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Holy shit.
In the fourth grade, we had to pick an inventor, dress like the inventor, and explain our invention. I decided to pick something off the wall (instead of, like, a light bulb), so I ended up doing my little presentation as George Crum. I remember reading about his work as a chef, learning about his shortness with customers, and the interaction (possibly apocryphal, although Crum certainly invented the potato chip) with the diner who kept complaining about his home fries being too thick.
I literally made a presentation as this man, and used a few websites and a couple encyclopediae (yeah, I’m old) to source all the data. I certainly know more than most people do about George Crum.
The point of all this is that, until I came across this post on Tumblr, I had absolutely no idea he was black. I’ve known who Crum was for over twenty years and never knew his race, because no website or encyclopedia thought it was worth mentioning.
Erasure is a fucking disease.
I also know the story about Crum, heard it several times–nobody EVER mentioned that he was black. There’s so many historical figures I’m only realizing as an adult were other than the standard cis white straight male and I hate it
Fuckin’ I live in the town where chips were invented and didn’t even know that… :(
Actually, his real name was George Speck, not George Crum. And it looks like he was a black Native American:
Speck was born on July 15, 1824 in Saratoga County in upstate New York. Some sources suggest that the family lived in Ballston Spa or Malta; others suggest they came from the Adirondacks. Depending upon the source, his father, Abraham, and mother Diana, were variously identified as African American, Oneida, Stockbridge, and/or Mohawk. Some sources associate the family with the St. Regis (Akwesasne) Mohawk reservation that straddles the US/Canada border. Speck and his sister Kate Wicks, like other Native American or mixed-race people of that era, were variously described as “Indian,” “Mulatto,” “Black,” or just “Colored,” depending on the snap judgement of the census taker.
As for his name…well, Speck was effectively renamed by a white guy who couldn’t be bothered to remember who Speck was:
Speck developed his culinary skills at Cary Moon’s Lake House on Saratoga Lake, noted as an expensive restaurant at a time when wealthy families from Manhattan and other areas were building summer “camps” in the area. Speck and his sister, Wicks, also cooked at the Sans Souci in Ballston Spa, alongside another St. Regis Mohawk Indian known for his skills as a guide and cook, Pete Francis. One of the regular customers at Moon’s was Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, who, although he savored the food, could never seem to remember Speck’s name. On one occasion, he called a waiter over to ask “Crum,” “How long before we shall eat?” Rather than take offense, Speck decided to embrace the nickname, figuring that, “A crumb is bigger than a speck.”
Snopes, however, discredits the story of potato chips being born of spite:
First, to the best of anyone’s knowledge, George Crum never made the claim that he had invented the potato chip, let alone claimed the tale as his own — those assertions emerged only many years after his death. Crum was, by some reports, the sort of cook that would have punished an overly demanding patron in the manner of the legend. He was also not a modest man. Had one of his fits of pique resulted in a popular dish, it’s highly unlikely he’d have been humble about it.
Second, in 1899, while Crum was still alive, his sister claimed in an interview to have been the one who invented potato chips. Says Dirk Burhans of Crunch! A History of the Great American Potato Chip:
The most credible version is that Katie Speck Wicks invented the chip in an accident not dissimilar to the culinary misfire in which the brownie was born (from a mix-up of cake and fudge). “Aunt Katie,” who also worked at Moon’s Lake House, was frying crullers and peeling potatoes at the same time. A thin slice of potato found its way into the frying oil for the crullers, and Katie fished it out. Noticing the chip, Crum tasted it and said, “Hm hm, that’s good. How did you make it?” After Katie described the accident, Crum replied, “That’s a good accident. We’ll have plenty of these.”
In 1917 Wicks’ obituary credited her as the inventor of the potato chip.
So the potato chip was invented by a black Native American woman, and was popularized by a black Native American man.
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