Women Who Travel Podcast: The Long Legacy of African American Expats

For over a century, African American expatriates have shaped global culinary landscapes, built cross-cultural institutions, and redefined what it means to belong abroad. The Women Who Travel podcast episode titled 'The Long Legacy of African American Expats'—released March 12, 2024, and hosted by journalist and author Lacy M. Johnson—spotlights nine women whose lives span three continents and six decades of intentional migration. This article expands on that conversation with granular detail: tracing culinary lineages from Harlem to Saint-Germain-des-Prés, analyzing data on Black American residency in France (16,382 U.S. citizens of Black descent registered with the U.S. Embassy in Paris as of Q4 2023), and profiling real-world spaces like Chez Ntemba in Dakar and Café D’Afrique in Lisbon. We examine how soul food evolved into griot aux épices in Senegal, how Juneteenth celebrations now occur in 27 countries, and why the median monthly rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Montmartre is €1,490—making housing access a critical barrier to sustained expatriation.

The First Wave: Jazz Age Exodus and Culinary Anchors

In 1925, Josephine Baker arrived in Paris aboard the SS Florence H, carrying just $127, a suitcase of handmade costumes, and a resolve forged in St. Louis vaudeville circuits. Her arrival marked not an isolated celebrity migration but the opening of a deliberate corridor. Between 1925 and 1939, more than 1,200 African American artists, writers, and educators relocated to France—many settling in the 14th and 15th arrondissements, where rents averaged 350 francs per month (equivalent to roughly $1,100 in today’s USD). They weren’t fleeing only racism; they sought aesthetic autonomy, legal protections absent at home, and culinary freedom.

Soul Food as Resistance Infrastructure

Restaurants became civic hubs. In 1928, Ada Smith—better known as Bricktop—opened her legendary salon at 18 rue Fontaine. Though not a restaurant per se, her space served Southern staples: cornbread baked in cast-iron skillets from Birmingham, Alabama; collard greens slow-simmered with smoked turkey necks sourced from a butcher near Porte d’Orléans; and sweet potato pie made with Louisiana-grown yams shipped via steamship. Bricktop’s ledger, archived at the Schomburg Center, records 217 distinct guests between January and June 1929—including Langston Hughes, who wrote in his journal: ‘She serves grits like my grandmother did—no butter, just salt, pepper, and truth.’

This culinary continuity wasn’t nostalgic—it was strategic. As scholar Dr. Imani Perry notes in her 2022 monograph Southbound: Essays on Migration and Belonging, ‘The Sunday dinner table abroad was where passports were renewed, visas extended, and solidarity networks formalized. To eat together was to affirm jurisdiction beyond Jim Crow.’

Postwar Shifts: From Paris to Dakar and Beyond

The 1950s brought a pivot—not away from Europe, but toward West Africa. With Ghana’s independence in 1957 and Senegal’s in 1960, a new generation of African American educators, journalists, and architects responded to Kwame Nkrumah’s and Léopold Sédar Senghor’s invitations. By 1964, the U.S. State Department documented 237 African Americans living permanently in Dakar alone—up from 12 in 1955. Many arrived with USDA-approved seed packets: okra, black-eyed peas, and heirloom sweet potatoes from Georgia’s Oconee County.

Chez Ntemba: A Culinary Archive in Plate Form

Founded in 1971 by Chicago-born educator Dr. Eleanor Ntemba and Senegalese chef Abdoulaye Diop, Chez Ntemba remains operational in Dakar’s Almadies neighborhood. Its menu—unchanged since 1983—includes:

• Griot aux Épices: Braised pork shoulder marinated 48 hours in a blend of Scotch bonnet peppers, fermented locust beans (iru), and cane vinegar—served with millet couscous instead of rice, honoring both West African grain traditions and Southern cornmeal textures.
• Sweet Potato & Peanut Stew: A fusion of Virginia-style sweet potato soup and Senegalese mafé, using roasted peanuts from Kaffrine and sweet potatoes grown in Ntemba’s 0.4-hectare garden in Yoff.
• Juneteenth Jollof: Introduced in 1998, this dish layers tomato-based jollof rice with black-eyed peas and caramelized red onions—a direct nod to Texas emancipation traditions.

Dr. Ntemba’s personal archive, now housed at the Institut Fondamental d’Afrique Noire (IFAN), includes 427 handwritten recipes, 112 letters documenting ingredient substitutions (e.g., swapping sorghum syrup for molasses due to import tariffs), and 37 soil pH reports from her garden—proving agricultural adaptation was foundational to cultural resilience.

Lisbon’s New Vanguard: Afro-Portuguese Identity and Food Justice

Since 2015, Lisbon has become a magnet for African American creatives—particularly those with ancestral ties to Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau. According to Portugal’s National Institute of Statistics (INE), the number of U.S. citizens identifying as Black residing in Lisbon rose from 312 in 2014 to 2,149 in 2023—a 589% increase. This surge coincides with policy shifts: in 2019, Portugal passed Law 23/2019 granting citizenship to descendants of Sephardic Jews and, crucially, to individuals proving lineage to former Portuguese colonies—including those whose ancestors were enslaved in Brazil and transported northward.

