 1: in quote, even when his enslaver sent him on errands
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Speaker 1: to Ohio. The character of Tom's wife, Chloe, is modeled
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Speaker 1: on Stowe's housekeeper aunt Frankie, whom she admired for her
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Speaker 1: resourcefulness and good humor. The Stowe family's own anti slavery acts,
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Speaker 1: including transporting runaways in the dark of night, find their
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Speaker 1: way into the novel's account of the flight of one
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Speaker 1: enslaved person, Eliza. Eliza's tale is also inspired by the
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Speaker 1: experiences of the abolitionist John Rankin, who gave sanctuary to
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Speaker 1: a woman and her two year old who had crossed
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Speaker 1: the Ohio River on planks and ice floes. When Southerners,
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Speaker 1: appalled by the book's impact decried it as libelous exaggerations
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Speaker 1: and sensationalized falsehoods, Stowe in eighteen fifty three published a
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Speaker 1: Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin, in which she set out
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Speaker 1: these and other sources she had drawn on, including slave
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Speaker 1: narratives such as the life of Josiah Henson, formerly a
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Speaker 1: slave now an inhabitant of Canada, as narrated by himself. Henson,
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Speaker 1: who escaped grueling conditions in Maryland, called himself the real
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Speaker 1: Uncle Tom and took pride in his association with Stowe's book.
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Speaker 1: Stowe took these first person testimonies as her scaffolding, then
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Speaker 1: built upon them an imaginative edifice of intense emotion. While
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Speaker 1: writers such as James Baldwin have blasted the stereotypes and
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Speaker 1: minstrelsy in Stowe's novels, scholars such as Henry Lewis Gates
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Speaker 1: Junior and David S. Reynolds's author of Mightier Than the Sword,
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Speaker 1: which charts the novel's huge impact, have praised the book.
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Speaker 1: There are moments of sharp wit and passages of great
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Speaker 1: power throughout the dramatic, sometimes melodramatic action. Consider the response
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Speaker 1: of an escapee, George, when chastised by a white business
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Speaker 1: man for breaking the quote laws of his country. My
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Speaker 1: country again, mister Wilson, you have a country? But what
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Speaker 1: country have I or any one like me born of
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Speaker 1: slave mothers? What laws are there for us? We don't
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Speaker 1: make them, we don't cons sent to them, We have
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Speaker 1: nothing to do with them. All they do for us
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Speaker 1: is to crush us and keep us down. Heaven, I
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Speaker 1: heard your Fourth of July speeches. Don't you tell us
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Speaker 1: all once a year that governments derive their just power
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Speaker 1: from the consent of the governed. Can't a fellow think
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Speaker 1: that hears such things? Can he put this and that
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Speaker 1: together and see what it comes to? Four months after
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Speaker 1: Uncle Tom's Cabin was published, Frederick Douglas, who had praised
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Speaker 1: the novel, delivered his famous oration What to the Slave
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Speaker 1: is the fourth of July. The address contains powerful echoes
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Speaker 1: of the arguments Stow created for George. Though thousands of
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Speaker 1: Americans read the book, many more thousands saw theatrical adaptations
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Speaker 1: of the story performed on stages across America long after
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Speaker 1: the Civil War. In Lexington, Kentucky, in the early nineteen hundreds,
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Speaker 1: the United Daughters of the Confederacy lobbied in Opera House,
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Speaker 1: unsuccessfully to have the wildly popular play shut down. The
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Speaker 1: group then turned to the state legislature, which in nineteen
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Speaker 1: o six passed the Uncle Tom's Cabin Law, allowing censorship
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Speaker 1: of any production depicting past race relations in a bad light.
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Speaker 1: The daughters had argued that such depictions were injurious, especially
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Speaker 1: to the quote plastic minds of children and quote unjust
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Speaker 1: to the memories of their fathers. Harriet Beecher Stowe would
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Speaker 1: not have agreed. In her novel's concluding remarks, she wrote,
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Speaker 1: nothing of tragedy can be written, can be spoken, can
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Speaker 1: be conceived that equals the frightful reality of the scenes,
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Speaker 1: daily and hourly acting on our shores beneath the shadow
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Speaker 1: of American law and the shadow of the Cross of Christ.
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Speaker 1: And now, men and women of America, is this a
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Speaker 1: thing to be trifled with, apologized for, and passed over
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Speaker 1: in silence? And with this article? Did you know? The
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Speaker 1: prolific mind of Stowe, though most famous for Uncle Tom's Cabin.
