Black History Month

Because of two birthdays. In February 1926 the historian Carter G. Woodson and the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History launched Negro History Week, deliberately placing it in the week spanning the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln on February 12 and Frederick Douglass on February 14 — two dates Black communities were already marking on their own.

Campuses and cities stretched the week into a full month through the late 1960s and into the 1970s, and in 1976 President Gerald Ford called on Americans to observe Black History Month nationally.

Woodson's argument was never that one week of assembly speeches would do it. He wanted this history treated as ordinary history, taught and lived rather than announced. An hour spent cooking a dish and hearing where it actually came from is closer to that than a slide deck is.

Five workshops, and the thread running through them is the Atlantic.

• Black-Eyed Pea Fritters descend from akara, the West African fritter of peeled, whipped black-eyed peas. The same technique crossed the Atlantic with enslaved West Africans and surfaces again as acarajé in Bahia, Brazil and as bean fritters across the American South. One idea, three continents.
• Western African Peanut Stew runs that trade route in reverse. Peanuts are native to South America and reached West Africa on Portuguese ships, then became so central to the cooking there that most people assume they were always local.
• Jamaican Jerk Chicken carries the cooking of the Maroons, who smoked meat over pimento wood in the Jamaican interior. Allspice, or pimento, is native to the island.
• Southern Shrimp and Grits began as a working breakfast in the Carolina and Georgia Lowcountry, shrimpers eating what came off the boat over stone-ground corn, long before it was a restaurant dish.
• Kuku Paka is a coconut chicken curry from the Swahili coast of Kenya and Tanzania, where East African and South Asian kitchens have been borrowing from each other for centuries.

Your chef tells these while your team is cooking, so the history arrives with dinner instead of on a slide.

Yes, through the pairings. The Jamaican Jerk Chicken, Southern Shrimp and Grits and Kuku Paka workshops all offer a wine pairing add-on featuring African American-owned wineries, and your event planner can confirm the details for your date. The Black-Eyed Pea Fritters and Western African Peanut Stew workshops take a Watermelon Agua Fresca pairing instead, which keeps the whole event alcohol-free if that suits your group better. You can also extend the menu itself: add Rice and Peas to the jerk chicken, or Collard Greens to the shrimp and grits. Each adds about thirty minutes and turns a single dish into a full plate.

It's a chef teaching a real dish properly, which is a different animal from a themed party. Your team spends the hour seasoning, searing and tasting, and the history comes through the food rather than around it. Nobody is asked to dress up or put on a performance. You don't need cooks, either: the chef works at the pace of the slowest pan, and the Zoom host keeps the quieter half of the call in it with trivia and a mini scavenger hunt. Rockoly has hosted over 1,000 events and is rated 5 stars on Google across 105 reviews. Customization is free, so tell your planner if your ERG wants its own speaker up front.

Yes, and there is no surcharge for any of it when you tell us in advance. Three of these menus need very little adjusting: the Western African Peanut Stew is vegetarian and gluten-free before anyone touches it, the Jamaican Jerk Chicken has a cauliflower steak standing in for the chicken, and the Black-Eyed Pea Fritters come in vegan and gluten-free versions. Kosher and no-alcohol setups are handled the same way.

Distance is not the obstacle it sounds like either. US shipping is free; beyond that we deliver to Australia, the UK, Canada, Sweden, Ireland, Germany, South Africa, Mexico, India and Spain among other countries, and a shopping list covers anyone a courier can't reach. Zoom is the default, and Google Meet, Microsoft Teams and WebEx all work. Groups run from 3 to 600 and up, with the largest split by department or across two days.

One rate, one invoice, and it carries the chef, the Zoom host who runs the games and watches the chat, and your planner; all fresh ingredients delivered, free and insured within the US, portioned to feed four; and free customization, free dietary adjustments, gratuities and all service fees.

The only things quoted on top are the pairings and the menu extensions — Rice and Peas, Collard Greens, the agua fresca, the winery pairing. A second person in the same kitchen costs nothing, so a per-head figure usually feeds rather more people than it appears to.

Yes — Rockoly runs in-person and hybrid events alongside virtual ones. An in-person event is about two hours in your own office, or in a venue we arrange, with themed appetizers and non-alcoholic refreshments included and add-ons like custom aprons if you want the day marked properly. Remote colleagues aren't left out of it either: their ingredients ship to them, free within the US, and they cook the same menu at the same time as the room.

Two honest caveats before you plan around it. The rates on this page are virtual rates, and which of these five menus can travel — the jerk chicken, the shrimp and grits, the peanut stew, the kuku paka, the black-eyed pea fritters — depends on which chef is free and where you are, so that quote comes from your planner rather than from this page. And the February squeeze bites harder on an in-person booking than a virtual one, because a chef has to be free and physically in your city on the same handful of days everybody else wants. Say which format you have in mind early and you get a choice rather than what's left.

February is the shortest month on the calendar and the most heavily booked one we run, which is the scheduling problem in a sentence. Booking before the December holidays gives you the widest choice of dates; leaving it to late January means taking what is left. Three weeks is the minimum lead time for a cooking event, and rush dates are sometimes possible depending on chef availability, so it is always worth asking rather than assuming.

The inquiry form on this page reaches a Rockoly event specialist, who replies with menus, open dates and a quote. A $250 deposit then holds the date, by credit card, ACH transfer or check. Cancel 21 or more days out and you are refunded what you paid less any nonrecoverable costs already committed; 8 to 20 days out you choose between a 50% refund and a 100% Rockoly credit; inside 8 days payments are nonrefundable, though one complimentary reschedule is yours if you ask 14+ days ahead.

Everything is covered by the Love Your Event Guarantee: if your Rockoly event doesn't live up to expectations, we'll make it right. A planner can also be reached on (617) 939-9732 or at events@rockoly.com.