Rosa Parks' Pancake Recipe Helps Us See The Human Side Of A Hero

Rosa Parks' "Featherlite Pancake" recipe was written on the back of an envelope. After she refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Ala., bus in 1955, she and her husband lost their jobs and eventually moved to Detroit. They struggled financially and had to be frugal, which is why she reused papers, like banking envelopes, for recipes. Rosa Parks' "Featherlite Pancake" recipe was written on the back of an envelope. After she refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Ala., bus in 1955, she and her husband lost their jobs and eventually moved to Detroit.

They struggled financially and had to be frugal, which is why she reused papers, like banking envelopes, for recipes. In 2015, after a 10-year legal battle, the Library of Congress released a trove of Rosa Parks' personal documents. Last year the papers were put online for the first time. They include postcards from the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., lists of volunteers for the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and pages and pages of journals.

Buried in the Parks collection is another document that doesn't have as much historical significance - but it got my attention. It's a pancake recipe, written on the back of an envelope. At first glance, Parks' recipe for "Featherlite Pancakes" seems little more than a charming footnote, especially because of the novelty of including peanut butter in pancake batter.

But as we find in this week's episode of The Sporkful food podcast, this recipe is actually a window into a time and place, and a person most of us know little about. Nicole Taylor, author of The Up South Cookbook. What's in an envelope, Adrienne Cannon, who curates the Rosa Parks papers at the Library of Congress. This discrimination eventually forced Parks and her husband to move to Detroit, where she'd end up spending more than half her life.

They always struggled financially and she had to be frugal, which is why she reused papers, like banking envelopes, for recipes. Food writer Nicole Taylor had a similar reaction. Rosa Parks' "Featherlite Pancakes" recipe calls for peanut butter. Rosa Parks' "Featherlite Pancakes" recipe calls for peanut butter. Rosa Parks was born in 1913 in Tuskegee, Ala., home of Tuskegee Institute, where George Washington Carver gained fame for his work with peanuts. His goal was to help black farmers in the South grow a cash crop other than cotton, so they could support themselves better in the years after slavery.

By the 1920s Carver was a household name, and by 1940 peanut production was second only to cotton in the South. But the connection between African-American food and peanuts is rooted even deeper. Indigenous to South America, peanuts traveled to the Caribbean and then to Africa, where they were infused into African cuisine. Peanuts came to the American South via the slave trade.

Neither Cannon nor Taylor had heard of putting peanut butter in pancake batter before seeing Rosa Parks' recipe. But if the idea would come from anywhere, it would be from Southern African-American food traditions. And it's quintessentially Rosa Parks. Parks and her husband never had kids of their own, but it's clear she loved children.

She often cared for, and cooked for, her 11 nieces and nephews. Her niece Sheila McCauley Keys wrote a book that includes many of her "Auntie Rosa's" recipes. Rosa Parks' nieces Sheila McCauley Keys and Deborah Ann Ross (center) with the author, Dan Pashman. Rosa Parks' nieces Sheila McCauley Keys and Deborah Ann Ross (center) with the author, Dan Pashman.

When I visited Keys and Ross in Detroit for this episode of The Sporkful podcast, they cooked up several of their aunt's recipes — chicken and dumplings, cornbread griddle cakes, cabbage and bacon, and lemonade. Auntie Rosa's lemonade involved simmering the lemons in water for 30 minutes, which on a hot day could feel like a long time to wait for a drink. As Nicole Taylor and I cooked those peanut butter pancakes, we found ourselves thinking a lot about what it might've been like to cook with Rosa Parks.

Did she wear her usual formal outfit in the kitchen, or something more comfortable, Which brand of flour did she prefer, And would she approve of putting buttermilk, instead of milk, in the batter, as Nicole did, One thing was for sure: When we took our first bites, we found the pancakes were true to their name - featherlite. While making the peanut butter pancakes, food writer Nicole Taylor and I imagined what it would be like to cook with Rosa Parks. While making the peanut butter pancakes, food writer Nicole Taylor and I imagined what it would be like to cook with Rosa Parks. Taylor says of making and eating the pancakes.

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