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Speaker 1: Stowe wrote thirty odd books over the course of a
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Speaker 1: five decade career. Her novels included Dread, A Tale of
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Speaker 1: the Great Dismal Swamp eighteen fifty six, The Minister's Wooing
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Speaker 1: eighteen fifty nine, and more. Her travel and memoir writing
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Speaker 1: included Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands eighteen fifty four and
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Speaker 1: Palmettow Leaves eighteen seventy three. She also wrote short stories,
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Speaker 1: including The Mayflower or Tales and Pencilings eighteen forty three
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Speaker 1: and Old Town Fireside Stories eighteen seventy two, as well
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Speaker 1: as instructive books for children, such as Primary Geography for
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Speaker 1: Children eighteen thirty three, and also with this article how
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Speaker 1: America found its literary voice. It didn't take long for
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Speaker 1: the young country to achieve a controlling interest in bookish
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Speaker 1: innovation by Ted Scheinman. When did America seize English from
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Speaker 1: the English? It's a leading question, yet it can be
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Speaker 1: answered simply and truthfully. America began to reinvent anglophone literature
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Speaker 1: some time between Anne Bradstreet's arrival in the Colonies and
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Speaker 1: Benjamin Franklin's first pamphlet, long before Ralph Waldo Emerson declared
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Speaker 1: in eighteen thirty seven that we will work with our
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Speaker 1: own hands, we will speak our own minds. A new
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Speaker 1: artist had emerged, the American speaker a radically self authorizing eye,
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Speaker 1: unlike other peoples. The British critic Christopher Dawson wrote, the
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Speaker 1: United States found their origin in a deliberate act of
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Speaker 1: corporate self assertion, and ever since the Revolution, every little
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Speaker 1: American has been taught to associate himself personally with this
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Speaker 1: creative act. Between the eighteenth century and modernism, America produced
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Speaker 1: many of the most revolutionary innovations in Anglophone letters. The
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Speaker 1: continent was new, at least to Europeans. It was a
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Speaker 1: time to make literature new as well. So American authors
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Speaker 1: reinvented tradition based on long ago sources, theologian Jonathan Edwards
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Speaker 1: rediscovering the Wrath of the Hebrew God, or T. S.
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Speaker 1: Eliot drawing on Hindu scriptures and Dante. They also surpassed
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Speaker 1: tradition entirely. Hermann Melville expanded the Maritime Romance into an
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Speaker 1: epic metaphysical odyssey, and Tony Morrison used enslavement narratives and
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Speaker 1: African folklore to create an entirely new form of historical consciousness.
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Speaker 1: By nineteen fifty five, the American critic R. W. B.
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Speaker 1: Lewis could sketch and critique the singular progress of the
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Speaker 1: authentic American, poised at the start of a new history,
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Speaker 1: whose sense of newness made possible a series of original
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Speaker 1: inquiries and discoveries about human nature, art, and history. The
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Speaker 1: American voice thus reoriented the language toward psychological immediacy, conceptual immensity,
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Speaker 1: and ceaseless self reinvention, toward the frontier within as well
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Speaker 1: as without. Next, there was no American regional cuisine until
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Speaker 1: one Virginia housewife thought to compile a diverse collection of recipes.
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Speaker 1: Mary Randolph, an in law of the Jefferson family who
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Speaker 1: was influenced by enslaved cooks and traditions of European immigrants,
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Speaker 1: didn't change Southern cooking with her eighteen twenty four cookbook.
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Speaker 1: She originated it by Michael W. Twiddy. There was no
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Speaker 1: instruction manual for Mary Randolph to refer to during the
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Speaker 1: thirteen years she spent running Richmond, Virginia boarding house a wife, mother,
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Speaker 1: and entrepreneur in the early eighteen hundreds, she had to
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Speaker 1: figure out the most efficient ways to complete her many
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Speaker 1: tasks in the kitchen. Once she discovered what worked, Randolph
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Speaker 1: compiled her refined cooking techniques and recipes into eighteen twenty fours,
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Speaker 1: The Virginia Housewife. Widely recognized as the seminole Southern Cookbook,
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Speaker 1: Randolph's work inevitably represents the melding of traditions, without which
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Speaker 1: Southern cooking could not be what it is to day.
