Savannah Miles: From Gadsden to Harvard and back, and now to MasterChef
It’s easy to get lost on the way to Savannah Miles’ farm.
Fields dotted with spirals of hay and rows of corn blur together as the country roads pass by in the summer heat.
But if you hang a right at the F & K Auto Repair sign in Ballplay and go a little way 'til you hear a loud rooster — you’ve found her.
A wooden post has the address and is attached to a rusty open farm gate. As you drive into a clearing, a large garden appears. And what used to be a weathered stable, now home to Miles and her boyfriend, sits next to their cars in the grass.
Miles’ Honda Civic has a sticker that says “Go outside. Do things,”
All of it is right next to their chicken coop, and the rooster. She waves as she comes from the coop.
It’s a long way from Harvard, where Miles spent four and a half years.
It’s also a long way from Los Angeles and the set of Fox’s “MasterChef,” where the 27-year-old spent two months filming this season as a contestant.
She graduated from Harvard in 2018 with a bachelor’s degree in social studies focusing on race and class in the rural South.
The perky brunette is an unconventional, down-to-earth believer that change needed to come to her hometown. She’s put her passion to work — even getting grants from people like Bill Gates to work on a more equitable and cohesive community.
When she’s not doing all that, she’s back home on her farm growing vegetables for the community.
And obviously cooking up some pretty good meals.
But the sweet-natured activist won’t tell you how the “MasterChef” part pans out.
“You’ll just have to watch and see,” she said, grinning.
Growing up in Gadsden
Miles, who goes by Sav, is a fifth-generation local. She says some of her empathy for those who are discriminated against may have come from her ancestors.
She says the Mafia chased her great-great-grandfather out of Sicily — which she recently visited — because he wouldn’t pay them for protection.
He came to Alabama as an immigrant in the 1800s to work for the steel production companies. He probably felt out of place, she said.
Miles can somewhat relate. She grew up in downtown Gadsden where her father, Philip, was an attorney. But don’t let that fool you, she says. “We weren’t living in the country clubs.”
Money was often tight. And she was an Italian Catholic with a liberal view who also happened to be a vegetarian. And her parents were divorced.
“I felt kind of out of place here,” she said.
Half the kids on her block were Black and the other half white, but she said they never socialized much though they shared many of the same struggles growing up.
Miles had Black friends in high school, but often got called names because of it. All around her she saw a divide.
“Many of my friends’ families struggled,” she said. “I could relate. My parents were divorced, and my mom didn’t make a lot of money. I understood the challenges of the families struggling to make ends meet. I still see people continue to suffer when they don’t need to.”
Making it to the Ivy League
So why Harvard? Turns out, the smarts run in the family.
Miles was 13 when her sister, Megan, got a full ride to the prestigious college in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
She was the first female recipient of the Mark D. Cory Scholarship — named after a teacher at Gadsden High in the 1940s.
“I saw her go and succeed,” Miles said of her older sister. (Megan currently works for the City of Chattanooga in their affordable housing division.)
Miles said getting into Harvard was just luck. “I didn’t think I was much smarter than anybody else,” she said.
Well, she was valedictorian at Gadsden City High School. But that doesn’t mean much. Only about 5% of those who apply get accepted to Harvard.
Miles humbly shrugs it off saying, “Some person in an admissions office just thought I was smart.”
She got the same scholarship as her sister and noted, “You can’t pass up that opportunity.”
When she arrived at Harvard, there were only six people from Alabama.
“It was total culture shock,” she said.
Most of the students knew each other because they’d gone to “fancy prep schools together,” she said. There was a certain culture that you had to understand.
“It was really tough,” she said. “I felt like a fish out of water. I had to find a pocket of people I could relate to.”
Coming home
Miles always knew she’d come back to Gadsden after graduation. She wanted to put her education into action. She said she didn’t think being in a big city was conducive to that.
“It would have been a tiny splash,” she said.
Her college thesis was based on what she saw as the biggest issue in her hometown — racial prejudice. It was getting in the way of hardworking families of all backgrounds, coming together around shared challenges (i.e. good jobs, affordable housing and healthcare and quality education), she said
Her paper “laid out a community organizing model that turned Jesus' call to love your neighbor into a call for action,” she said.
So, she partnered with local churches to build multiracial and nonpartisan community groups that focused on shared interests and mending racial and political divisions.
“You have to have dreamers in this world," said Gadsden City Councilman Jason Wilson, who has known Miles’ parents for years. “She’s just an inspiring young lady.”
Miles was named the chief executive director at the Boys & Girls Club of Gadsden/Etowah County.
“I don’t know why they wanted a 22-year-old,” she said, laughing.
One of her goals was to persuade club members and other young people to stay in Etowah County once they grew up.
“Most young people do not stay in Gadsden anymore,” she said at the time. “So many of them leave for college, and they don’t return. I’m searching for ways to rebuild our community. I have a passion for making people see how wonderful Gadsden is. If you leave for college, come back and get jobs. That’s a game-changer for our community.”
