Adrian Miller couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Back in 2004, he found himself watching a Paula Deen special about Southern barbecue. By the time its credits rolled, he’d seen not a single Black barbecue chef profiled. “An hourlong special with no Black people at all,” he said. “And you know, that's just crazy.” Until recently, the oversight would likely have been inconceivable, said Miller, a Beard Award-winning writer of food history and author of a new book called “Black Smoke: African Americans and the United States of Barbecue.” Stretching back to Colonial times when enslaved Africans were most often in charge of the pits, Black barbecue cooks had been regarded as the most skilled practitioners of the art during most of America’s history, Miller said.