My most recent research project has been working with McKee Foods (which you’ve heard of through their biggest product, Little Debbie) to do a history of sweet cake baking in the southeastern United States. I began this project in the summer of 2017 and completed is by the end of 2020, with just a few odds and ends left to tie up in 2021.
The McKee family are Seventh-day Adventist and the first McKee to go into baking, O.D. McKee, attended the local Adventist college and took a baking class – called Domestic Science back in the 1920s when he enrolled. O.D. passed down the story to his family that it was this baking class that got him interested in baking sweet cakes. So for the summer and fall of this year I will be interviewing bakers families across the southeast and writing their history.
In the bigger picture one wonders if – and if so, why – so many sweet baked goods came out of the south, and in the 1920s through 1930s. I suspect there are two completely unrelated answers to this. The first, regarding when, is probably taking place in the large context of the consumer market, growth of discretionary income, etc., that is taking place in the decade prior to the depression. Of course, why then do we not see these sweet baked goods shutting down during the depression? I hope to answer this.
The other part of this question is related to geographic location. Why the south? My hunch is that, again, the growth of sweet baked goods in the south is in the larger context of southerners eating sweeter foods more generally. Pralines, Krispy Kreme, sweet tea, all of the colas – all of these come out of the south. So I will test this hunch and see if the south actually did produce more sweet baked goods companies in the first half of the twentieth century.
Next up is a battery of articles I am writing for the Encyclopedia of Seventh-day Adventists. I have signed on for about fifteen of these articles and published the first ones in 2020. The rest will be written and published in the next year or two. I’m also working on a manuscript on Sino-US relations during the 1940s. That will be a book-length project.
Recent Publications:
“For the Love of Cookies!: Commercial Cookie and Cake Bakers in Chattanooga, Tennessee in the 1920s and 1930s,” Journal of Adventist Archives, Spring 2021.
“Ida Elizabeth Thompson,” The Encyclopedia of Seventh-day Adventists, 2021.
“Adelphian Academy,” The Encyclopedia of Seventh-day Adventists, 2020.
“Gem State Academy Academy,” The Encyclopedia of Seventh-day Adventists, 2020.
“Milo Academy Academy,” The Encyclopedia of Seventh-day Adventists, 2020.
“Thelma Smith,” The Encyclopedia of Seventh-day Adventists, 2020.
For the Love of Cookies: A History of Seventh-day Adventist Commercial Cookie Bakers in The United States,” manuscript completed and privately published. McKee Foods Corporation. 2020.
“Oral History in the Classroom: Faith, Learning, and Community Service.” Journal of Adventist Education. April-June 2018.
“Missionary Diplomacy: The Genesis of the China Lobby in the United States and how Missionaries Shifted American Foreign Policy between 1938 and 1941.” The Journal of American-East Asian Relations 25, (2018), 33.
“Frank and Harry Price: Diplomatic Backchannels between the United States and China During World War II.” The American Journal of Chinese Studies 24, no 2 (2017): 105.
FORTHCOMING ARTICLES:
China’s American Advisor: A Missionary’s Role in the Shaping of Sino-U.S. Relations, 1937-1949,” manuscript in progress.
“Amanda Van Scoy,” The Encyclopedia of Seventh-day Adventists, 2021, at encyclopedia.adventist.org.
“Hong Kong Adventist College,” The Encyclopedia of Seventh-day Adventists, 2021, at encyclopedia.adventist.org.
“Fletcher Academy,” The Encyclopedia of Seventh-day Adventists, 2020, at encyclopedia.adventist.org.
“Cedar Lake Academy,” The Encyclopedia of Seventh-day Adventists. Forthcoming, 2021, at encyclopedia.adventist.org.
“Grand Ledge Academy,” The Encyclopedia of Seventh-day Adventists. Forthcoming, 2021, at encyclopedia.adventist.org.
“Cameron Arthur Carter,” The Encyclopedia of Seventh-day Adventists. Forthcoming, 2021, at encyclopedia.adventist.org.
“Adlai Esteb,” The Encyclopedia of Seventh-day Adventists. Forthcoming, 2021, at encyclopedia.adventist.org.
“Delbert W. Curry,” The Encyclopedia of Seventh-day Adventists. Forthcoming, 2021, at encyclopedia.adventist.org.
“Frederick M. Larsen,” The Encyclopedia of Seventh-day Adventists. Forthcoming, 2021, at encyclopedia.adventist.org.
“Harry B. Parker,” The Encyclopedia of Seventh-day Adventists. Forthcoming, 2021, at encyclopedia.adventist.org.
“Pauline Schilberg,” The Encyclopedia of Seventh-day Adventists. Forthcoming, 2021, at encyclopedia.adventist.org.
“Paul Vincent Thomas and Carrie B. Teel Thomas,” The Encyclopedia of Seventh-day Adventists. Forthcoming, 2021, at encyclopedia.adventist.org.
From Fourth Island 