Family donates hundreds of cookbooks honoring Black cuisine to Chicago culinary school

CHICAGO (WLS) -- Chicago's City Colleges will be able to celebrate the history of Black cuisine for years to come after the family of Free Frank McWorter donated nearly two thousand cookbooks.

The vintage cookbooks come from a massive collection compiled over the years by Sandra McWorter Marsh.

Her younger brother Gerald said she has always had a passion for cooking.

"She became a great chef in our family and developed this cookbook collection," Gerald said.

McWorter Marsh donated her entire collection of more than 1,700 cookbooks to the Washburne Culinary Institute at Kennedy King College.

It's the 83-year old's wish for future generations to preserve Black culinary traditions.

McWorter Marsh is honoring her own legacy.

She's the great-great granddaughter of Free Frank McWorter, an enslaved man who bought his freedom and his wife's settling in southern Illinois in the 1830s, where he founded the town New Philadelphia.

As descendants of Free Frank, the McWorter family puts value on education.

"We're so proud of these young people making a way for themselves and getting these skills," Gerald said.

In honor of the donation, culinary students prepared some dishes from one of McWorter Marsh's cookbooks.

"It's been an eye opening experience to know that someone of that stature still looks at us and says, 'let me pass down this knowledge that I have gained over the years' and it helps push the culinary generation forward," said Jaylen Spires, a Washburne culinary student.

The students made some of the recipes pulled from an old edition of the Ebony Cook Book. Things like pound cake, black eyed peas, as well as chef's molded salad -- which some of the culinary students have never heard of before.

"I tasted it. Ehhh... it was alright. It was alright," said Tashianna Wilkins, a Washburne culinary student.

But the rest of the meal was a hit.

There are plenty more recipes to discover in McWorter Marsh's collection, which is now in Kennedy King's library.