By Elizabeth Gabriel
Foods like grits, made from corn, offer a connection to the plants enslaved people of African descent used to survive and thrive, said Kofi Acree in an interview with the Cornell Chronicle in 2022. Acree is the Director of the John Henrik Clarke Africana Library and curator of Africana Collections at Cornell University Library.
Corn is among the 21 plants featured in the ongoing exhibit “Seeds of Survival and Celebration: Plants and the Black Experience” at the Cornell Botanic Gardens’ Nevin Welcome Center in Ithaca, NY. The exhibition includes an outdoor display garden featuring medicinal and edible plants, an audio tour and an indoor exhibit, all describing plants that are significant to the Black experience in the Americas dating back to the transatlantic slave trade. An advisory committee including Cornell staff, faculty and students helped form the exhibition.
Sarah Fiorello, Interpretation Coordinator at the Gardens, explains, “The transatlantic slave trade is central to the story of these plants, but the Botanic Gardens and the committee really wanted to highlight the stories of survival that these plants tell.”
From 1502 to 1867, the transatlantic slave trade displaced 12.5 million Africans on an estimated 30,000 voyages - the largest forced migration in history. Africans were known for and chosen because of their farming skill, knowledge about plants and ability to do manual labor. Dozens of Africa’s cultivated plants made their way to the Americas as provisions on slave ships. Africans also braided seeds and grains into their hair to bring their foods with them as a way of survival. The grains, medicinal plants, and root vegetables left over from the Atlantic crossing provided enslaved Africans access to familiar plants that grew around their living quarters.
Many dishes in America today were first prepared by enslaved people and their descendants using their culinary excellence and the plants that came with them from West Africa. Enslaved Africans cultivated these plants to relieve hunger, have more food choices, including those central to their culture, and treat illnesses. These African food staples - including black-eyed peas, okra, greens, watermelon and rice - were slowly introduced into the meals of slaveholders by the enslaved cooks who prepared them. These “foods of survival” quietly made their way into the dishes prepared for plantation owners, eventually becoming regional staples in the North American diet and worldwide.
The goal of the Cornell exhibit is to elevate the plants that are significant to the Black experience and to offer a space of diversity and inclusion at Gardens, at Cornell and to the public, says Fiorello, “These are really amazing stories, and enslaved Africans and their descendants are often not given credit for them in our country,” she says.
Agricultural skill and resilience enabled slaves to stay alive and retain some of their dietary preferences and cultural identities under the trauma of kidnapping and enslavement, Acree says.
“What they did was amazing. They had to till these gardens after they worked, after they labored – for free, by the way,” Acree says. “And so that meant late at night, early in the morning, before they went to the fields.”
The exhibition at Cornell focuses on food plants native to West Africa and also highlights cash crops, like sugarcane, cotton and tobacco, that fueled the transatlantic slave trade and that enslaved people were forced to grow. West African rice farmers were explicitly targeted for enslavement because of their expertise in rice cultivation (see the work of Konda Mason of Jubilee Justice, who is growing rice in Louisiana as a path to justice for Black farmers). Between the 1740s and the 1770s, indigo was a significant commercial crop grown on Southern plantations. Enslaved people planted, cultivated, harvested and processed indigo to dye clothing worn by upper-class Europeans.
During the 1700s, the number of enslaved people in the Chesapeake Bay area and North Carolina increased from 10,000 to 1 million due to the increased European demand for tobacco, which led to a higher demand for labor.
Here are just a few of the plants native to West Africa whose stories are inextricably linked to Africans and their descendants.
Sweet Potato
Morning Glory Family (Convolvulaceae)
Native to tropical Central and South America
Enslaved cooks roasted whole, unpeeled sweet potatoes in hot embers until they were soft and steaming. Whether baked whole, cooked in sugary syrup or baked into mouthwatering pies, sweet potatoes are an American comfort food.
Sorghum
Grass Family (Poaceae)
First domesticated in Sudan more than 5,000 years ago, sorghum is the world’s fifth most important cereal crop. It first arrived in the Americas on slave ships and was grown by enslaved Africans around their living quarters and was used to make cakes, breads, and porridge.
Medicinal use: Sorghum syrup was used to sweeten the flavor of bitter-tasting herbal medicines.
One of the gardens at the Cornell exhibit features okra, taro, and amaranth.
Marshmallow Family (Malvaceae)
Native range: Old World Tropics
Savored in African cuisine for millennia, okra was transported across the Atlantic Ocean on slave ships as provisions, grown by slaves in their domestic gardens, and introduced into American foodways via enslaved cooks. Okra can be stewed with tomatoes, battered and fried, pickled in vinegar, and simmered in bubbling pots of hearty gumbo.
Medicinal uses: Enslaved people ate okra stewed in chicken broth as a remedy for alleviating chills. Delicate flower blossoms were applied to boils to soothe and heal the affected area. Okra pods are a good source of plant fiber and mucilage that help aid digestion and elimination.
This article was compiled from an interview with Sarah Fiorello while visiting the Botanic Gardens in September 2023, the article “Seeds of Survival: Botanic Gardens Honors the Black Experience” published in the Cornell Chronicle, and information directly from the exhibit’s plaques.
Resources & Links:
High on the Hog: How African American Cuisine Transformed America is a 2021 docuseries released on Netflix on May 26, 2021
Jubilee Justice, jubileejustice.org
Kelley, Susan. Seeds of Survival: Botanic Gardens Honors the Black Experience, published in the Cornell Chronicle in 2022
Cornell Botanic Gardens, cornellbotanicgardens.org.
Smith, Chris. The Whole Okra: A Seed to Stem Celebration. Chelsea Green, 2019.
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