Library Of Congress Shares Rosa Parks’ ‘Featherlite’ Pancake Recipe Found On Back Of Envelope

The Library of Congress shared an unusual recipe for Featherlite Pancakes, which was scribbled on a First Independence National Bank of Detroit envelope. Interestingly, the list belonged to Rosa Parks, a founding member of the Civil Rights Movement.

Manuscript Specialist Adrienne Cannon shared that the Howard G. Buffett Foundation gifted Rosa’s collection to the Library of Congress in 2016. The stash contained thousands of items, including family history, personal correspondence, writings, financial records, pictures, and books from Martin Luther King Jr. and Roots’ Alex Haley, who referred to Rosa as “the mother of us all.”

Rosa Parks’ ‘Featherlite’ Pancake Recipe

To make Rosa’s special pancakes, you’ll need peanut butter and three times the amount of baking powder you would normally use. Her niece, Sheila McCauley Keys, described them as “nice, petite pancakes,” and “not like the big stacks you see now.”

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“I had never tasted the ones with the peanut butter until they cooked them at a school event in Pennsylvania, but she would make us pancakes,” Keys said. “You’d get two, and you might get a dollop of apple butter, and we thought that was the best treat.”

Adrienne says it is the only recipe in the collection of 10,000 items, making it a special thing indeed. “We don’t know the origin of it or exactly when she may have jotted it down, but we do know it was written on the back of a bank envelope, the First Independence National Bank of Detroit,” she explained. “She moved there with her husband Raymond Parks and her mother Leona McCauley in August of 1957.”

If you are looking to recreate the treat, you need a cup of flour, a tablespoon of baking powder, half a teaspoon of salt, two tablespoons of sugar, an egg, a cup and a quarter of milk, one-third cup of peanut butter, and one tablespoon of melted shortening or oil. Simply mix all together—dry ingredients first, and set on a griddle at 275 F.

More things left by Rosa Parks

Being an active pioneer of the Civil Rights movement at the time, Rosa left behind many items related to the cause. Alongside the recipe was a carpool note documenting ride-sharing after the church and boycott leaders had to provide the Black community with exclusive transportation during the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

Her Presidential Medal of Freedom — the highest civilian honor given by the executive and legislative branches of the federal government — from President Bill Clinton in 1966, as well as the Congressional Gold Medal she earned in 1999, were also contained in the box. Amidst these monumental finds, the pancake guide stood out because it showed a more personal side of Rosa. “Auntie Rosa just seemed to float around the house; she was so light…and in that kitchen experimenting,” Keys recalled.