Where Da Bird At? Dub Shack BBQ Presents Smoked Chicken Leg Quarters

 

I know it is way too hot to hang out around the smoker, but for a couple hours of hard work, the end result can be legendary!

I decided to smoke some chicken leg quarters for the three of us; one day after the coronavirus pandemic ceases, I’ll invite a few of you to the house to eat, drink, and enjoy each other. This is a very easy, versatile, and affordable way to put dinner together, and if that doesn’t suit your fancy, smoked chicken leg quarters also can become leftovers for sandwiches, shredded enchiladas, salads, and so forth.

For the backstory of the title:  In college, a few of us were day drinking on the patio and one of the guys had an idea of frying chicken that night. As par for the course, I had to work meaning I knew I was going to miss out on the bird, so I did not think anything of it until the next day when Lance’s chicken was the talk of the apartment and the four words I wrote on the shared whiteboard were:  Where da bird at? Instantly – and from that moment forward, the first thing in conversation was that question.

Back to the barbecue part – and the reason why you’re reading this post.

You don’t have to trim much on leg quarters, but I will remove the feathers the processing plant missed and the extra fat and skin. Below is a general seasoning recipe – again, make this your own.

·        Table salt

·        Black pepper

·        Chicken seasoning of your choice

One thing I did differently is I marinated the chicken in beer overnight before taking the pieces out of the Ziploc bag and shaking off the excess liquid before sprinkling the seasonings onto each piece.

Any grill will get the job done as long it is set up for indirect heat. I used my Oklahoma Joe offset smoker with a couple of chimneys of charcoal (your brand of choice is your preference, and as a FYI I have no real favorite on the big boy) and some chunks of hickory and cherrywood for smoke. Once the temperature made it to 275 degrees, I positioned all eleven pieces skin side up onto the cooking grate and let the smoker work its magic. After the first hour, feel free to take a look at the chicken and move the pieces around for an even cook; keep in mind that the temperature still needs to be around 275 unless you don’t mind sitting around and working a little harder for the quarters to reach an internal temperature of 175.

Three hours later, the chicken was thoroughly smoked and done! The trick with chicken is to cook it through without drying it out, and thankfully when leg quarters are cooked, they can take a hotter temperature. I cannot say the same thing of a boneless breast.

Let the chicken rest for a few minutes, and may the eating commence!

How did we eat ours? With greens and blackeye peas, if you really want to know. This works well with a lot of things – in sandwiches (try my Dat White, The O.G., or the newest flavor Dang! Oh, Mango sauces); family style with mashed potatoes and Brussel sprouts; and of course, for lunch with baked beans and Woo Pig mac and cheese with a pickle spear on the side.

Remember, every day is a GREAT day for Dub Shack BBQ! Stay safe, keep practicing social distancing, wash your hands often, be blessed, and please remain kind to one another.

 

 

When the US Government Was OK With Snitching

William O'Neal, the FBI informant who infiltrated the Black Panthers, responsible for the assassination of Black Panther Party Chairman Fred Hampton. Mourners pass by the coffin of Black Panther Party leader Fred Hampton at his memorial service on Dec. 9, 1969, at the First Baptist Church of Melrose Park. Hampton was murdered during a police raid on Dec. 4, 1969.

In late 1968, the Racial Matters squad of the FBI's Chicago field office brought in an individual named William O'Neal, who had recently been arrested twice, for interstate car theft and impersonating a federal officer. In exchange for having his felony charges dropped and a monthly stipend, O'Neal agreed to infiltrate the BPP as a counterintelligence operative. He joined the Party and quickly rose in the organization, becoming Director of Chapter security and Hampton's bodyguard.

By means of anonymous letters, the FBI sowed distrust and eventually instigated a split between the Panthers and the Rangers, with O'Neal himself instigating an armed clash between the two on April 2, 1969. The Panthers became effectively isolated from their powerbase in the ghetto, so the FBI went to work to undermine its ties with other radical organizations. O'Neal was instructed to create a rift between the Party and SDS, whose Chicago headquarters was only blocks from that of the Panthers. The Bureau released a batch of racist cartoons in the Panthers' name, aimed at alienating white activists, and launched a disinformation program to forestall the realization of the Rainbow Coalition. In repeated directives, Hoover demanded that the COINTELPRO personnel destroy what the [BPP] stood for and eradicate its 'serve the people' programs. Documents secured by Senate investigators in the early 1970s revealed that the FBI actively encouraged violence between the Panthers and other groups.

In early October, Hampton and his girlfriend, Deborah Johnson (now known as Akua Njeri), pregnant with their first child (Fred Hampton, Jr.), rented a four-and-a-half room apartment on 2337 West Monroe Street to be closer to BPP headquarters. O'Neal reported to his superiors that much of the Panthers' provocative stockpile of arms was being stored there. 

The FBI, determined to prevent any enhancement of the BPP leadership's effectiveness, decided to set up an arms raid on Hampton's Chicago apartment. FBI informant William O'Neal provided them with detailed information about Hampton's apartment, including the layout of furniture and the bed in which Hampton and his girlfriend slept. An augmented, 14-man team of the SAO — Special Prosecutions Unit — was organized for a pre-dawn raid armed with a warrant for illegal weapons.

