Maxton: Where Collards Are a Tradition

In the fall many small towns and communities celebrate the harvest of the season and food that sustains them through the winter. The celebration of collards has become a tradition in the Town of Maxton, NC. With a crop as healthful as the collard plant, how should it be celebrated? Maxton, which claims to be “rich with greens,” organizes competitions of food, poetry, and costumes where collards are the central theme.

The Town

According to Dr. Gladys M. Dean, former mayor and founder of the festival, the event “honors the heritage and history of early settlers.” Scottish immigrants, who brought a tradition of eating collards with corn cakes, began settling the area in the 1700s and helped shaped Maxton, whose entire downtown area is on the National Register of Historical Places. Incorporated in 1874 with the name of Shoe Hill, the town changed its name several times before picking Maxton (the town of surnames beginning with Mac or Mc) in 1887. African Americans have also claimed Maxton as home for several generations, and it is where famous educator Charles N. Hunter, born into slavery around 1851, opened his first school in 1875 to improve the lives of African Americans.

The Annual Maxton Collard Festival, started in 2006 and held the second Saturday in November, continues to grow bigger, draw more participants, and attract more spectators from far away. The festival on South Austin Street now attracts over 4,000 people. In addition to being the collard center of the South in November, the town also claims the distinction of being “the collard sandwich capital” of the world. In fact, several festival food vendors make the sandwich – greens packed between two corn fritters with peppers and fatback – their primary item. All are tasty, but Shirley’s (a local caterer) makes the best ones.

The Competition

The best display of collards, however, is the food competition where local cooks proudly compete in categories that include main dishes, side dishes, salads and desserts. Nothing is more surprising to see than a cake with green icing labeled as “collard cake.” Soups, dressings, and salads line the table awaiting approval by the judges and tasting later by others. When my collard and black-eyed pea soup won a trophy, I knew that it must have hit the spot with the judges.

With a category known as “collard orations,” the festival recruits family stories, poems, and songs about collards. Several excellent stories – how collards survive frigid temperatures, how Scottish settlers transferred them to the Maxton area, how enslaved Africans brought a tradition of cooking the greens and drinking the juices known as pot likker – are in the festival souvenir book, sponsored by town businesses and festival supporters. However, the best “orations” read at the festival earn trophies as prestigious as the awards for the food. I’ve competed at two festivals, and each time have come home with a trophy.

The most unusual category is probably the collard costume competition when participants vie for trophies by wearing clothing decorated with collards. Winners have worn hats decorated as collard leaves topped with a red pepper as well as full-body suits imitating tall plants with mature leaves sprouting from toe to head. Even Dr. Dean as mayor walked the festival grounds in a collard suit. When I won first place, the prize was more valuable than any other.

The Competitive Spirit

The competitive spirit of the Maxton festival extends to other contests, such as for collard growing and collard eating. Arts and crafts dealers, food vendors, musicians and other entertainers round out the festival program that also includes a Veterans Day event.

The day ends with a “collard blasting ball” to celebrate how fall frosts improve the flavor and taste of collard leaves. The ball includes food (yes, more opportunities to eat collards) and dancing. Winners of dances such as the Chow Chow, the Fritter, the Fatback, and the Pot Likker receive a prize.

Maxton, a small town with a rich history, has added to its charm with a festival for everyone. Join the competitive spirit next year and enter one of the categories. You might come home with a trophy or prize.

Note: Click here to see recent photos of the Maxton Collard Festival.

So Pretty

Collard leaves are so pretty,
On a plate so dandy
Loving soil so sandy,
Much better than candy.

Collard leaves are so pretty
With green tones so bright.
Sleeping during night,
They rise in sunlight.

Collard leaves are so pretty.
No plant likes to lean.
If raw, they are mean
And a bitter green.

Collard leaves are so pretty.
Spread around cow poo.
A little will do.
Wait to eat a few.

Collard leaves are so pretty,
Every morning and night,
Bunched together tight,
Good to the last bite.

Collard leaves are so pretty.
So little they cost.
Ready at first frost,
Without them we’re lost.

Collard leaves are so pretty.
Every plant’s a king.
Eat with chicken wing.
Then praises we’ll sing.

Collard leaves are so pretty,
Far better than kale,
Every fall for sale,
Don’t buy if they’re pale.

