‘Some Time We Have Trouble in Getting Mail. And Everything Else Here’: Black Women, Freedom Food and the US Postal System

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article puts food at the centre of the Civil Rights Movement by illuminating rural Black women's experiences accessing food and survival goods in Mississippi from 1964 to 1968. Examining letter correspondence, it demonstrates how Black women strategically participated in the little‐known postal benevolence programme, ‘Box Project’, to feed their families. Within the context of surplus commodities and the food stamp programme, the article reveals how the postal system allowed Black women to acquire food and engage in conversations with northern sympathisers about the insidious state welfare structure under which they lived. As the volume of boxes and letters entering Mississippi increased, so did the risk of Black women's strategic use of the interstate mail services. The US Postal System, as quotidian and seemingly benign a state apparatus, was a battleground for food and freedom for ordinary rural Black women.