On the evening of December 3, Hampton taught a political education course at a local church, which was attended by most members. Afterwards, as was typical, several Panthers retired to the Monroe Street apartment to spend the night, including Hampton and Deborah Johnson, Blair Anderson, Ronald "Doc" Satchell, Harold Bell, Verlina Brewer, Louis Truelock, Brenda Harris, and Mark Clark.

Upon arrival, they were met by O'Neal, who had prepared a late dinner, which the group ate around midnight. O'Neal had slipped the powerful barbiturate sleep agent, secobarbitol, into a drink that Hampton consumed during the dinner, in order to sedate Hampton so he would not awaken during the subsequent raid. O'Neal immediately left.

At 4:45 a.m, an 14 man heavily armed police team stormed into the apartment. Automatic gunfire converged at the head of the south bedroom where Hampton slept, unable to awaken as a result of the barbiturates the FBI infiltrator had slipped into his drink. He was lying on a mattress in the bedroom with his fiancée, who was eight-and-a-half months pregnant with their child. Two officers found him wounded in the shoulder, and Black Panther Harold Bell reported that he heard the following exchange:

"That's Fred Hampton."

"Is he dead?... Bring him out."

"He's barely alive.

"He'll make it."

Two shots were heard, which were later discovered were fired point blank in Hampton's head. According to Johnson, one officer then said:

"He's good and dead now."

The Queen of Drag

William Dorsey Swann was a gay liberation activist. Born into slavery in 1858, he was the first person in the United States to lead a queer resistance group and the first known person to self-identify as a "queen of drag". Imagine the queenery of this icon. 

He was a slave in Hancock, Maryland and was freed by Union soldiers after the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect. During the 1880s and 1890s, he organized a series of balls in Washington, D.C. He called himself the "queen of drag". Most of the attendees his gatherings were men who were former slaves, and were gathering to dance in their satin and silk dresses. 

William was arrested in police raids numerous times, including in the first documented case of arrests for female impersonation in the United States, on April 12, 1888. In 1896, he was falsely convicted and sentenced to 10 months in jail for "keeping a disorderly house" (running a brothel). After his sentencing, he requested a pardon from President Grover Cleveland. This request was denied, but he was the first American on record who pursued legal and political action to defend the LGBTQ community's right to gather. 

He was known to have been close with Pierce Lafayette and Felix Hall, two men who had also both been slaves and who formed the first known male same-sex relationship between enslaved Americans.

When William stopped organizing and participating in drag events, his brother continued to make costumes for the drag community. Two of his brothers had also been active participants in his drag balls.

Imagine how intelligent and ambitious this man had to be to come up with drag balls in the 1800s! Imagine how many terrible concepts he had to unlearn by himself to be a confident gay black man who does drag in the 1800s! Imagine how courageous he had to be to fight for LGBT people as a former slave in America in the 1800s! 

William Dorsey Swann is the original queen, the original drag mother, the original activist. Tell his story!

13th

In 1866, one year after the 13th Amendment was ratified (the amendment that ended slavery), Alabama, Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, Florida, Tennessee, and South Carolina began to lease out convicts for labor (peonage). This made the business of arresting Blacks very lucrative, which is why hundreds of White men were hired by these states as police officers. Their primary responsibility was to search out and arrest Blacks who were in violation of Black Codes. Once arrested, these men, women and children would be leased to plantations where they would harvest cotton, tobacco, sugar cane. Or they would be leased to work at coal mines, or railroad companies. The owners of these businesses would pay the state for every prisoner who worked for them; prison labor.

It is believed that after the passing of the 13th Amendment, more than 800,000 Blacks were part of the system of peonage, or re-enslavement through the prison system. Peonage didn’t end until after World War II began, around 1940.

This is how it happened.

For those in the back, it says, “neither slavery nor involuntary servitude could occur except as a punishment for a crime". Lawmakers used this phrase to make petty offenses crimes.

This is the precursor of the "tough on crime" legislation that has been pushed through since.

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— A. Cedric Armstrong (@cedteaches) August 4, 2020

Did you catch that? It says, “neither slavery nor involuntary servitude could occur except as a punishment for a crime". Lawmakers used this phrase to make petty offenses crimes. When Blacks were found guilty of committing these crimes, they were imprisoned and then leased out to the same businesses that lost slaves after the passing of the 13th Amendment. This system of convict labor is called peonage, or slavery by another name.

The majority of White Southern farmers and business owners hated the 13th Amendment because it took away slave labor. As a way to appease them, the federal government turned a blind eye when southern states used this clause in the 13th Amendment to establish laws called Black Codes. Here are some examples of Black Codes:

For example:

In Louisiana, it was illegal for a Black man to preach to Black congregations without special permission in writing from the president of the police. If caught, he could be arrested & fined.

They don't want in in their churches but want to patrol our worship.
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— A. Cedric Armstrong (@cedteaches) August 4, 2020

If a Black person did not have a job, he or she could be arrested and imprisoned on the charge of vagrancy or loitering.