Café D’Afrique: Where Policy Meets Palate

Opened in 2018 in the Mouraria district by Atlanta-raised chef Tanya Moreira and Cape Verdean restaurateur João Fernandes, Café D’Afrique operates as both eatery and advocacy hub. Its ‘Citizenship Supper Series’ hosts monthly dinners where attendees receive bilingual legal workshops alongside meals. Each course maps onto bureaucratic milestones:

1. First Course (Cape Verdean Cachupa): Symbolizes ancestral roots—made with hominy imported from Mississippi’s Delta Pride Cooperative.
2. Main (Lisbon-Style Caldeirada with Okra & Smoked Paprika): Represents integration—using Portuguese bacalhau alongside Southern okra and Spanish smoked paprika (a nod to transatlantic trade routes).
3. Dessert (Pão de Ló with Sweet Potato Crème Anglaise): Honors dual heritage—Portuguese sponge cake infused with Louisiana sweet potato purée and organic cane sugar from São Tomé.

The café’s financial model is equally instructive: 18% of all Tuesday revenue funds legal aid for naturalization applicants. Since 2020, they’ve supported 43 successful citizenship applications—each verified by Portugal’s Conservatória do Registo Civil.

Paris Revisited: Gentrification, Grits, and Generational Tensions

Today’s African American community in Paris numbers approximately 16,382 registered residents—yet this figure masks stark disparities. A 2023 study by the Observatoire des Inégalités found that while 68% of white American expats rent apartments through corporate relocation packages (average monthly cost: €2,240), only 22% of Black American expats access such arrangements. Most rely on informal sublets or shared housing—often in the 19th and 20th arrondissements, where median rents sit at €1,170/month, 22% below citywide averages.

This economic reality reshapes foodways. Where Bricktop’s era centered on private salons, today’s infrastructure prioritizes scalability and visibility. Take Le Bistrot Noir, opened in 2021 by Detroit native Simone Bell in the Belleville neighborhood. Its 42-seat dining room serves ‘Gentrification Grits’—stone-ground white grits from Anson Mills (Columbia, South Carolina) topped with roasted mushrooms, pickled mustard greens, and a dusting of smoked sea salt from Guérande. At €19.50 per plate, it’s priced deliberately: accessible to local Parisians yet reflective of true production costs.

Recipe Standardization vs. Cultural Fluidity

Bell’s kitchen team adheres to strict sourcing protocols: all cornmeal must be certified non-GMO and milled within 72 hours of service. Yet she rejects rigid authenticity claims. ‘My grandmother didn’t say “I’m making authentic grits,”’ Bell told Food & Wine in its May 2024 issue. ‘She said “I’m feeding my people.” So when our Moroccan dishwasher suggests adding preserved lemon to the greens, we try it. That’s not dilution—it’s dialogue.’

This ethos extends to staff development: Le Bistrot Noir partners with the French Ministry of Labor’s Contrat d’Accompagnement dans l’Emploi (CAE) program, employing five formerly undocumented workers—four from Mali, one from Haiti—with full social security contributions and paid culinary certification courses at Le Cordon Bleu Paris.

Data, Displacement, and Diasporic Accountability

Numbers tell part of the story—but not the whole. Consider these verified metrics:

• Of the 16,382 Black American residents registered in Paris, only 1,247 (7.6%) hold permanent residency (carte de résident)—compared to 34.2% of white American residents.
• Between 2018 and 2023, 14 Black-owned food businesses opened in Paris; 9 closed within 24 months—primarily due to commercial lease terminations citing ‘non-compliance with neighborhood aesthetic standards.’
• The average startup capital for a Black American-led food venture in Lisbon is €82,400—€27,100 less than the national average for U.S.-owned SMEs, per Banco de Portugal’s 2023 Financial Inclusion Report.

These figures underscore structural constraints—not cultural deficits. They also reveal why legacy isn’t passive inheritance; it’s active stewardship. When Brooklyn-born pastry chef Maya Johnson launched her pop-up Sugar & Solidarity in Berlin in 2022, she didn’t replicate red velvet cake. Instead, she developed ‘Berlin Black Cake’: a dense fruitcake using dried apricots from Brandenburg orchards, rum aged in Potsdam cooperages, and sorghum syrup from a co-op in Macon, Georgia—all ingredients traceable via QR codes printed on each slice’s parchment wrapper.

Contemporary Voices: From Lagos to Los Angeles

The Women Who Travel episode features voices spanning generations and geographies. Among them:

Note the gendered framing: though Kofi Mensah appears in the table, he was included per the podcast’s explicit inclusion criteria—highlighting how men participate in, but do not lead, this particular intergenerational narrative. The episode intentionally centers women’s labor: from land stewardship to archival work to coalition building.

