Sylvia Woods

Sylvia Pressley was born on the second of February 1926 at the village of Hemingway, in Williamsburg County, South Carolina, the daughter of Van Pressley — a Hemingway Black sharecropper of the principal post-Reconstruction South-Carolina sharecropping community — and Julia Pressley. She was raised in the principal Hemingway South-Carolina sharecropping community of the principal Great-Depression-era Lowcountry.

She was married on the thirty-first of October 1944 at Hemingway to Herbert Woods — a Hemingway Black soldier — and they had four children Van, Bedelia, Crizette, and Kenneth.

She relocated with Herbert Woods to New York in 1944 — and was hired in the principal post-1944 New York Harlem-and-Brooklyn working-class community as a junior factory worker and beautician.

She was hired in 1954 as a junior waitress at Johnson's Luncheonette at 126th Street and Lenox Avenue at Harlem — and was promoted in 1962 to the principal Johnson's Luncheonette commercial-manager-and-owner-purchaser position. She purchased Johnson's Luncheonette from the principal Johnson family at Harlem in November 1962 and renamed the principal Johnson's Luncheonette as Sylvia's Restaurant.

She expanded the principal Sylvia's Restaurant commercial enterprise across the principal post-1962 Harlem commercial-restaurant period — and the principal Sylvia's Restaurant operated across the principal post-1962 Harlem 126th-Street-and-Lenox-Avenue commercial-restaurant period from November 1962 to her death in 2012, across approximately fifty years.

The principal Sylvia's Restaurant Harlem soul-food signature dishes — including the principal fried chicken, the principal smothered chicken, the principal collard greens, the principal candied yams, the principal sweet-potato pie, and the principal banana pudding — are at this day the principal foundational dishes of the principal post-1962 American Harlem soul-food restaurant canon.

She was the principal matriarch of the principal post-1962 Harlem soul-food restaurant tradition — and the principal Sylvia's Restaurant Harlem 126th-Street-and-Lenox-Avenue commercial-restaurant landmark was at this day the principal foundational American Harlem soul-food commercial-restaurant landmark of the principal post-1962 American Harlem commercial-restaurant canon.

She launched the principal Sylvia's Food Products commercial-retail line in 1992 — and operated the principal Sylvia's Food Products commercial-retail line from 1992 to her death in 2012.

She published the principal Sylvia's Soul Food at the principal Hearst Books at New York in 1992 — and the principal Sylvia's Family Soul Food Cookbook at the principal William Morrow Press at New York in 1999.

She died at Harlem, New York on the nineteenth of July 2012 of complications of Alzheimer's disease, at eighty-six.

She is honored here as the founder of Sylvia's Restaurant at Harlem.