Collard leaves are so pretty,
Greener than turnips,
Juices for our sips --
Pot likker to our lips!

Collard leaves are so pretty.
When gone, everyone grieves
And wants more huge leaves
To eat with field peas.

Collard leaves are so pretty.
When stiff, hard to fold,
Quickly they are sold.
They’re worth more than gold.

Collard leaves are so pretty.
Vitamins they pack
Put them in a sack.
Sweeten with fatback.

Collard leaves are so pretty,
Pleasing to the eye.
Without them we might die.
Let’s eat some – oh my!



Note: This poem, prepared for the Sixth Annual Collard Festival in Maxton, NC, that I attended on Nov. 12, 2011, placed first in the collard poetry contest. It's a prize winner!

My First True Love

My first true love --
We met in the field at night.
I kept her warm when it was cold.
She made each day a delight.
With wonder that was so bold.
My first true love was a collard plant.

My first true love --
Always a glorious sight,
A treasure she was to me.
Time together was so right.
Everyone could plainly see.
My first true love was a collard plant.

My first true love --
Worth more than a huge diamond,
Fore’er her praises I could sing.
She loved cold sand and warm sun
And sparkled in early spring.
My first true love was a collard plant.

My first true love --
She always smiled in the rain
And glistened in the bright sun.
Firm she was but oh so plain.
Romance should never be done.
My first true love was a collard plant.

My first true love --
Sometimes coarse and so very green,
She grew up extremely fast.
Then ne’er again was she seen.
But my love forev’r will last.
My first true love was a collard plant.


Note: This poem was prepared in appreciation of the Sixth Annual Collard Festival in Maxton, NC, that I attended on Nov. 12, 2011.

Civil War Music: Themes for Yesterday and Today

Civil War music usually doesn’t enjoy the same popularity as other musical traditions of the American South. However, prominent Southerners such as Martin Luther King, Jr. have frequently used lyrics of Civil War songs to connect to our shared history as they emphasize ideas. Much like country music, blues, and gospel, music of the Civil War era can portray haunting themes of the American South with powerful language, alluring rhythms, and familiar characters.

Although Civil War music doesn’t often enjoy being the central focus of musical productions, it did when the Theater of the American South in Wilson, N.C., selected Civil War themes to commemorate the sesquicentennial of the American Civil War. “The Civil War in Song and Legend,” one of the productions, featured more than 40 songs of the Civil War era. It also showcased the musical talents of Bill Schustik, who bills himself as an American troubadour and often performs as a one-person show.

For this performance, Schustik was accompanied by the 17-member Unity Choir of St. John AME Zion Church (organized in 1868 as the first African-American church in Wilson) that sang harmony as well as lead vocals, and its soprano soloists provided a sweet contrast to Schustik’s rich baritone. In addition, The Many Thousand Gone Youth Chorus added 12 local youthful voices as they boosted the rhythm with toe-tapping beats.

During the performance at the Boykin Cultural Center (built in 1919), Schustik played a variety of folk instruments such as the banjo, guitar, dulcimer, drum, harmonica, and Jew’s harp. (Choir director Bill Myers also played the flute and melodica.) As Schustik moved among the instruments and changed from one musical style to another, he wove stories with his song selections to tell the history of a nation – divided between North and South – and personal narratives of the men and women who lived through or died in the Civil War.

Some songs such as “The Vacant Chair,” written to commemorate the death of soldier in 1861, were popular in both the North and the South. This song hauntingly depicts the loss at the family table:

We shall meet but we shall miss him.
There will be one vacant chair.
We shall linger to caress him,
While we breathe our ev’ning prayer.

Other songs such as “Goober Peas” acknowledge the tough duty of a southern soldier who often had little to eat except boiled peanuts (or “goober peas”), which frequently served as an emergency ration:

Just before the battle, the General hears a row.
He says, “The Yanks are coming, I hear their rifles now.”
He turns around in wonder, and what d'ya think he sees?
The Georgia Militia, eating goober peas.

“Lorena,” an antebellum song with Northern origins, was a favorite of soldiers of both sides because it expresses the longing for a wife or sweetheart back home. In fact, one Southern officer lamented that the song reduced his soldiers’ effectiveness because the mournful lyrics made them too homesick:

A hundred months have passed, Lorena,
Since last I held that hand in mine,
And felt the pulse beat fast, Lorena,
Though mine beat faster far than thine.