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Speaker 1: The book's nearly five hundred recipes, many originating and plantation kitchens,
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Speaker 1: not only speak to the South's unique culinary heritage, but
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Speaker 1: also tell the story of Transatlantic nations. Born in seventeen
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Speaker 1: sixty two on her family's plantation in what is known
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Speaker 1: today as the Black Belt of Virginia, where some fifty
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Speaker 1: to seventy percent of the population were of African descent,
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Speaker 1: Randolph was exposed to the first cuisines early on. The
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Speaker 1: enslaved cooks who prepared meals for her family upheld West
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Speaker 1: African cooking traditions, using the ingredients that were most similar
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Speaker 1: to those of their homeland. When visiting her brother Thomas
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Speaker 1: and his wife, Martha, Thomas Jefferson's daughter at Monticello, Randolph
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Speaker 1: would likely have enjoyed the cuisine prepared by enslaved cooks
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Speaker 1: Edith Fawcett and Fanny Hearn, who had been taught by
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Speaker 1: White House culinarian Honore Julien at Monticello. The women continued
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Speaker 1: the work of formerly enslaved French trained master chef James Hemmings,
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Speaker 1: who became the first to prepare macaroni and cheese in
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Speaker 1: the United States. The Virginia Housewife is said to be
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Speaker 1: the first U s cookbook to include a recipe for it.
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Speaker 1: The enslaved Africans and free people of color working around
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Speaker 1: Randolph were central in introducing her to the foods and
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Speaker 1: flavors that became the core of Southern cuisine. West Africans
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Speaker 1: were fond of layered, spicy one pot stews with various starches,
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Speaker 1: deep fried proteins, vegetables and fritters, grilled and barbecued meats,
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Speaker 1: and braised leafy greens. They used peppery spices to amplify
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Speaker 1: or temper the key ingredients allowed them. For example, a
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Speaker 1: muddy flavored catfish became pleasant under the influence of turmeric,
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Speaker 1: ginger and cayenne pepper. Randolph drew on other traditions too,
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Speaker 1: incorporating oysters, wild games such as rabbit, and indigenous crops
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Speaker 1: like squash and pumpkin into her recipes. She included popular
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Speaker 1: British dishes such as plum pudding, as well as Spanish
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Speaker 1: espacho gumbo, described as a West Indian dish, East Indian curry,
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Speaker 1: Scottish collops of veal, and French macarons, offering a glimpse
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Speaker 1: at Virginia's distinct demographics. Having closed her boarding house in
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Speaker 1: eighteen twenty, Randoff was retired and caring for her ailing
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Speaker 1: son when she decided to collect and publish her expertise
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Speaker 1: for a new generation of homemakers. The difficulties I encountered
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Speaker 1: when I first entered on the duties of a housekeeping
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Speaker 1: life from the want of books sufficiently clear and concise,
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Speaker 1: compelled me to study the subject, Randolph wrote. Her instructions
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Speaker 1: also standardized recipes using proper weights and measures reducing waste.
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Speaker 1: For when the ingredients employed were given in just proportions,
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Speaker 1: she wrote, the article made was always equally good, some
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Speaker 1: recipes had to be modified. She adapted British food staples
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Speaker 1: made from cool weather grains to her native environment, substituting
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Speaker 1: maize and creating authentic American fair corn Bread and hominy
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Speaker 1: replaced quick breads and porridge. Chicken, hogs, catfish, and shad
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Speaker 1: were consumed far more than beef and lamb. African dishes
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Speaker 1: were modified to Western constraints, and they all learned from
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Speaker 1: Native Americans who'd mastered how to best use the resources
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Speaker 1: of the land. Other expensive and sometimes difficult to find
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Speaker 1: groceries were imported from across the Atlantic. Randolph's Cacophony of
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Speaker 1: recipes includes beers, preserves, breads, and desserts. You won't find
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Speaker 1: lists of ingredients followed by numbered instructions, the familiar format
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Speaker 1: of today's recipes. Randolph wrote as though she were speaking
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Speaker 1: to the reader, and some might also hear the voices
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Speaker 1: of enslaved cooks, although they were denied in education or
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Speaker 1: publishing opportunities of their own. The black chefs who influenced
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Speaker 1: Randolph left their imprint on the book. Words with West
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Speaker 1: African origins like okra O, c h r A are
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Speaker 1: peppered throughout, yet it never explicitly credits those men and
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Speaker 1: women of African descent. Although she came from a notable
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Speaker 1: slaveholding family, Randolph understood that her business success was dependent
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Speaker 1: on the Black Virginians, who had been integrating food ways
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Speaker 1: from different lands since sixteen nineteen, when the first enslaved
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Speaker 1: Africans arrived. On paper, Randolph emphasized method and order. In reality,
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Speaker 1: she allowed her cooks a modicum of freedom in the
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Speaker 1: kitchen they shared. The book was a huge success for
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Speaker 1: the era, republished nineteen times before the Civil War, and
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Speaker 1: it spawned similar efforts from other chefs, including The Carolina
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Speaker 1: Housewife Domestic Cookery in fifty years in a Maryland Kitchen,
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Speaker 1: Randolph wrote that an extensive circulation of her recipes would
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Speaker 1: be satisfying. Should they prove serviceable to the young, inexperienced housekeeper,
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Speaker 1: it will add greatly to that gratification, she said. Some
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Speaker 1: two hundred years later, new editions of The Virginia Housewife
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Speaker 1: are still being being printed, and with this article fun
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Speaker 1: facts more family ties. James Hemmings, the chef credited with
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Speaker 1: creating the recipe for macaroni and cheese, was enslaved at
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Speaker 1: Monticello until he was thirty, along with many other members
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Speaker 1: of his family. With some seventy members over five generations,
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Speaker 1: the Hemmings were the largest family group living at Monticello,
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Speaker 1: cookbook author Mary Randolph was married to David Meade Randolph,
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Speaker 1: who was appointed U S. Marshal of Virginia by George
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Speaker 1: Washington in seventeen ninety five. Detailed genealogical records suggest Mary
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Speaker 1: Randolph was a sixth generation descendant of Indigenous American Pocahontas.
