Bibb Country follows Lonnae O’Neal back in time as she pieces together generations of her family history against the sweep of American history, unearthing hidden triumphs, traumas, and a specialty strain of lettuce along the way.
“Bibb Country is a searing meditation on one American family’s tangled origins [...] Lonnae O’Neal stares history in the face and doesn’t blink once.”
—Jabari Asim, author of We Can’t Breathe
"O’Neal is a wonder and a truth-teller.”
—Deesha Philyaw, author of The Secret Lives of Church Ladies
Five years ago, Lonnae O’Neal grabbed some seeds for her backyard garden, including seeds for Bibb lettuce. She had no idea how deeply she’d wind up digging, or how far she would travel.
Lonnae’s fourth great-grandmother, Keziah, was enslaved by the Kentucky Bibb family, including John Bigger Bibb, who developed the Bibb lettuce strain, which remains a culinary darling more than 150 years later. John Bigger Bibb was executor of his father Major Richard Bibb’s will, which freed Keziah and dozens of other Black Bibbs decades before the Civil War, leaving them with a powerful, complicated legacy.
Major Bibb is widely believed to have fathered one of Keziah’s granddaughters. Another white Bibb, or Bibb-adjacent enslaver, whose identity is shrouded in mystery, fathered Keziah’s grandson, who is the beginning of the line for Lonnae.
Through historical records, genealogical science, oral histories, and interviews, Lonnae brings Bibb family stories (both Black and white) to life, and traces the legacy of the Black Bibbs’ migration from Kentucky to Southern Illinois, and beyond.
A mix of memoir, food history, and cultural critique, Bibb Country explores what it means to be descended, through enslavement, from a family whose wealth and power helped shape a nation, and confronts the history that echoes through one family’s generations, and, by extension, every generation of America. - (Random House, Inc.)
Lonnae O’Neal is a senior writer for Andscape. She was a top five winner in the 2019 Associated Press Sports Editors contest, and is a two-time recipient of the National Association of Black Journalist’s Salute to Excellence Award for projects and general reporting. Prior to joining Andscape she was a Washington Post reporter and columnist for two decades, during which she received the 2016 Society for Features Journalism Award for excellence in commentary. - (Random House, Inc.)
I tried to find it at a nearby farmers market first. I met a young farmer who said he and his brother used to sell Bibb lettuce for three dollars a head, but they’d stopped a few years earlier because there wasn’t enough demand. Next, I searched the produce aisles of a few local grocery stores, but none of them carried anything in the Bibb lettuce family. Finally, I found two kinds of butter lettuce, of which Bibb is a type, at Whole Foods, and decided that would have to do.
Having secured the greens, I shifted gears. I willed myself to evolve into a better and higher version of my salad-fixing ways. I remembered what I’d read about the softness of Bibb lettuce leaves and vowed to dress it lightly. As I walked the grocery aisle, everything I was tempted to buy prompted me to think deeply about complementary pairings and ideal ways to awaken lettuce flavor.
I bought a lime because it seemed like the right thing to do. Then I bought a lemon, because a lime might not be right. I rejected a classic ranch or chunky blue cheese, or an organic creamy Caesar dressing, as too heavy for the tender Bibb constitution, and I looked instead for something that telegraphed sophisticated and fresh. Something new in my experience, with a considerable number of vowels in the name, like lemon herb tahini. And I searched high and low for an appropriate vinaigrette (because how many Bibb salad recipes had I read that championed vinaigrette?). I saw a lemon basil dressing—which wasn’t a vinaigrette, but I picked it up anyway. A lemon vinaigrette would have been perfect, but that I could not find. There was, however, a champagne vinaigrette that married well with my need to combine two French names in my salad that were not French dressing, which I was starting to wonder if Whole Foods carried. That one was even spelled with an a in the vinaigrette, which felt fancy until I looked it up and found out that’s how vinaigrette is spelled. So that was less of a win than I thought.
In the end, my choices came down to Italian Romano cheese vinaigrette, with notes of citrus (I felt good about the notes part), or herbes de Provence vinaigrette, which was “fragrant, savory, robust, and herbaceous.” As I read the labels in the refrigerated section of the produce aisle, I shook my butt a bit because I liked the way that last word sounded. Maybe I myself was feeling herbaceous. Or robust. Anyway, I’d lost the thread. I just went ahead and bought the champagne vinaigrette. And the lemon basil. Also the lemon herb tahini, because I decided whatever this Bibb salad was going to be, it was going to work.
Except then I felt pressured. After returning home and spreading out three containers and one plastic bag of butter and baby butter lettuce and nearly thirty dollars’ worth of salad dressings, I opted for a new plan. I would find a restaurant that served a true Bibb lettuce salad and I would order from there. In that way, I wouldn’t have to wonder if I had the right stuff in terms of both the lettuce and my aptitude for dressing it correctly.
As it turned out, finding a local restaurant that served a Bibb salad also took a considerable amount of intention and effort. It was on the menu at one Italian restaurant for Washington’s biannual restaurant week, but by the time I called, they’d switched their lunch menu to serve a kale salad instead. I found other restaurants with Bibb lettuce menu mentions that were outdated or limited to an important but supporting role on lobster rolls or burgers. I’d nearly resigned myself to having to become a food tourist, to wander the mid-Atlantic or perhaps travel all the way back to central Kentucky, before I would finally score. But then I found a strawberry Bibb salad with candied walnuts, goat cheese, and a Dijon vinaigrette at McCormick & Schmick’s seafood restaurant in downtown Washington. I ordered it to go so I could eat in private and descend into the experience.
I took three bites, just the lettuce first so I could take in the unvarnished taste and texture. Then I added a few blue cheese crumbles and I allowed myself to spear a few pieces of strawberry. I dipped the leaves in tiny drops of vinaigrette. In very short order, I understood why I’d heard of Bibb lettuce, and why it was considered a gourmet favorite. It was late afternoon and I hadn’t eaten anything, so I was at the point in my program where anything I’d eat would taste like the best I’d ever had, but these leaves were the real thing: whole, soft, and absolutely buttery in my mouth. They felt, very nearly, creamy. And, yes, sophisticated. It was the best lettuce in the best salad I’d ever tasted, and even that descriptor was foreign to me since lettuce was not something I’d ever considered in terms of superlatives.
On the theory that everybody is a critic, I permitted myself just the slightest quibble. The leaves were supposed to be mild, I knew, but I wondered if I’d actually enjoyed the vegetable’s full nuance and taste potential. Or had this Bibb lettuce been grown hydroponically, for efficiency’s sake, shipped over great distance, perhaps, and had that affected my ability to experience some of the more flavorful “notes”? I wouldn’t have known the difference, but that had been the debate among some gardening and food experts. But now I’m getting ahead of the story.