“Taps,” which concludes many military funerals today, was used by both Confederate and Union forces, although it was arranged by Union Army Brigadier General Daniel Butterfield in July 1862 to replace a previous French bugle call used to signal "lights out.”

Contraditions are inherent in some songs, such as “The Ballad of Shiloh Hill,” which is about the Battle of Shiloh (a biblical name that means “place of peace”) in southwestern Tennessee that resulted in 20,000 casualties in April 1862:

It was an awful struggle and will cause your blood to chill;
It was the famous battle that was fought on Shiloh Hill.

'Twas on the sixth of April, just at the break of day;
The drums and fifes were playing for us to march away.
The feeling of that hour I do remember still,
When first my feet were tromping on the top of Shiloh Hill.

Some music has definite religious connotations. “Nearer, My God, to Thee” was played by the Confederate army band as survivors of the disastrous Pickett’s Charge in the Battle of Gettysburg returned from their failed infantry assault on July 3, 1863. Another example is “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” often used today as a patriotic song and included in many church hymnals; it which was created in 1861 by abolitionist Julia Ward Howe when she wrote new words to a military marching tune. The song’s lyrics appear in sermons and speaches of Martin Luther King, Jr. -- most notably in his last sermon “I've Been to the Mountaintop,” delivered in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1968 on the night before his assassination. King's final public words, in fact, end with the first lyrics of the song, “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”

The Civil War playlist is rich and includes boastful, mournful, and raucous songs. More noteworthy is how lyrics and songs are used today to represent a nation healed of Civil War divisions still seeks to attain a more perfect Union, an objective evident as the two-hour show ended with Shustik singing the little-known latter verses of “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

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For more resources on the Web related to Civil War music, consult the following:
American Civil War Music
Songs of the Confederacy
Music of the American Civil War

Collards Sprouting

Collards sprouting in old fields
Become green as green can be.
They soak up morning sunshine
As they wake up happily.

Daybreak dew glistens on leaves
That sparkle like priceless stones
As they create nutrients
Needed to strengthen our bones.

Rain storms crash over the fields.
Emerald leaves come to life
And soon soar like eagle wings
But quickly fall by our knife.

Into kitchens we bring them
To wash sand from their thick veins.
We heat our favored kettles
Often filled with captured rains.

Unable to stand the heat,
Leaves wilt like a jailed sinner.
We poke sometimes too often
To see if set for dinner.

To evening table they come
Where they claim a place of pride
Next to pork dishes we crave.
Ready for blessings, they bide.



Note: This poem was prepared in appreciation of the Fifth Annual Collard Festival in Maxton, NC, that I attended on Nov. 13, 2010.

Pot Likker

Feeling so poorly?
Couldn’t be sicker?
You know what to do:
Drink some pot likker.

Something ailing you?
Wanna fight and bicker?
You know what to do:
Drink some pot likker.

Heavy weight troubling?
Too big for the wicker?
You know what to do:
Drink some pot likker.

So lonely and blue?
Get better, quicker.
You know what to do:
Drink some pot likker.

Troubled and worried
About your ticker?
You know what to do:
Drink some pot likker.

You’re OK, but girlfriend
Says you should kick her.
You know what to do:
Give her some pot likker.

Note: This poem, prepared for the Fifth Annual Collard Festival in Maxton, NC, that I attended on Nov. 13, 2010, placed second in the collard poetry contest. It's a prize winner!

Emerald Leaves

Can you imagine
Old plants as they give
Love to families,
Love that surrounds
All our closest kin?
Ripen quickly as
Delicious green sheets
Sandy with our soil.

Keep your watchful
Eye on the plants as
Emerald leaves sprout,
Plentiful for all.

Under the morning
Sun, always growing,

Heavy with daybreak dew,
Every leaf glistens
And shines with delight.
Lusting for sunshine,
They soon deliver
Health and nutrition.
You can’t wait to taste.


Note: This poem is an acrostic (the first letter of each line spells a word or a message), a style popularized in North Carolina among university students by George Moses Horton (1798-1880?), an enslaved African American who taught himself to read and composed in his head a series of stanzas based on the rhythms in Wesley hymns. This poem was prepared in appreciation of the Fifth Annual Collard Festival in Maxton, NC, that I attended on Nov. 13, 2010.