Kingsford Launches ‘Preserve the Pit’ Scholarship for Aspiring Black American BBQ Professionals



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the Owned by Clorox (CLX) The charcoal brand calls its new initiative “Preserve the Pit”. The program, which kicked off Monday, gives aspiring black barbecue professionals a chance to train and network with some of the country’s top pitmasters throughout 2021 and receive an undisclosed capital investment to start their business.
Kingsford has launched its “Preserving the PIt” program.  scholarship program for black barbecue professionals January 25, 2021.
Kingsford says nominees will be chosen based on their connection to the barbecue industry, their contributions to the legacy of the black barbecue and their commitments to its future, among other factors. The company is accepting applications for the program from Monday to March 1. The inaugural class will be announced in April.

Over the past few years, Kingsford says it has made efforts to support more diverse talent in the barbecue community, but over the past year it has become clear that the company needs to step up its efforts.

“2020 has allowed every business to take a step back and take a closer look at how they could do more to support the contributions of the Black community, which are integral to the past, present and future of barbecue,” says Shaunte, vice president of strategy and marketing for Kingsford Mears-Watkins told CNN Business via email. “We also wanted to think about our approach to make sure we find a credible role for our support.”

Barbecue historian Dr. Howard Conyers (left) cooks with his family in New Orleans on Jan.3, 2021.
Barbecue historian Howard Conyers, chef Kevin Bludso, star of “The American Barbecue Showdown” on Netflix, and FoodLab executive director Devita Davison will serve as mentors for the program, alongside fellow pitmasters Bryan Furman, Rashad Jones and Amy Mills.
Conyers, 39, has been in the barbecue business since the age of four, when his father, Harrison Conyers, who worked as a farmer and welder, taught him traditional barbecue technique. Elder Conyers learned it from other black farmers in their hometown of Manning, SC.
Howard Conyers is a rocket scientist who worked for NASA after receiving his doctorate in mechanical engineering from Duke University in 2009. He has spent the last seven years researching the history of the black barbecue, which he said to have been lost or credited to whites. the men who owned the plantations, small farms and later the restaurants in which the masters of the black wells often cooked the food and perfected the craft.
Thirty-six pitmasters have been inducted into the American Royal Association’s Barbecue Hall of Fame since it opened in 2012. Only five of them – Kansas City legend Henry Perry, Memphis restaurateur Desiree Robinson, John “Big Daddy Bishop, CB Stubblefield, and Chicago’s James Lemons – are black, although Conyers says the origins of American barbecue are rooted in American slavery.

“The barbecue was perfected in the hands of enslaved Africans for more than 350 years in the Southern United States,” Conyers told CNN Business. “These people were not able to read and write to tell their own stories. We want to see this barbecue tradition raised, celebrated and become more of a central part of the African American community.”

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