Excellent piece. Interesting to remember that King and his peers weren't the only part of the Civil Rights movement talking about gardens; the Black Panthers were (and still are) leading advocates for using food as a tool for community empowerment:

http://www.salon.com/mwt/food/eat_drink/2007/08/01/black_ ...

And while Tom focuses on the rural south, African-American communities in the urban north are also at the leading front of food justice. Whether in Detroit, where a friend said to me, "We're much more interested our city's ability to grow food than make cars," or in Oakland where People's Grocery is a continuous inspiration:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HN2laxseU8E

City Slicker Farms is doing amazing work in supporting back yard food gardening in West Oakland, which has 300 liquor stores and no grocery store.

The woman I worked with learned gardening from her mother in the deep South, but the conditions (i.e. extremely sandy soil) here are very different. Her mother also never needed to deal with the threat of lead or other toxicity that's the legacy of the area.