Not just dessert: how sweet potato pie became a tool of Black American resistance

‘[Sweet potato pie is] an example of how you can use something that seems pretty basic to really change history,’ says archivist Dr Clarissa West-White. Illustration: Yuki Murayama

The pastry chef David Benton grew up in a pumpkin pie family; they always bought the dessert for Thanksgiving dinner.

So he was thrilled whenever someone gifted them a sweet potato pie. “Sweet potato pie has a richer, more authentic homemade taste to it, and you could never find them in the store so people must have made those,” says Benton, of Sugarsweet Oakland, an online bakery in California. He grew up before Patti LaBelle’s sweet potato pies became a staple at Walmart.