Fried Fish Is a Fixture in Black American Cuisine

Written & Photographed by Nafeesah Allen

Recently, I read that in Langston Hughes’s 1927 journal entry about meeting Zora Neale Hurston, he casually noted that they “went to eat some fried fish and watermelon.” It is no surprise that these two firebrands easily dismissed taboos about the fruit and were unashamed in enjoying the juicy nectar of being Black in America. But, I wondered what to make of their dining on fried fish. It bears neither iconography of stigma nor signals of celebration, but I knew that with these two nothing is as simple as it seems. So, I set about trying to uncover the hidden value of fried fish. 

As a staple in the African-American culinary tradition, fried fish has adapted to socioeconomic shifts, corresponded to the Black community’s entrepreneurial spirit and crowdfunding needs, and reinvented itself throughout the African Diaspora. Though the mainstay in our diets has surreptitiously infiltrated all parts of Black life in the Americas, it has managed to remain an underdog among favored dishes and has been underexplored as a line of inquiry around Black life on this side of the Atlantic Ocean.

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 In 2001, at the ripe old age of 16, I decided I would be a pescatarian. I lived in Spain the year prior and had, for the first time in my life, become seriously ill upon eating meat and poultry. Both sides of my family were interfaith, so we were accustomed to avoiding pork. But being the first to adopt a non-religious dietary restriction, my experience was an education for us all.

Though I grew up in Newark, New Jersey, I am undoubtedly a Great Migration grandchild, the second generation to live in the North. My people are from the Deep South—South Carolina and Alabama. There, you cook what you have, and you eat what’s been cooked. My health, however, demanded a new dialogue with soul food, and the mothers in my life’s kitchens took time to be convinced of the staying power of my shift.

For the next three years, my maternal grandmother would offer me fried chicken at Thanksgiving in the hopes that I would become “normal” again, but over time she realized that this was no passing phase. Together, we re-discovered that no special accommodations were needed for me.

Fried fish had always been a fixture in our gatherings. This unsung hero of family meals took on new purpose in keeping our bonds strong. 

Black folk have a strong tradition of letting fried fish hold court. Fridays are for fish fries and hushpuppies. Sundays are for salmon cakes with grits. Any day is perfect for a fried whiting sandwich. And when we hit the road, an aluminum foil–wrapped fish po’ boy is never far afield.

Over the years, we have also learned to welcome the flavors of the new Black migrants who have made a home in the tri-state area. Escovitch fish from the Jamaicans in Newark, poisson frit from the Haitians in East Orange, fish yassa from the Senegalese in Harlem are now as familiar to me as our own cornbread, candied yams and collard greens. Like these side dishes, fried fish has become so ever-present on our plates that it is easily overshadowed by its accompaniments. It is not nearly as prized as the big piece of chicken. Yet, there is value to understanding the role fish has played in keeping our communities stable and growing.

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In 2018, Korsha Wilson took to the New York Times to share her love for fish fries. The gatherings are a Black social tradition, which typically entails one person (in my family, always a woman) battering and deep frying flaky white fish over a series of hours for a rolling caravan of arriving friends, family and community members. Soul food scholar Adrian E. Miller explained to Wilson that the fish fry has its roots in slavery and was one of the few meals that enslaved people enjoyed in their scarce “free time.”

Though there’s evidence that fish was a sacred food reserved for special occasions even before the time of Christ, Christians generally and Roman Catholics in particular popularized eating fish on Fridays as a substitute for warm-blooded animals, which were forbidden to be consumed on that day of the week.

The Black Church, of course, added its own flair to the practice. Smoky seasonings color the blank palette of Atlantic and Gulf fish like porgy and whiting. Salty flavors mask the grit and cornmeal camouflages the texture of Mississippi River scavengers, like the blue and flathead catfish. And hot pepper sauce was rumored to stave off water- and mosquito-borne illnesses.

We still hold fish fries on Fridays, with gatherings starting promptly after a hard week’s work. And like Barbados’ famous fish market in Oistins, which hosts its weekly Friday fish fry beachside, food is served well into the wee hours of Saturday morning 

This is called making due with what you have. Whether it be enslaved people seeking community or blue-collar workers in need of a break, Black people in working-class communities have seen fish fries as an affordable way to practice communal self-care. Large meals meant for an entire neighborhood can be cost prohibitive and cumbersome, but for fish fries, the largest outlay is the grease. 

Though much has been written about African-American sharecropping and backyard chicken coops, it is important to remember that coastal families were equally as accustomed to subsistence fishing. New Orleans foodways are a testament to the accessibility of what we now consider to be high-end sea foods. Crayfish, catfish and crawfish were not the delicacies they have now become, instead they were rather mundane for Black people. As such, we became inventive in their preparation styles, intent to stretch a meal to feed many bellies, over many days. The affordability of these gatherings is intrinsic to their staying power. 

