COASTAL HERITAGE VOLUME 21, NUMBER 1 SUMMER 2006 African roots, Carolina gold SUMMER 2006 • CONTENTS 3 AFRICAN ROOTS, CAROLINA GOLD The African contribution to the immensely lucrative South Carolina rice industry. 8 Coastal Heritage is a quarterly publication CAROLINA gold’s trAIL of the S.C. Sea Grant Consortium, a university- Researchers are using molecular tools to study Carolina Gold’s genetics. based network supporting research, education, and outreach to conserve coastal resources and enhance economic opportunity for the people of South Carolina. Comments regarding this or FORMER RICE FIELDS, DISAPPEARING future issues of Coastal Heritage are welcomed. A rare habitat could soon fade away along the Cooper River. Subscriptions are free upon request by contacting: S.C. Sea Grant Consortium 287 Meeting Street REDISCOVERING CAROLINA RICE Charleston, S.C. 29401 There is a growing interest in reviving heirloom rice varieties such as Carolina Gold. phone: (843) 727-2078 e-mail: [email protected] 4 Executive Director EBBS AND FLOWS M. Richard DeVoe • Beach Sweep/River Sweep Annual Litter Cleanup Director of Communications • 9th International Conference on Shellfish Restoration Susan Ferris Hill Editor John H. Tibbetts Art Director ON THE COVER: Inside a former rice mill at Middleton Place Carl Turner on the Ashley River, a pestle rests in a mortar. These tools were used to pound rice to remove the husks. PHOTO/WADE SPEES Board of Directors The Consortium’s Board of Directors is composed of the chief executive officers of its member institutions: Dr. Andrew A. Sorensen, Chair President, University of South Carolina James F. Barker President, Clemson University John E. Frampton Executive Director S.C. Department of Natural Resources Dr. Raymond S. Greenberg President, Medical University of South Carolina Dr. Conrad D. Festa Interim President, College of Charleston Dr. Andrew H. Hugine, Jr. President, S.C. State University LINE DRAWING COURTESY OF MIDDLETON PLACE Dr. Ronald R. Ingle President, Coastal Carolina University Lt. General John W. Rosa COPYRIGHT © 2006 by the South Carolina Sea Grant Consortium. All rights reserved. President, The Citadel • COASTAL HERITAGE African roots, Carolina gold By John H. Tibbetts n the early 1960s, when Emory S. Campbell was a young RICE TRADITION. The Gullah people “cook and man, he moved from his family home on Hilton Head eat rice today as we always did,” says Emory S. Island to Boston and suffered a bout of culinary shock. Campbell, former executive director of the Penn “It took me a long time,” he says, “to adjust to the fact that Center on St. Helena Island. Ithere was something other than rice that people could eat PHOTO/WADE SPEES for dinner.” Hilton Head’s population was tiny during Campbell’s youth, with only 1,125 residents in 1950. Connected to the Island. Since his retirement in 2003, Campbell has mainland by ferry, the island was isolated, and the Campbell continued as an educator and consultant, describing the family—like other African Americans on the island— culture of his fellow Gullah/Geechee people, descendants embraced traditional folkways. And that included eating rice of African slaves who labored on antebellum rice planta- at every evening meal. tions. Along the coast of the Carolinas, they are known The Campbells would simmer meats, vegetables, beans, as Gullah, but in Georgia and northern Florida they are or field peas in a stew, which was poured over rice. In winter, called Geechee. they’d add oysters to the mix; in the summer, shrimp or garden The Gullah people have struggled to sustain their greens. “You’d have fish or vegetables prepared in such a way folkways in a time of rapid coastal development. While that you put it over rice,” says Campbell. “Collard greens, pressures of the modern world have diluted their creole cabbage, lima beans—all those are cooked in a soup or gravy language and culture, a blend of African and European that you’d put over the rice.” For breakfast the family usually influences, the Gullah attachment to rice remains strong. ate grits, but on special occasions the children might be lucky Scholars in recent years have gained insights into enough to eat rice, a “real treat.” the African contribution to Carolina rice’s origins, rice’s After a few years in Boston, Campbell returned to South place in lowcountry history and its creole cuisine, and the Carolina as executive director of the Penn Center on St. Helena grain’s role in the Atlantic world of trade and slavery. SUMMER 2006 • 3 Joseph Opala, who teaches similar ways? Because Africans of the the region in the mid-fifteenth century. African-American history at James Rice Coast and many lowcountry blacks Before European contact, West Madison University in Harrisonburg, have a shared ancestry split by slavery. Africans knew how to grow it in dry