Ping and Echo: The Club from Nowhere
Baking behind the scenes to fund the Montgomery bus boycott
Welcome to Ping and Echo, a daily newsletter that shares one amazing podcast episode guaranteed to be a great listen for kids and their families. Each newsletter includes links to articles, videos, and activities related to the podcast so you can turn every episode into an adventure.
Today’s podcast episode is from Hidden Kitchens, a podcast we’ve highlighted once before (go back and check it out here). Hidden Kitchens was a series produced for NPR by the Kitchen Sisters, and this was one of our favorite episodes. Here is how the show is described over at NPR: “In the 1950s, a group of Montgomery, Ala., women baked and sold pies, cookies and cakes in beauty salons and on street corners to help fund the Montgomery bus boycott. The Club from Nowhere, as the group was known, was the brainchild of Georgia Gilmore, a cafeteria worker fired for her organizing efforts. She was one of the unsung heroes of the civil rights era.” This brief episode is a lovely tribute to Georgia Gilmore, and can serve as a starting point for a number of discussions about civil rights, movement building and activism.
Podcast: Hidden Kitchens
Episode: The Club from Nowhere
URL: https://www.npr.org/2005/03/04/4509998/the-club-from-nowhere-cooking-for-civil-rights
Length: 6 minutes
🧐 You Should Know
I’ll always give you a heads up if there is anything in the podcast that might surprise or worry kids. Nothing to worry about here.
💡 Try This
After you listen to the episode you can feed the movement with the links and activities below:
Check out the book Pies from Nowhere, and make one of Georgia Gilmore’s pie recipes
🔎 Explore More
Read up on hidden kitchens and civil rights with these links:
Hear John Edge of the Southern Foodways Alliance discuss the hidden kitchens of the South - NPR
Overlooked No More: Georgia Gilmore, Who Fed and Funded the Montgomery Bus Boycott - New York Times
The name Ping and Echo comes from sonar technology which relies on sending out “pings” and receiving back “echos” to discover the world around you. You can send us pictures of the art and activities created by your kids. Email them to pingandecho@gmail.com and we’ll post all your echos on our Instagram and our Twitter page.
Thanks for lending us your ears and your inbox.
Ruby, Toby, and Josh