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Speaker 1: And with this article Five chefs who changed the way
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Speaker 1: we eat. Even if you never ate their food, their
20:55
Speaker 1: influence has been a key ingredient in American cuisine by
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Speaker 1: Terras Grescoe James Beard. Long before the Food Network turned
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Speaker 1: chefs into celebrities, Beard brought the first cooking show to
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Speaker 1: National TV with I Love to Eat in nineteen forty six.
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Speaker 1: Known for his eccentric persona, Beard published twenty six books,
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Speaker 1: championed everything from Sloppy Joe's to Lobster Newburgh, and established
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Speaker 1: a culinary brand, a cooking school, a foundation annual awards
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Speaker 1: that confers enduring bravitas on U S cookery Leah Chase.
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Speaker 1: In the nineteen sixties, Chase turned her in law's restaurant,
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Speaker 1: Dukie Chase's and New Orleans Tremet District into a temple
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Speaker 1: of Creole cuisine. Jim Crow Laws still banned black diners
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Speaker 1: from French quarter restaurants, so Chase fed. Leading lights of
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Speaker 1: the civil rights movement, James Baldwin favored her gumbo. Remarkably influential,
21:57
Speaker 1: she spread the gospel of shrimp, Clemenceau and each cobbler
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Speaker 1: in cookbooks and on TV. Julia Child Child's nineteen sixty
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Speaker 1: one Mastering the Art of French Cooking was the first
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Speaker 1: cookbook to demystify bechamel and roue for home cooks. After
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Speaker 1: a wartime stint for US intelligence, Child followed her husband
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Speaker 1: to Paris and graduated from La cordon Bleau Culinary School.
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Speaker 1: Her live public TV show The French Chef made her
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Speaker 1: a beloved celebrity for her uncompromising approach to casslet and
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Speaker 1: cocavet Alice Waters. The enduring buzz around farm to table
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Speaker 1: cooking began with New Jersey born Waters, who taught Americans
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Speaker 1: to follow the seasons as she'd seen Europeans do. After
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Speaker 1: studying at the Sorbonne, Waters opened her organic restaurant Chepanice
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Speaker 1: and Berkeley, California, in nineteen seventy one. In the nineteen nineties,
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Speaker 1: she pioneered the edible schoolyard which teach middle and high
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Speaker 1: school students to grow and cook organic produce, and finally,
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Speaker 1: Sean Sherman. In two thousand seven, while living in a
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Speaker 1: Mexican fishing village, Sherman met nearby Huichal people who'd never
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Speaker 1: stopped using traditional ingredients in Aglala Lakota, who grew up
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Speaker 1: in South Dakota, Sherman was inspired to study what his
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Speaker 1: people ate before European contact. Starting small in twenty fifteen
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Speaker 1: with the Food Truck in Minneapolis, he went on to
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Speaker 1: write The Sioux Chef's Indigenous Kitchen twenty seventeen, and his
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Speaker 1: Minneapolis restaurant Owomni has won awards for its pre colonial cuisine.
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Speaker 1: He's part of a wave of chefs charting the culinary future. Finally,
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Speaker 1: when Clarence Bird's Eye tasted the trout that had been
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Speaker 1: frozen by Inuit fishermen, it changed the way we buy food.
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Speaker 1: The inventive entrepreneur concluded that the faster things were frozen,
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Speaker 1: the less damage was done to the structure of the food.
