Professor Opie lectures and writes about foodways, African Diasporas, and Latin America. Opie has appeared on the popular American Public Media show The Splendid Table, the BBC radio show Americana, Southern California NPR show Good Food in Los Angeles among other shows. Opie appears in the NYC Media television series Appetite City hosted by previous New York Times food critic, William Grimes and Byron Hurt’s new documentary Soul Food Junkie.

Professor Opie is the author of Hog and Hominy: Soul Food from Africa to America (Columbia University Press, 2008), Black Labor Migration in Caribbean Guatemala, 1882-1923, Florida Work in the Americas Series (University of Florida Press, 2009), and numerous journal articles on Latin American history and foodways. His forthcoming book is titled Black and Latino Relations in New York, 1959–2010 a book in the Columbia History of Urban Life Series, editor Kenneth Jackson, Columbia University Press. Professor Opie is also a blogger at http://frederickdouglassopie.blogspot.com/ where he does "Daily Musings on Culture, History, and Food with Related Recipes."