Paulette Johnson stood before a crowd at the Williamson County Public Library on Monday, Sept. 28, and traced the food on their plates back more than two centuries.

Johnson, a Franklin native and retired medical laboratory technologist, was the guest speaker for the African American Heritage Society of Williamson County's September Porch Talks, a free evening program titled "Let's Talk Soul Food." Attendees ate a soul food dinner while Johnson walked them through the cuisine's history, as first reported by the Williamson Herald.

Johnson, a former AAHS board member and current member of the society's Historic Committee, opened with her own story, according to Williamson Source. She described being born into a family of cooks and learning from her mother, known as Miss Minnie, along with family friends Mrs. Lee Anna Watson, Mrs. Rosa Evans and Mrs. Lee Nora Oden-Brown.

By age nine, Johnson was cooking supper after school. Her early fried chicken, she recalled, looked like it was coated in cigarette ashes. Her mother praised the effort anyway, and that encouragement stuck.

Johnson said the experience made her want to try harder.

That personal thread led into a broader history lesson. Johnson traced soul food's roots to enslaved African Americans who worked with whatever ingredients they could find. They turned overlooked scraps into meals. They used weeds as nutrients, molasses as sugar and even okra as a contraceptive, Johnson explained.

"People made something out of nothing," Johnson said.

African culinary knowledge shaped Southern cooking in lasting ways, Johnson said. Black-eyed peas, greens, beans and rice all became staples of African American food traditions, rooted in the resourcefulness of people cooking under extreme constraint.

Johnson spent roughly 40 years as a medical laboratory technologist at Williamson Medical Center before retiring. She also worked 10 years as a clerk at the Five Points Post Office in Franklin. A mother of five, she has served as chair of the Culinary Committee at Connection Hill P.B. Church and cooked in several restaurants.

The Porch Talks series, organized by the African American Heritage Society of Williamson County, brings historians, preservationists and community storytellers together to discuss African American history and culture in Williamson County. The organization adjusted its schedule this year after attendees said they could not make the previous morning sessions, according to the AAHS events page. Upcoming speakers are announced on the AAHS Facebook page.

The society's next scheduled public event is its Annual Holiday Open House on Monday, Dec. 14, from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m., featuring a live re-enactment at the McLemore House Museum, which was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1999. The AAHS Annual Tom Murdic Educational Scholarship application process also opened Thursday, Oct. 1, accepting applications for 2027.