The Good Food Revolution: Growing Healthy Food, People, and Communities

As a child, Allen worked growing and selling vegetables in Rockville, Maryland, as “the laws of the Jim Crow era were starting to be dismantled” (52). He describes the rapid changes in his neighborhood as the years progressed, when streets were soon paved, brown dirt lawns grew green, and cars appeared in many driveways. His area “became a commuter suburb for federal employees in Washington, D.C.” (54), so it changed from an agricultural community to one full of subdivisions. At this point in time, “[t]he way people ate was changing” (54).

Allen describes his family’s life in Ken Gar, the neighborhood “sandwiched between Kensington and Garrett Park, Maryland” (55). There was no running water until after World War II, and other “conditions reflected the persistence of segregation even for those black people who had left the South” (55). In this environment, the relationship between Willie Mae and O.W. bloomed. Two years later, a woman named Ethelwyn Frank hired Willie Mae to work for her as a domestic servant, and Ethelwyn “invited [his] mother [and her family] to move to the property and to help care for the place” (57). Willie Mae separated from her first husband, Major Kenner, and “O.W. took Major’s place” (57). Allen spent many childhood years at the property. From his father, Allen learned how to live off the land: “As a family, we were almost self-sufficient” (61).

Allen “struggled all [his] youth with shyness” (61), but his incredible height drew him a lot of attention. His brother Joe taught him how to play basketball: “The long and strong body that for years I had seen as a liability was suddenly an asset” (61). By 12 years old, Allen could dunk, and he “soon had reason to hope that [he] had found a path out of farming” (62).

Allen attended segregated schools that he felt “were better than most” (64), and “first entered an integrated school in 1961” (65), when he began middle school. He describes a friendship he had with a Jewish boy, and only in “later life would [Allen] understand the discrimination against Jews and how he must have felt” (66). Ethelwyn Frank, who “had a genuine passion for knowledge” (67) inspired an intellectual curiosity in Allen when he was a child, as well as “a love of nature” (67).

Allen’s interest in basketball was also developing at this time, and “the American University coach Jim Williams let [him] play” (67) at the university gym where Allen worked cleaning the pool as a middle-schooler. When Allen started high school, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rachel Carson garnered a lot of media attention, but “[he] had been shielded from the worst kind of racial injustices and had not yet developed an environmental conscience” (68). Soon, Allen was talking with the varsity basketball coach at Richard Montgomery High School, and “was named the starting center” (68).

Athletic success came easily to Allen, who learned that “there was a power in being both huge and polite” (69). Allen’s mother catered to his dietary needs, and soon, Allen “had grown so muscular from [his] mother’s food, farm work, and from basketball that [he] unintentionally broke things” (70). Allen soon had a girlfriend, and though “[s]he was white” (70), Allen’s parents welcomed her into their home. The open feelings were not reciprocated by the girlfriend’s family, and the relationship ended. By the end of Allen’s high school career, letters of interest were flooding in from colleges, and in May of 1967, Allen “signed a letter of intent […] to attend the University of Miami as their first African American basketball player” (72), on full scholarship. 

While at the University of Miami, Allen and a football player named Ray Bellamy were the two athletes “integrating the school’s athletic programs” (74). They were both criticized and suspected of being placed in their positions “because of affirmative action and not because of [their] actual abilities” (74). Threatening letters from racists as well as other challenges did not hold Allen back, however, and he made friends quickly. The most meaningful friendship he made was perhaps with Cyndy Bussler, who was beautiful and three years older than Allen; she “was from Oak Creek, Wisconsin, and she had long blond hair” (76). Allen gave Cyndy a puppy as a gift, and when Cyndy asked her parents to look after the dog, she told them that “she was dating a black man” (78) and “they refused to take it in” (78), giving it to a friend of her father’s.

In 1968, “[m]any things of national importance happened” (78). Against this historical backdrop, Cyndy met Allen’s parents for the first time, and several months after this meeting, “[they] finally informed [their] parents of [their] plans” (79). They set the wedding for February of 1969, on Allen’s 20th birthday: “None of our parents attended the wedding—mine for financial reasons, Cyndy’s because they disapproved” (80).

