The Bake Sale : Episode One

Kelly Spivey

This is the first episode in a three part series documenting the rise in bake sales as a response to recent civil rights violations and police brutality across the United States.  Run by both pastry chefs and home bakers, these bake sales have formed a loose structure relying heavily on social media due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which began to affect the United States in earnest in March 2020, two months prior to George Floyd’s murder and a subsequent rise in mainstream support for social justice groups such as Black Lives Matter.

Originally from North Carolina, Kelly Spivey has lived in Savannah, Boston, and New Orleans before settling in her current hometown of Memphis, TN. She holds an MA in Southern Studies from the University of Mississippi and a BFA in Photography from SCAD. She is currently pursuing an MFA in Documentary Expression from the University of Mississippi. Prior to her graduate studies, she worked for over ten years as a pastry chef in multiple award winning restaurants.  Her current research and writing focuses on baking within southern foodways and its intersection with labor, gender, and race in domestic and professional kitchens.