The fact that Miles came back home after Harvard “shows a lot about her character,” said Robert Hunter, a friend from high school who has worked with Miles on several community projects. “I wouldn’t be surprised if in 20 or 30 years, she’s on the Supreme Court.”
Law school is something Miles has considered. “We’ll see,” she said.
When the Black Lives Matter movement began across the country, she organized local protests and visited Gadsden leaders to talk about what was happening. Her group talked to the police chief, sometimes about specific officers and their behavior. They talked to town leaders about the Forrest Cemetery. It has the same name as Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, a grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.
She applied for grants — one with monies from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. And started working on her plans in the community.
“Something that surprised me in the best way was seeing all of the people who came out to support the initiatives we were doing,” she said, offering examples:
A city council member who came out to the city’s first Pride Festival with painted toenails in pride colors.
There was the busy mom of four who dropped off a car’s worth of food every week and spent hours volunteering at the free store Miles helped set up for low-income residents.
“Even my own mom showing up to every single protest, free store shift and fundraiser,” she said.
“We faced our fair share of hate, but the amount of love I saw from people in this town towards people totally different from them really restored my faith in this place,” she said.
In the Pines
Miles, dressed in a red crop top and black jeans on a recent morning, is a hugger.
“Thank you for making the trip” she said with a slight Southern drawl.
A glimpse inside the stable-turned-house reveals one big room with a typical first-apartment vibe. Futon couch, hammock swing chair, various objects hung up on the wall etc.
Even the name of the farm, In the Pines, is part of a Nirvana lyric.
Different instruments line one wall, an ode to she and her boyfriend, Cory Shands’, love of music. He plays in a band in Nashville and goes back and forth.
Miles said her family has always been a musical one — bluegrass specifically. Her dad plays the guitar. She plays the banjo and her mom, Sarah Cusimano Miles, the mandolin and fiddle. They’ve played at a few festivals, she said.
Miles explains that Cory, is really the musician. “Where’s my coffee?” Cory asked the same morning.
“I might be drinking it,” Miles said, sheepishly.
The two have made a cozy, if eclectic home in the stable, complete with colored lights around the loft where they sleep. They also have an outdoor shower Cory built.
It uses 100% recycled materials, said Miles, who is very eco-friendly with just about everything she does.
“Old tin from the roof, wood taken from an old barn and even river rocks we pulled from our garden bed to make a mosaic base,” she said. “We love it!”
They’ve improvised on many aspects of the home where a portable air conditioner hums trying to keep up with the humidity and summer heat outside
“Don’t report us to the HOA,” Cory said with a grin.
Miles calls the house renovation “a process,” laughing. She has always dreamed of having a farm and found the 3 acres in the classifieds and decided to purchase it.
She said the last few years have been hectic, and she decided to take a break and focus on sustainable agriculture. So, she and Cory formed In the Pines Produce, where they grow everything from squash and peppers to okra and potatoes.
People order boxes online and the duo deliver them, as far away as Birmingham or Huntsville. They have a Facebook page that updates folks on what they have new going on.
They’ll also fix boxes at a discount for people who can’t afford them. Miles noted that vegetables are expensive and fast-food is cheaper, but “that has such an effect on their health,” she said.
“Food is a justice issue,” she said. “Everybody deserves a happy, healthy life.”
They also have chickens and can provide eggs. The rooster crows loudly as if on cue. “He’s our mascot,” Miles said, rolling her eyes.
They also have several cats, including an enormous multi-colored Maine coon named Bleeto, because of her strange meow. She struts in from somewhere to her food bowl. She’ll take a pet or two, then hisses, turns and walks off.
“She’s friendly sometimes,” Miles said.
Chef Savannah
Miles will tell you straight up that she hadn’t even watched “MasterChef” before the last year.
But that doesn’t mean she wasn’t interested. She’s been cooking since she had an Easy Bake oven.
“Other kids would watch cartoons and I’d watch cooking shows,” she said.
What she loves most about cooking is transforming the mundane and monotonous task of eating into an opportunity for joy, creativity and connection.
“From the earliest cooking shows I watched, I was inspired to see cooking as a creative outlet that can be as fun as any other personal passion,” Miles said.
Being from an Italian family on her mom's side meant all gatherings revolved around food.
“So many of my favorite memories revolve around food and family and laughter and deliciousness,” she said.
“I got attached to those feelings and now, even if I'm just cooking for myself and my partner after a long day of work,” she said. “I'm able to bring myself back to those special moments of childhood: the wonder of watching Rachel Ray turn an eggplant into a delicacy, the chaos of 20 Italians scrambling to get some of my aunt's famous meatballs, or the vintage Jubilee cookbook my dad pulls from for all his favorite Gulf Coast recipes.”
So, having said all that, Miles watched a girl from Mississippi win “MasterChef,” and thought to herself, “I can do that.”
She applied to be a contestant and the rest is history. She’s mum on the outcome.
But those who know her would probably say she’s got this.
This article originally appeared on The Gadsden Times: Profiling MasterChef contestant Savannah Miles of Gadsden
