Charles Alston, The Family, 1955

"Family life is centered around food," says Pauline Holmes of the Mississippi Delta. Food brings the family together, to share in each other's company and appreciate what they have. It is often the situation that both parents have their own careers. "Sometimes the husband will be in the kitchen doing the cooking, it just depends on who gets home first and who has the most energy," exclaimed Edna Scott. No matter whether the mother or the father cooks the food today, what seems most important to families is the good, quality family time that the food brings.

Eating times, to many African Americans, are the times that are "very special . . . to sit down and laugh, joke, and have a good time." The old saying of, 'when the bell goes a ringin,' I'm a come runnin',' still holds true in the 20th century to African Americans. Food, in a sense, is a part of love. Holmes holds claim that when the time came for her family to eat "everyone was there, you didn't have to look for anyone. The whole family would gather around the dining room table -not a place left empty- and the next hour would be spent laughing, talking, and being together around a wonderful meal."

Wini McQueen, Family Tree, 1987