Jessica B. Harris receives JBF Lifetime Achievement Award

Today the James Beard Foundation announced the recipient of its 2020 Lifetime Achievement Award, bestowing that honor on Jessica B. Harris. The award is given to those “whose body of work has had a positive and long-lasting impact on the way we eat, cook, and think about food in America”. Harris is the author of twelve cookbooks documenting the foods and foodways of the African Diaspora, has written extensively about the culture of Africa in the Americas, lectured widely, and made numerous television appearances.

She holds a Ph.D. from NYU and is an English professor at Queens College, CUNY. She consults at Dillard University in New Orleans, where she founded the Institute for the Study of Culinary Cultures. Harris is a founding member of the Southern Foodways Alliance, and a member of the IACP and Les Dames d’Escoffier. Her articles have appeared in numerous publications and Harris has appeared on a variety of television programs including The Today Show, and Good Morning America. In 2004, Harris was awarded the Jack Daniel’s Lifetime Achievement Award. She was also recently inducted into the James Beard Foundation’s prestigious Who’s Who of Food and Beverage in America. You can learn more about Harris’s work at www.africooks.com.

The JBF also announced its Humanitarian of the Year Award winner today. That honor – which now also includes a cash prize – goes to Zero Footprint. The organization is a nonprofit that endeavors to build “a renewable food system rooted in healthy soil.” Zero Footprint want to harness the power of the food and restaurant world to ameliorate the ongoing climate crisis.