How The “Welcome Table” Provided Comfort And Community

young couple holding hands while sitting down around a table
Via Unsplash
Briona Lamback
September 4, 2024

For us, breaking bread has always been more than sustenance. It’s rest, resistance, comfort, and community. The Welcome Table is a longstanding tradition worth remembering and continuing.

Southern Black culture birthed the Welcome Table, an ethic of Southern hospitality that offers a space where everyone is welcome to share in an abundance of food, joy, and community.

Our people created the Welcome Table to resist a society that often violently tried to limit us. But at the Welcome Table, there were no limits. Folks had space to enjoy, be grateful, and, most importantly, just be.

Many Black women who didn’t march during the Civil Rights Movement opened their homes and dressed their welcome tables to feed entire organizations and their activists. Food was their contribution, and it undeniably helped sustain the movement.

Community has always played a key role in our liberation struggle. We can accomplish much together when we open our hearts and welcome one another to our tables.

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