This next Black Code will make you cringe. In South Carolina, if the parent of a Black child was considered vagrant, the judicial system allowed the police and/or other government agencies to “apprentice” the child to an "employer". Males could be held until the age of 21, and females could be held until they were 18. Their owner had the legal right to inflict punishment on the child for disobedience, and to recapture them if they ran away.

This peonage is an example of systemic racism - racism established and perpetuated by government systems. Slavery was made legal by the U.S. Government. Segregation, Black Codes, Jim Crow and peonage were all made legal by the government, and upheld by the judicial system. These acts of racism were built into the system, which is where the term “systemic racism” is derived.

This is the part of Black history that most of us were never told about.

Here are some ways that Black people had racists befuddled by living rent-free in their feeble heads, and as an example, let's begin with our home state of Arkansas. In addition to passing Act 151 of 1859 and signed by Gov. Elias N. Conway which freedmen, upon being freed, were exiled or remained in an enslaved state for a term of one year.

Also in Arkansas, freed Black men were not only banned from carrying handguns.

Maybe wypipo thought they'd exact revenge for what they did to them during slavery.

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— A. Cedric Armstrong (@cedteaches) August 4, 2020 

That also meant Black barbers were disallowed to cut white women's hair in Atlanta. 

In Nebraska, a 1911 law marriages are void when one party is a white person and the other is possessed of one-eighth or more negro, Japanese, or Chinese blood.

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— A. Cedric Armstrong (@cedteaches) August 4, 2020

 

The Inspiration For The Invisible Man

Some of you know that Ralph Ellison's The Invisible Man is one of my favorite books of all time - thanks to Dr. McGinnis for giving me his copy as a graduation gift from Henderson. 

Here is the inspiration for the classic:

On this day in 1943, Robert Bandy, a private in the 730th Military Police Battalion in Jersey City, New Jersey, was entering the lobby of the Braddock Hotel in Harlem, New York, with his mother and girlfriend when he heard an African-American woman named Margie Polite shout out, “Protect me from this white man!” as she wrestled with a policeman named James Collins. When Bandy intervened, Collins tried to smack him with the nightstick. Bandy caught the nightstick and used it on Collins. After falling to the ground, Collins shot Bandy. When a false rumor spread that Bandy was dead, a riot ensured for days. Five people were killed, 400 were wounded, and 500 were arrested. It was the most violent event in Harlem’s history in a year filled with violence against African Americans including against other soldiers. Poet Langston Hughes described the inequities of fighting Nazism abroad while white supremacist violence terrorized African Americans across the U.S.: “You say we’re fighting for democracy. Then why don’t democracy include me?” The riot inspired Ralph Ellison’s novel "Invisible Man."

Swept Under the Rug: The Battle of Lancashire

Hidden American History....

On June 24-25, 1943 black American soldiers faced off with white American military police during World War II on British soil. Yes you read correctly:  black American soldiers had to fight their own white American soldiers, while in England, where they were fighting for the world.🤦🏽‍♂️

Why? Because the English town of Bamber Bridge in Lancashire was not segregated so they treated the black soldiers like all other races, aka blacks were free to eat, drink anywhere BUT back in America segregation of blacks and whites still existed. In other words, the American army went to someone else’s country and demanded they adopted America’s racist practices🤨

The folks in Lancashire were like hell no we like the black soldiers in fact during that time the American created Jitterbug dance was popular and the British women were eager to learn it from the Black soldiers. The fondness for the Black American soldiers was also supported by those famous essays written by George Orwell who stated that the black American soldiers had the best manners of all the American troops. 

So when the American military police found out that their own black American soldiers were drinking at the same pubs as white people they went in to arrest them, one for not wearing proper uniform. The people in the town got mad about the treatment of the black soldiers and decided to then turn their pubs into “BLACKS ONLY DRINKING PUBS” the very opposite of what was taking place in America with their WHITES ONLY businesses.

Of course this pissed off the American military so guns went blazing, and when word spread back at camp that black soldiers had been shot, scores of men formed a crowd, some carrying rifles and by midnight more American military police arrived with a machine gun-equipped vehicle, so the black soldiers had no choice but to get rifles from British stores while others barricaded themselves back on base, so now it was American white soldiers versus American black soldiers. 

Back in America the battle was hushed up because they didn’t want the country to find out that they were fighting their own soldiers which would anger the black population and weaken the moral in the country.

You may read about the ill treatment of black American soldiers by their own army in the book FORGOTTEN”

Dub Shack BBQ Pricing 2022

All prices are subject to change.

Pork $8/lb

Brisket $14/lb

Chicken or turkey $10/lb

Ribs $20/rack

Sauces $10 each (16 oz. mason jar; 9-12 month shelf life on all except Dat White, which is 1 week)

Smoked meatloaf + 2 sides $17

Sandwiches vary, but generally $6-10

Fried catfish + two sides $17

Sides:  Baked beans, fries, WP (Woo Pig) mac and cheese, cabbage Family $8 Crowd $15

Lunches come with a pickle spear

Catering - Message for info and details 

Every day is a GREAT day for barbecue! 🐖🐄🦃🐤🐑🐟