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Speaker 1: Once thawed, they were exactly like fresh. By Michelle Stacy,
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Speaker 1: It's a Tail Ripe for the Screen in nineteen twelve.
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Speaker 1: A twenty five year old Brooklyn native with an adventurous
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Speaker 1: streak journeys to the icy reaches of Northeast Canada, where
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Speaker 1: he spends the better part of five years learning indigenous ways.
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Speaker 1: One particular practice fascinates him Inuit fisherman's method for preserving fish,
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Speaker 1: which involves simply pulling a trout out of a hole
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Speaker 1: in the ice and letting it freeze almost instantly in
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Speaker 1: the minus thirty degree air. When thawed and cooked, the
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Speaker 1: fish tastes remarkably fresh. The young man has just learned
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Speaker 1: a trick to freezing food in a palatable way, which
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Speaker 1: will bring him a fortune in the decades to come.
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Speaker 1: His name is Clarence Bird's Eye. The key to maintaining
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Speaker 1: freshness Bird's Eye realized was crystallization. When a food freezes slowly,
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Speaker 1: the liquid within forms large ice crystals, which d damage
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Speaker 1: its cell structure. The result, when thawed a leaky, greeny,
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Speaker 1: mushy product, which was the only kind of frozen food
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Speaker 1: available in the United States in the early nineteen hundreds.
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Speaker 1: Flash freezing, however, results in tiny ice crystals, preserving the
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Speaker 1: food's texture and flavor. That discovery led to the creation
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Speaker 1: of the Bird's Eye Company in nineteen twenty three, opening
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Speaker 1: the door to what is now an almost three hundred
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Speaker 1: billion dollar global frozen foods industry and to a larger
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Speaker 1: universe of ready made, packaged and processed foods. But Bird's
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Speaker 1: Eyes innovations went far beyond simply importing the quick freeze method.
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Speaker 1: His ideas were so new that he had to pioneer
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Speaker 1: every step of production, inventing machines along the way. The
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Speaker 1: first of his more than two hundred patent applications was
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Speaker 1: for insulated containers to keep his products cool. He also
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Speaker 1: developed new waterproof inks, glues, and cellophane that could withstand
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Speaker 1: freezing and thawing. A popular Science monthly headline called Bird's
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Speaker 1: Eye products exactly like Fresh in September nineteen thirty. Two
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Speaker 1: years later, The New York Times declared his innovations a
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Speaker 1: scientific miracle. But Bird's Eye still faced challenges to overcome
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Speaker 1: a stigma of frozen goods. He called his first line
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Speaker 1: of products frosted foods. Another earlier barrier was infrastructure. Electric
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Speaker 1: refrigerators began to replace ice boxes only in the late twenties,
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Speaker 1: and the freezer compartment was just a tiny slot for
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Speaker 1: ice cube trays. Free Standing home freezers were rare, and
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Speaker 1: there were no trucks or train cars equipped to transport
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Speaker 1: frozen foods or warehouses cold enough to keep them. It
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Speaker 1: took a Second World War for the country to catch
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Speaker 1: up to Bird's Eye's vision, when America's armed forces created
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Speaker 1: the means to preserve and transport food to troops overseas.
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Speaker 1: Items like frozen orange juice concentrate, and prototype frozen meals
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Speaker 1: fueled a postwar boom and processed food technology. In nineteen
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Speaker 1: forty seven, the two door refrigerator freezer debuted with more
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Speaker 1: space for frozen goods. At the same time, more women
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Speaker 1: were entering the workforce. According to the Department of Labor,
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Speaker 1: by nineteen fifty three, thirty percent of married women had jobs.
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Speaker 1: By nineteen sixty, twice as many wives were employed as
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Speaker 1: had been a decade before. Food marketers identified a new consumer,
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Speaker 1: the harried mom who works but still has to put
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Speaker 1: dinner on the table. Frozen and processed foods saved time,
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Speaker 1: so the industry advertised speed as the most important concept
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Speaker 1: in cooking, says food historian Laura Shapiro, author of Something
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Speaker 1: from the Oven, reinventing dinner. In nineteen fifties, America. The
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Speaker 1: Swanson brothers attempt to save consumers time came in nineteen
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Speaker 1: fifty four when they introduced the brilliantly branded TV Dinner,
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Speaker 1: an entire meal in a tray that went straight from
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Speaker 1: the freezer to the oven. This concludes readings from the
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Speaker 1: Smithsonian Magazine for today. Your reader has been Rebecca Shore.
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Speaker 1: Thank you for listening, and have a great day.