As African-Americans migrated to the North for better paying industrial jobs over the 1930s and ’40s, they valued community more than as ever. In these unfamiliar spaces, people heavily relied on these weekly interactions to convene their informal networks. Between dashes of Frank’s Red Hot, acquaintances conversed to find jobs, access schools, get loans, pay bills, marry off children and bury relatives.

Something else started happening too: With banks generally untrustworthy and insurance companies racially discriminatory, small businesses within the Black community became a lifeblood for socioeconomic progress. Again, the low cost and minimal time investment associated with preparing fried fish made take away businesses ripe for replication throughout northern cities. From boarding houses to lunch pails, fried fish sandwiches made frequent, repeat appearances in working class diets. They quickly became a fixture on the menus of Black-owned take-outs and humble lunch counters in Great Migration outposts along the Detroit River, the D.C. Wharf, Baltimore’s Harbor and other port cities above the Mason Dixon. 

The association with fried fish—rather than grilled or broiled—is marked by class. For some reason, the state of being fried somehow classed down the meal, but the benefit was that fish was made mobile. The breading made the fish solid, created less mess and eliminated the need for a fork and knife. And the enveloping in cheap sliced bread would help a stray bone go down if it didn’t get caught during a chew.

Fried fish sandwiches are the hoagie of Black America. Both are comfort food for hard working people. Throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s, both were easily sold at a profit, making them cash cows for fundraisers. Throughout my childhood, I recall summers filled with family members taking weekend orders for fish platters. Proceeds went to church building funds or doubled as a respectable alternative to a rent party.

What I didn’t realize until much later into adulthood is that the Nation of Islam cornered the market on fried whiting, versus other fish varieties, in the mid- to late 1970s. Rumor has it that holdovers from tent revivals in the Baptist and Pentecostal churches kept catfish in vogue, which ostracized the growing Black Muslim community that viewed the bottom dwelling fish as haraam (prohibited). Not to be pushed out of mainstream Black life, the Islamic Brotherhood started importing white fish from South America, opened its own parallel establishments, and is still known today for their food trucks like E & S Original Steak-N-Take in my hometown, which is actually best known for its fried fish.

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That 2001 trip to Europe was the first of many immersive expat experiences I’ve had throughout my adult life. In every country, I would inevitably meet women in kitchens on every continent and have to re-enact the same conversation I had with my grandmothers. I briefly explain that I regrettably can’t eat their down-home cooking and would love to sample their fish instead. Throughout the African diaspora, there is typically a bit of a scramble for a substitute that has the same charm as meat-heavy national dishes. However, I have benefited immensely from the former French colonies’ familiar reliance on fried fish as a staple food. 

 I have made it a habit to try Haitian fried red snapper all along the American east coast, in an unannounced taste testing contest to see if any place rivals my neighborhood favorite. Harlem first brought me into contact with Senegal’s thieboudienne, pan-fried fish chunks atop a jollof rice stew, and—by far—it tops my list of fish favorites. Not only is it delicious and filling, but it has been a transnational anchor throughout my sojourns. I have eaten it family-style on the living room floor of the Sengalese Ambassador to India. I have been served from a bucket in Cape Verde’s Sucupira market. And the flavors are just as vibrant as they are in my old Harlem haunt, Le Baobab.

 When in Ghana for the first time in 2005, I met the late, great African poet Kofi Awonoor. He greeted our all-female group with warm introductions, and I distinctly remember him saying that I would be particularly delighted with the fried fish at a local restaurant run by residents from Cote d’Ivoire. After the meal, we bonded over the fact that we had no idea how they managed to make an ordinary fish such a colorful delicacy. When I went back to Ghana last year, I made it a point to go to Chez Clarisse to mourn Awonoor (who died in the 2013 Nairobi attack) with a fried whole fish and bissap juice. Sweet nectar of the Gods.

Necessity forces me to disproportionately patronize Black-owned businesses that feed their families and my own with the golden-brown crisp of trout and crunchy croaker. The current pandemic temporarily shuttered the places I depend on most, like JJ’s Carryout and Fish in the Neighborhood on Georgia Avenue in D.C.

It was in that wake of fear that takeaways like Horace & Dickies wouldn’t survive the immediate stay-at-home orders or would be swept away in the looming wave of gentrification that I revisited the true value of Black commodification of the fish filet. I am eternally grateful to my ancestors, direct and indirect, for their creativity in making fried fish an ode to all things us. A symbol of health, a vehicle for wealth, pan- and deep-fried fish have made priceless contributions to the survival of migratory Black people all over the world. In our family, it is said that when a person dreams about fish, it is an auspicious sign of new life to come. For generations and across oceans, someone has dreamed of us, and, now more than ever, we are obliged to honor and protect that legacy.