Allen began playing more basketball games in the South, where he encountered racism in its ugliest forms. He tried to use these moments as opportunities to focus on his playing, and soon he “realized that [he] was playing in part for [his] own self-respect” (82). When the University of Miami told the team that financial problems may limit the basketball program during Allen’s senior year, he led the team in a protest, and they decided to boycott practice. By December, “the university announced that it would continue the basketball program for at least one more season” (83), so Allen was safe to pursue a post-college career in the NBA during his senior year. In April of 1971, Allen was chosen for a deal with the Baltimore Bullets “for three years and paid around six figures, but it was contingent on [him] making the team” (85). He got cut from the team, so he joined a semi-professional team from Connecticut temporarily and then for the Miami Floridians, until he “had an offer from a team called BC Sun Charm in the Belgian city of Aalst” (87). Allen decided to move his young wife and their two young children to Europe, where he “found [his] love of the land again” (87). 

Allen and his family move to Belgium, where Allen “could support [his] family on [his] basketball salary alone” (89). During family outings in the countryside, Allen “took notice of the rich brown color of the soil” (89). He remembers how his father taught him how to compost. Thoughts like this came to Allen during his time playing basketball, and soon, Allen had planted his first garden.

After a few years in Belgium, Allen’s body started to feel the stress of the game, and after he retired from basketball, the Allen family moved to Oak Creek, Wisconsin, which was Cyndy’s hometown. They took over Cyndy’s family’s restaurant, turning it into a successful disco. Health problems plagued Allen while he was managing the disco, and tests revealed that he had thyroid cancer, at the age of 29 years old. Allen’s medical history revealed a childhood radiation treatment for ringworm, “a fungal infection of the scalp that is common in children who live in farming communities” (93). Two surgeries later, “[he] hoped that [he] would remain cancer free” (94).

After this ordeal with cancer, Allen sought a career change and landed a job with the Marcus Corporation, who hired him to be “a regional manager for half a dozen of their Kentucky Fried Chicken stores” (94). Allen “poured [his] competitive energies into [his] new job” (95), and soon won awards for his success. He farmed on the side, waking early to work on the land before getting to work at 10AM. Allen soon began selling his vegetables to Lena’s Food Market in Milwaukee. At one point, Allen suffered “catastrophic crop losses” (96) after heavy rains and was denied reimbursement from the government; Allen “felt that the color of [his] skin had played a part in [his] application’s denial” (96). Later, he was shut out of a farmer’s market in Milwaukee, and again, he suspected it was because of his race, so “[f]eeling shunned by the farmers in the market, [he] became determined to outsell them” (98). A year later, Allen “began to form relationships with the other farmers there […] Once we began speaking to each other face-to-face, we no longer felt distrust” (98).

At this point, Allen faced “the uncomfortable truth that black farmers have faced discrimination for generations, even to the present day” (98). He explores the history of black farmers in America, going back to the days when “[f]reed slaves […] embraced the hope that the federal government would help them establish their independence” (99). Obstacle after obstacle limited progress, and “black farmers’ interests were rarely protected” (102). Increasingly more black farmers left the profession.

Three years after his initial cancer diagnosis, Allen again needed surgery to remove cancer, this time for “cancer in one of [his] parotid glands—the largest of the salivary glands—near [his] right ear” (104). He received radiation treatment, which led Allen to reflect that “an elaborate technological solution to [his] ringworm had got [him] into this trouble in the first place” (105). From this whole experience, he learned the lesson “never to use a more expensive, energy-intensive technology when a simpler one can serve the same purpose” (105).

Ten years later, after a long career with the Marcus Corporation, Allen moved to work with Proctor & Gamble in a sales position while tending to his farm and selling food at the Fondy Farmers Market in Milwaukee. Just as Proctor & Gamble were restructuring, Allen felt a powerful desire to “spend [his] life entirely in the active and physical world of agriculture” (108). Allen drove past the greenhouses in Milwaukee that would become the site of his urban farm and his farm stand.