Heading into Labor Day weekend, millions of Americans will heat up grills and barbecue – a subject Georgia College history professor Dr. Craig Pascoe knows something about.

An expert in barbecue and its importance in history, culture and traditions - Pascoe’s the kind of guy who can eat 2 pounds of meat at one sitting. He’s a “big carnivore” who knows good grilling and how something mostly known as Southern is served differently all over the world.

“It’s a sneaky way of teaching history,” Pascoe said. “Barbecue’s a sense of community. It’s more of an event, something everyone has at least some connection with.”

Working with students and interns, Pascoe is collecting oral histories and artifacts for a “Smokin’ History” exhibit at the Atlanta History Center. It’ll feature local pit masters and eateries while telling the cultural story of barbecue and how it came to be known as “our nation’s true cuisine.”

A recent $100,000 sponsorship from the Rich Foundation allowed Pascoe to begin designing the 3200-sq.ft. exhibit, scheduled to open May 2018. Interns helped research, locate images and identify artifacts to be used - like an old neon sign from Fincher’s Bar-B-Q in Macon.

About 20 students from Pascoe’s Foodways and Southern Traditions course this fall will record testimonies and sample Georgia barbecues like Old Clinton in Gray, Hot Thomas’ near Athens, Fresh Air in Jackson and one of Pascoe’s favorites: BL Smokers, a former “dilapidated gas station” in Macon.

Barbecue changes according to state, region or period, Pascoe said. German immigrants in the 1800s brought the custom of barbecuing sausage. Africans used vinegar to kill germs and cut grease. Mexicans wrapped and buried heads of cows with coals. In Asia, people cooked on battlefields in upside-down shields that became today’s modern wok. In North Carolina, they put coleslaw on top of barbecued pork sandwiches. Along the Georgia coast, barbecue includes Brunswick Stew. And, in Columbus, Georgia, they serve it with mustard sauce.

Respect for African-American pit masters propelled barbecue into the unique role of challenging racial lines during segregation, because barbecue “tends to brings people together,” Pascoe said. Passed generation to generation, these traditions give people a sense of who they are and where they belong.

“When you cook something over hot coals, it’s universal,” he said. “You get a merging of cultures with different methods and styles and ingredients. That’s the base of American barbecue.”