These days, hot chicken is a “must-try” Southern food. Restaurants in New York, Detroit, Cambridge, and even Australia advertise that they fry their chicken “Nashville-style.” Thousands of people attend the Music City Hot Chicken Festival each year. The James Beard Foundation has given Prince’s Chicken Shack an American Classic Award for inventing the dish.
But for almost seventy years, hot chicken was made and sold primarily in Nashville’s Black neighborhoods—and the story of hot chicken says something powerful about race relations in Nashville, especially as the city tries to figure out what it will be in the future.
Hot, Hot Chicken recounts the history of Nashville’s Black communities through the story of its hot chicken scene from the Civil War, when Nashville became a segregated city, through the tornado that ripped through North Nashville in March 2020.
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Set It Up: A Tennessean's Take on Mise en Place
Chapter 1: Brine with Hot Sauce: The Princes Move to Nashville, 1860–1924
Chapter 2: Toss to Coat: Forgotten Promises, the Origins of Urban Renewal, and the Cost of Erasure, 1925–1940
Chapter 3: Shake That Dredge: The Redevelopment of Hell's Half Acre and the Destruction of Thornton Prince III's First Restaurant, 1941–1952
Chapter 4: Let It Rest: The Barbecue Chicken Shack, Culinary Nostalgia, and the Death of Thornton Prince III, 1952–1960
Chapter 5: Fry in Spitting-Hot Oil: Jumping Jefferson Brought Low, 1961–1968
Chapter 6: Fry Again: Black Nashville Fights Back, 1968–1973
Chapter 7: Find Your Own Spice: Ms. André Prince Jeffries and the Hot Chicken Heirs, 1974–1998
Chapter 8: Plate on White Bread: Hot Chicken Goes Global, 1998–2020
Conclusion: Dig In
Epilogue: Wash Up
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Rachel Louise Martin is a writer and public intellectual. She holds a PhD in women's and gender history from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Her work has appeared in O Magazine, Oxford American, The Atlantic online, Bitter Southerner, CityLab, and Catapult. She has been featured on the BBC's Food Chain, KCRW's Good Food, and The Michelle Meow Show.
