Soul food is an ethnic cuisine traditionally prepared and eaten by African Americans, originating in the Southern United States. Soul food originated with the foods that were given to enslaved black people by their white owners on Southern plantations during the Antebellum period; however, it was strongly influenced by the traditional practices of West Africans and Southeastern Native Americans from its inception. Due to the historical presence of African Americans in the region, soul food is closely associated with the cuisine of the American South although today it has become an easily identifiable and celebrated aspect of mainstream American food culture. The expression "soul food" originated in the mid-1960s, when "soul" was a common word used to describe African-American culture. Origins Soul food originated in the Deep South, mainly Alabama, Mississippi and Georgia, where there was a large population of enslaved peoples. The term soul food became popular in the 1960s and 1970s in the midst of the Black Power movement. One of the earliest written uses of the term is found in The Autobiography of Malcolm X, which was published in 1965. LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka) published an article entitled "Soul Food" and was one of the key proponents for establishing the food as a part of the black American identity. Those who had participated in the Great Migration found within soul food a reminder of the home and family they had left behind after moving to unfamiliar northern cities. Soul food restaurants were black-owned businesses that served as neighborhood meeting places where people socialized and ate together. Soul food recipes have pre-slavery influences, as West African and European foodways were adapted to the environment of the region. Many of the foods integral to the cuisine originate from the limited rations given to enslaved people by their planters and masters. Enslaved people were typically given a peck of cornmeal and 3-4 pounds of pork per week, and from those rations come soul food staples such as cornbread, fried catfish, barbecued ribs, chitterlings, and neckbones. It has been noted that enslaved Africans were the primary consumers of cooked greens (collards, beets, dandelion, kale, and purslane) and sweet potatoes for a portion of US history. Most enslaved people needed to consume a high-calorie diet, to replenish the calories spent working long days in the fields or performing other physically arduous tasks. This led to time-honored soul food traditions like frying foods,