Echoes of the Feast: A Thanksgiving History of Food, Culture, and Tradition

Echoes of the Feast: A Thanksgiving History of Food, Culture, and Tradition is a cinematic, time-traveling journey through the real story of the American Thanksgiving meal. This episode moves across centuries to reveal how each dish on the table came to be — shaped by Indigenous agricultural knowledge, colonial hardship, national mythmaking, Black culinary traditions, migration, and modern reinvention.

Through immersive soundscapes and historical narration, the episode traces:

• Indigenous harvest practices of corn, beans, squash, wild turkey, and maple sugar

• The reality of seventeenth-century survival and why the 1621 gathering was not the first “Thanksgiving”

• Nineteenth-century writers and political leaders who invented the holiday as a unifying national tradition

• The deep influence of Black cooks in the post-emancipation South, whose foodways transformed the holiday table

• The Great Migration, which carried Southern dishes — including dressing, sweet potatoes, greens, and macaroni and cheese — into cities across the country

• The rise of industrial food brands like Ocean Spray, Libby’s, and Campbell’s, which standardized the mid-twentieth-century Thanksgiving menu

• And the modern feast, shaped by chosen families, fusion dishes, cultural diversity, and evolving traditions

This is not a story about myth.
It is a story about people — about how history, culture, and memory have shaped the meal we recognize today.

Echoes of the Feast is part of the Beyond the Table Thanksgiving arc, alongside:
• What’s Cooking — a cultural exploration of the 2000 film and the families it brings to the table
• Thanksgiving, Everywhere — a journey across global gratitude traditions and how communities honor harvest, survival, and gathering

If Beyond the Table resonates with you, please follow, rate, and share the show. Your support helps these stories reach more listeners.

Written and produced by Amanda Clemons.

 

Resources:

• “What Was Eaten at the First Thanksgiving?” — History.com

• “The Story Behind Thanksgiving’s Most Polarizing Dish” — Food & Wine

• “How the Traditional Thanksgiving Feast Has Evolved Over Centuries” — National Geographic

• “African American Origins to Thanksgiving Foods” — TN Tribune 

• “At Black Thanksgiving, both body and soul are fed” — Los Angeles Times 

• “How Thanksgiving Cuisine Earned a Place at the Table” — Library of Congress Blog

• “Why Do We Eat Turkey on Thanksgiving?” — Britannica 

• “As an African American Who Loves Thanksgiving, Must I Simply Ignore the Historical Suffering…” — Religion Dispatches