In 2021, Marianne LeGreco and Niesha Douglas did something that had never been done in Greensboro. They published a book about food justice centered on Warnersville, the city’s first planned Black community. The state designated it as one of 17 food deserts in Greensboro, and it quickly became the center of conversations about food insecurity. The result was Everybody Eats, published five years ago.
Now, the pair are planning a book tour to commemorate the book’s fifth anniversary while continuing the dialogue about food, access, and agency in Greensboro today.
“I think the most reassuring thing is that there’s still a lot of creativity and ideas,” LeGreco said.
The book tour kicks off on Aug. 13 at the Back Table from 6-8 p.m. The first stop will be a social gathering where attendees can reconnect. The second stop will be at Scuppernong Books on Aug. 30 from 4-6 p.m. This session will dive into policy and intersections around food justice while highlighting the importance of storytelling. The last event is at Peaceful Seeds Farm on Sept. 12 from 4-7 p.m. This will be a potluck where people can talk about actionable steps in their communities around food.
The first five attendees at each event will receive a free copy of Everybody Eats.
“I think the most important thing that we want to capture with the book tour is recognition and celebration for the people and partnerships who contributed to the book, as well as support for collaborations we’ve been working with since then,” LeGreco said.
We caught up with Douglas and LeGreco ahead of their tour to talk about their work and what’s changed in the last five years in the food space.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
The book came out five years ago, during the pandemic. What have y’all learned since then?
LeGreco: I have spent the last five years doing two primary things: exploring the connection between food and music and the ways that those groups and the ways our hospitality community have supported each other in pandemic times and the post-COVID era.
There was a lot of uncertainty during that time, but we saw a lot of collaboration too. We saw food trucks supporting local music venues and vice versa. There was a lot of effective support within the community.
I had also done a lot of work with the Corner Farmers Market. We were doing things like making sure that policies were in place so that farmers markets could stay open and doing things like creating drive-through pickup stands so that people could still support farmers and support local vendors and get access to the foods that they were used to and needed during those times. And some of the things that we learned in that project were that we already have a lot of great communication infrastructure in place.
We saw some folks like Kathryn Hubert with Chez Genèse talk about support for things like Too Many Cooks in the Kitchen. I think those are all very reassuring pieces that have taught us that we’re still sustaining conversations around food.
Another big piece that has been part of my picture is that I’ve spent a lot of time in northwest California and southwest Oregon in very remote rural areas providing healthcare for my mom. It was like a true firsthand experience with the time and energy that it takes to get food in rural areas.
Douglas: For the past couple of years, this has significantly changed my career trajectory. I was a graduate student at UNC Charlotte working on adult and community education, actually, but the goal was for me to go back into the classroom and teach sports management classes. But along the way, I got pulled into this conversation when it comes to food access.
It stemmed from the neighborhood that I grew up in and how the Department of Health deemed our zip code as food insecure. And at the time, I didn’t know what that meant because, from my perspective, even though I lived and grew up in that neighborhood, I never experienced food insecurity because we always had food.
So just having these conversations, it opened my eyes because I knew people were struggling about getting food.
You’ve both worked and dealt with food access in rural areas. Tell me more about that.
Douglas: In 2022, I was presented with an opportunity to work and do research in a rural area, in the southeastern part of the state for the Center for Environmental Farm Systems at NC State.
I started reflecting on some of the conversations that we were having here in Guilford County then I kind of took that information, but I couldn’t necessarily have those same conversations in Robeson County or Bladen County or Columbus County because people in those areas had so many other problems and barriers on top of not being able to travel to get anywhere, let alone travel to get to the grocery store or how far they were going to the grocery store because it was such an expansive amount of space between where they lived.
It could just be they were off a dirt road somewhere, and they could only get to the store maybe once a week. And then on top of that, they could only buy certain things. And so just kind of coming from an urban experience to a rural perspective, it just really put it into perspective what I thought about food and the conversations we need to continue to have.
Food justice isn’t just about access though. Talk about the other factors that come into play.
Douglas: Before the book came out, before COVID hit, I had one of those light bulb moments, and I was like, “Wait a minute. Now, we’re talking about access to food, but let’s talk about why people can’t get food. How much money are they making? Are they not making enough money because they’re paying for health care, or they’re paying for rent, or they’re paying to live, and they just don’t have enough left over to be able to go to these places to get certain types of food?”
And we always say, ‘Oh, let’s go to the farmers market.’ But even with the farmers market, some people still have problems getting down to the farmers market. So these conversations continue to resurface at so many different levels.
It sounds like a lot of the same issues that existed five years ago are still very much in place today. What is the purpose of the book tour, given that reality?
Douglas: I don’t want us to keep going over the same stuff. We know what the problem is. We’ve come up with some solutions; the legwork has already been laid out. The conversation needs to move forward to, “Okay, how can we support local farmers? How can we support local business owners?”
LeGreco: One of the things that we learned from the book was how people got creative by working with each other in unique ways.
Like we had people from the city and the county working with community-based organizations, working with residents who would just show up one day to work in the garden. And there was so much support at that time, and that’s something that’s important to be recognized. That when we’re able to put people together effectively, people in Greensboro and Guilford County are able to do outstanding things.
For example, creating things like the Freedom Fridge and mutual aid networks.
With the book tour, we’re hoping to inspire newer voices to become a part of sustaining these conversations, celebrate what we learned, and identify some ideas and actions that truly need attention right now.
We really want to see who’s interested in being a part of these conversations, particularly when it comes to how do we start to plan for some actionable items and actual pathways that we can move forward so that it’s not one more example of just getting people together to have a conversation and then nothing comes out of it.
Douglas: There are so many real-life problems that I don’t think our county commissioners or our local government takes really seriously. We get so comfortable in knowing that I know people that have access to food or have a car and this and that, but you rarely hear about the people who are caring for their parents or senior citizens who aren’t able to stand up at a stove and cook. And when we think about food access, it’s like we automatically think about families and children, but there are other people who need help.
Why is food justice still important five years later? Why should people care?
Douglas: Given what’s happened in the last year—as far as SNAP and EBT benefits being cut, to the price of food increasing, to the price of oil increasing, and farmers losing out on specific grants—this conversation, if it wasn’t important then, is definitely important now. We’ve got to come up with solutions that don’t require us to depend on certain grants or certain aid from the government. I feel like we need to start having conversations around cooperatives and what that means for everybody to come together and just kind of build within the community.