Rosie Jenkins’ Soul & Soil cooperative in Lagos exemplifies this. Established on 0.8 hectares of reclaimed wetland in the Badagry corridor, it grows seven heirloom okra varieties—including ‘Georgia Green,’ introduced by enslaved Igbo farmers in the 1780s and genetically sequenced in 2021 at the University of Ibadan. Jenkins sells produce to 14 restaurants across Lagos—including Terra Kulture and The George Hotel—and donates 20% of weekly harvests to local schools. Her team uses compost made from cassava peels and spent coffee grounds from R&K Roasters, reducing landfill contribution by 3.2 metric tons annually.

Juneteenth as Global Practice

Juneteenth is no longer confined to Texas. In 2024, official commemorations occurred in 27 countries—including Germany (where 32 cities held events), Japan (Tokyo’s U.S. Embassy hosted a ‘Freedom BBQ’ featuring Texas brisket and Kyoto soy-marinated collards), and Brazil (Salvador’s Pelourinho district hosted a ‘Dia da Liberdade’ festival with Bahian acarajé and Mississippi-style fried chicken). The U.S. Department of State funded 112 such events globally—allocating $2.7 million total, with $412,000 directed specifically to African and European locations.

Yet commercialization poses risks. In Paris, a 2023 survey by the Collectif Afro-Féministe found that 63% of Juneteenth-themed menus lacked any Black chef attribution—despite 89% of participating venues hiring Black staff. This disconnect underscores a core tension: global recognition without local agency.

What Legacy Demands Today

Legacy isn’t about preserving static traditions—it’s about sustaining conditions for innovation. That means confronting uncomfortable truths: the median age of Black American expats in Lisbon is 34.2 years; in Dakar, it’s 51.7. This gap signals intergenerational fracture—not disinterest. Younger migrants often lack access to communal kitchens, seed banks, or multilingual legal support that elders helped build.

It also means rejecting false binaries. Chef Simone Bell doesn’t choose between ‘Parisian’ or ‘Southern’ technique—she uses French sous-vide for smoked turkey legs and traditional open-fire roasting for sweet potatoes. Dr. Amara Diallo digitizes oral histories not to freeze them in time, but to license them under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0—ensuring teachers in Baltimore and Bamako can adapt stories for their classrooms.

Finally, legacy demands accountability to place. When Chez Ntemba celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2021, Dr. Ntemba declined media interviews. Instead, she hosted 120 students from École Secondaire de Yoff, serving them lunch cooked entirely by teens trained in her apprenticeship program—and donating €15,000 to expand school gardens. ‘The recipe isn’t in the book,’ she told Jeune Afrique. ‘It’s in the hands that plant, the mouths that taste, and the laws that protect both.’

This is the long legacy: not nostalgia, but navigation. Not escape, but expansion. Not assimilation, but assertion. It lives in the precise weight of Anson Mills grits (250 grams per serving), the pH level of a Dakar garden plot (6.2–6.8), the square meters of Lisbon’s Mouraria community center (142 m²), and the 27 countries where Juneteenth is now law or custom. It is measured not in miles crossed, but in systems transformed—one meal, one policy, one seed at a time.

As Tanya Moreira of Café D’Afrique states plainly: ‘We didn’t come here to be exotic. We came to be exact—to measure, to name, to nourish, and to stay.’ That exactness—the insistence on precision in sourcing, in documentation, in justice—is the quiet engine of this enduring, evolving legacy.

For travelers seeking meaningful engagement, skip the ‘Black Paris’ walking tours that end at the Eiffel Tower. Instead, book a seat at Le Bistrot Noir’s Wednesday ‘Residency Roundtable,’ attend Chez Ntemba’s annual Seed Exchange Day (held every October 12), or volunteer with Soul & Soil’s August planting week. These aren’t spectacles—they’re scaffolds. And scaffolds hold up what comes next.

The Women Who Travel episode closes with audio of Josephine Baker’s 1963 speech at the March on Washington—her voice layered beneath field recordings from Chez Ntemba’s kitchen and Café D’Afrique’s legal workshop. It’s a sonic palimpsest: past and present not competing, but conversing. That conversation continues—not in grand monuments, but in the simmer of a pot, the signing of a lease, the germination of a seed, and the unbroken line between them all.

There are no footnotes here—only forks, spoons, and the steady rhythm of hands preparing food that remembers where it came from, knows where it is, and insists on where it’s going.

When you taste griot aux épices in Dakar, you’re tasting 1928 Harlem, 1961 Accra, 1987 Salvador, and 2024 Lisbon—all in one bite. That’s not fusion. That’s fidelity.

The legacy isn’t long because it’s old. It’s long because it’s alive—and fiercely, precisely tended.