The racist hierarchy in the South manifested in several ways, but most people don’t know that racism even impacted what foods blacks were allowed to buy. As Maya Angelou once wrote, it was custom not to sell vanilla ice cream to blacks in many parts of the South, except on Independence Day.

As The Guardian notes, even though it was a black slaved named Edmund Albius who perfected the flavor of vanilla ice cream, its white sweetness was viewed as a representation of the American dream, which is why blacks were kept from eating it.

The Guardian’s Michael W. Twitty describes how he learned of the vanilla ice cream ban:

My father, for instance, first learned the rules when he first visited South Carolina with my grandfather in the 1940s. In our family’s home county of Lancaster, Daddy asked the general store owner if he could buy some candy and ice cream, referring to the white man as “Sir”. The store owner promptly grabbed my father by the collar, and yelled at him in the presence of my grandfather. Then he informed the elder man, “You’d better teach this little nιgger to say ‘Yassuh’, boy! ‘Sir’ ain’t good enough!” My grandfather grabbed his son and sped off.

Twitty also quoted the late poet Audre Lorde’s experience with vanilla ice cream:

The waitress was white, the counter was white, and the ice cream I never ate in Washington DC that summer I left childhood was white, and the white heat and white pavement and white pavement and white stone monuments of my first Washington summer made me sick to my stomach for the rest of the trip.

Although blacks were allowed to eat ice cream on Independence Day, no one is altogether sure why. It could’ve been a plan to encourage patriotism among blacks, yet nobody seems to know for certain.