Myriah Towner

Credit: Director

This immersive, virtual reality journey reveals the stories of African American food and drink producers Deborah and Mary Jones of Jones Bar-B-Q in Kansas City, Kansas, and Matthew Raiford and Jovan Sage of Gilliard Farms. The immersive experience is featured in the Museum of Food and Drink's exhibition, African/American: Making the Nation's Table.

Credit: Associate Producer

From July 15 to August 15, 2022, home cooks can share their time-honored dishes, desserts, or drinks on Pinterest to enter the contest. A Golden Recipe is a treasured dish that, to you, says “home.” It can be a family tradition, a holiday favorite, or any recipe that is meaningful to your family or community.

This year for Juneteenth, spend the holiday supporting local businesses.

Juneteenth is a deeply important event commemorating the effective end of slavery in the US, and an opportunity for us all to celebrate Black culture. Food plays a significant role in storytelling and community, and these Black creators are setting the table with a full course of inspired recipes and perspectives in the form of their own culinary traditions.

Project Lead & Producer

There is a rich, beautiful, complex, and diverse narrative being told by African Americans and other persons of color in the floral marketplace. It is long past time to recognize their excellence and contributions to cut flower farming and floristry. Garden writer, podcaster, and blogger Teresa J. Speight of Cottage in the Court shares her interviews and profiles with leading pioneers and explores their lives rooted in the floral world.

Epilogue

Honoring Black farmers and their determination, resilience and innovation that carries them through.

Director/Producer

To celebrate the legacy of SAAFON for its 15th anniversary, this visual timeline documents the cultivation of SAAFON's love, work and dedication to Black farmers since its founding in 2006.

Strategist, Web Designer, Digital Curator, Storyteller

A multimedia storyteller found an emotional mission: documenting the rich lives of Black farmers and ranchers. She started with her own kinfolk and her fellow Texans.
Black agricultural producers have long called Texas home. Across the state, Black ranchers and farmers own cattle operations that sprawl across hundreds of acres, sell their beef directly to customers, and cultivate crops such as watermelon and cowpea hay.

Writer

MOFAD is mapping Black food and drink businesses across the country as part of African/American: Making the Nation's Table. Legacy businesses have been in operation for 50 years or longer and are still serving communities today.

Digital Strategist, Project Manager

The Legacy Quilt Project is a digital platform and story-gathering project developed to celebrate the countless Black farmers, chefs, and food and drink producers who have laid the foundation for American food culture. The project is featured in the Museum of Food and Drink's exhibition African/American: Making the Nation’s Table.

Digital Strategist, Project Manager

A SAAFON docu-series profiling Black farmers from around the Southeast.

Created By - Myriah Towner

Directed/Produced/Edited By - LeeAnn C. Morrissette

Black Farmer Stories is a digital platform and multimedia project that preserves the history, legacy and agricultural knowledge of Black farmers and ranchers in the U.S. through storytelling, and increases the knowledge of the general public about these important histories and stories.

Founder

Trace some of the people, food, and culinary knowledge from Africa to the Americas and across the US. Explore the ways African Americans have refashioned our country’s food through creativity, skill, and entrepreneurship. Meet the people who have built our national culinary identity.

Curatorial Associate and Digital Project Manager

The Carnegie-Myrdal Study of the Negro in America research memoranda archive housed at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, contains the output of a stellar team of social scientists who worked with Myrdal to study “the Negro problem” on behalf of the Carnegie Corporation of New York. This digital platform greatly expands the access that scholars and the general public have to these materials. In doing so, it increases the visibility of the “hidden figures,” those scholars who worked alongside Myrdal, but whose roles are lesser-known.

Assistant Curator