Virginia, has examined the similarities Centuries and human bondage didn’t upland areas and in irrigated wetlands; between lowcountry Gullah culture destroy many cultural links, particularly and how to plug hollow tree trunks as and that of the “Rice Coast” of West those of traditional foodways. irrigation devices for cultivation, Africa, a 700-mile, six-nation region. Says Opala, “The dishes prepared among other techniques. Opala worked for 17 years in in Sierra Leone are very similar to By the 1720s, Carolina rice Sierra Leone, where rice is not only the ones that are traditionally prepared in growers were telling slave traders that nation’s staple crop but it is also central South Carolina, and in some cases they wanted skilled Africans from the to the people’s identity. “They’d say, have exactly the same names. When I Rice Coast above all others. During ‘Joe, we’re Sierra Leoneans, we’re rice told Sierra Leoneans that the Gullah the eighteenth century, more enslaved eaters. We eat rice three times a day, eat okra soup, red rice, and rice and Africans from the Rice Coast were morning, noon, and night. Other foods greens, they became convinced that hauled into the ports of Charleston are fine, but if we ever go to bed with lowcountry people were family.” and Savannah than any other African our bellies empty of rice, we’re just region. “Rice growing was a particu- miserable.’ ” ATTACHMENT TO RICE larly complex form of agriculture, and When Opala later visited the that’s why planters needed people from South Carolina sea islands, Campbell Over the past few decades, that part of Africa,” says Opala. met him at the airport and explained, scholars have unearthed evidence that “There’s a pretty substantial “Joe, this is your first time here on the many cultivation techniques used on literature now on technical connec- islands, and I’ve got to tell you. We’re early rice plantations in North tions between the Rice Coast and the Gullah, we’re rice eaters. If we don’t America originated on the Rice Coast lowcountry,” of South Carolina and have rice, we’re miserable.” of West Africa. Georgia, Opala adds. “We know what How could two peoples thousands West Africans had been growing kinds of rice-growing techniques of miles apart, separated by the Atlantic rice for thousands of years before existed along the Rice Coast and how Ocean, describe themselves in such Portuguese mariners began exploring that knowledge affected the rice “The slaves knew more about the business of the rice plantation than the family that had owned that plantation for generations.” — Joseph Opala In early March through April, female slaves walked barefoot between rows, dropping rice seed into holes created by their toes, then tamping it down Lowcountry slaves hoed fields three with their heels. or four times from early June to early August. Hoeing was exhausting. The month of June, not surprisingly, was 4 •• COASTAL HHERITAGE the month highest in runaway slaves. industry of the eighteenth century the best of everything: horses, houses, were completed. In the early nine- lowcountry. The slaves knew more clothes, art, furniture, and food. One teenth century, a lowcountry slave about the business of the rice observer pointed out that their noted, “Most everybody have rice of plantation than the family that had luxuries denote “a higher degree of their own, for we all had land to plant, owned that plantation for genera- taste and love of show” than those and most everyday we done our task tions. But one of the things that found in northern states. time enough to work for ourselves.” hasn’t been written about much is Although they could afford a To supplement rice dishes, Africans how rice is central to the cultures cornucopia of grains, planters paid would add fish or wild game or use of the Gullah and of the people of thrice-daily respects to rice. In planta- leftovers from the planters’ hog killings the Rice Coast.” tion houses and summer homes, rice was such as pig’s feet, ears, heads, and entrails. Rice was also precious to the at the heart of every course of every After the Civil War, the Carolina lowcountry aristocrats who enslaved meal: soups, main dishes, side dishes, rice economy struggled and then died West Africans. Particularly before desserts, and breads. Carolina Gold rice out. The grain’s importance to high the Civil War, the swells of —the variety named for its dazzling color society faded. For the Gullah people, Charleston, Savannah, Beaufort, in fields—was famous for its cooking however, rice has sustained its central and Georgetown revered the grain. qualities, aroma, flavor, and texture. place through generations, though it was From the 1720s to 1860, no other Monthly rations of rice, mean- either grown locally as a subsistence crop commodity was remotely as impor- while, were given to plantation slaves.