Texas Food Explorer: The obscure origins and cruel history of the watermelon in America
How a marvelous feat of Sub-Saharan horticulture became weapponized as a racist trope.
We all know of the stereotype of Black people and watermelons...I just learned there's a cruel irony at the bottom of that racist imagery.
Watermelons hail from and grow native in a region spreading from the Congo north and west along the old slave coast. Watermelons spread first to Egypt and North Africa along trade routes and then into the Middle East, India and China. The Moors introduced them to Spain, and from there they were taken to the rest of Europe. Later they came west across the Atlantic on ships also carrying slaves to the Americas.
Here is how the experts at Texas A&M describe its spread and the long-delayed discovery of its origins:
The culture of the watermelon goes back to prehistoric times. It was grown by the ancient Egyptians, as revealed by pictures that survive to the present. Old names in Arabic, Berber, Sanskrit, Spanish, and Sardinian are all unrelated, indicating great antiquity of culture in lands about the Mediterranean and east as far as India.
The long and general culture of the watermelon from North Africa to middle Asia led to the view that it was of Asiatic origin, although it had never been found wild in Asia or elsewhere. Finally, however, about a hundred years ago, the great missionary-explorer, David Livingstone, settled the question of its origin. He found large tracts in central Africa literally covered with watermelons growing truly wild.
"In the wild state both bitter and sweet melons occur in the same locality, but the bitter ones appear no different from the sweet. The natives knock a hole in each fruit to taste the juice before taking it for food or drink."
The Aggies and others have put in plenty of work expermenting over the years, and g extension Frank Dainello from College Station has produced a list of over two dozen varieties that thrive in Texas, possibly due the relative similarity in our climate and that of West Africa:
Hybrids: Big Stripe, Royal Sweet, Jamboree, Stargazer, Stars-N-Stripes. Summer Flavor, 800, Dulce, Ole, Sangria, Summer Flavor, 810
Seedless(Triploids): Crimson Trio, Tri X313, Caurosel, Dillion, Summer Sweet, 5244, Gem Dandy, Tri X Palomar, Sweet Slice
Long Seedless: Revolution
Open Pollinated: Allsweet, Jubilee II, Legacy
Yellow Flesh:Summer Gold, Gold Strike (orange flesh)
Watermelons were domesticated and nurtured and cultivated by Black Africans and today not only is that history obscured, but their very association with Black Americans is considered shameful due to a long history of hateful racist humor.
I include the above by way illustrating my point -- I fear that many white people of today are unaware of just how nasty were our forebears.
In the aftermath of a few widely publicized, watermelon-related racist controversies six years ago, the Atlantic Monthly's William R. Black explored the origins of how watermelons became a racist trope:
While mainstream-media figures deride these instances of racism, or at least racial insensitivity, another conversation takes place on Twitter feeds and comment boards: What, many ask, does a watermelon have to do with race? What’s so offensive about liking watermelon? Don’t white people like watermelon too? Since these conversations tend to focus on the individual intent of the cartoonist, coach, or emcee, it’s all too easy to exculpate them from blame, since the racial meaning of the watermelon is so ambiguous.
But the stereotype that African Americans are excessively fond of watermelon emerged for a specific historical reason and served a specific political purpose. The trope came in full force when slaves won their emancipation during the Civil War. Free black people grew, ate, and sold watermelons, and in doing so made the fruit a symbol of their freedom. Southern whites, threatened by blacks’ newfound freedom, responded by making the fruit a symbol of black people’s perceived uncleanliness, laziness, childishness, and unwanted public presence. This racist trope then exploded in American popular culture, becoming so pervasive that its historical origin became obscure. Few Americans in 1900 would’ve guessed the stereotype was less than half a century old.
What should be a point of pride was turned into a butt of jokes.
Put yourself in the mind of an African-born slave. You are snatched away from your home and your loved ones, shackled, marched to a hellship, where you are stacked on cordwood below decks for a seemingly interminable demonic voyage, each passing minute taking you farther and farther from a home you will never see again.
If you are lucky enough to survive the Middle Passage, you find yourself a stranger in a strange land to put it mildly. If you are lucky, you might find yourself sold somewhere where a few of your fellow slaves speak your language, but the masters did their best to see to it that slaves could only communicate in English, the better to eavesdrop on and foil potential plots.
And the food is yet another shock. Hogs and hominy are almost certainly unknown to you, and that is to be your staple for the rest of your life. And then...you see a watermelon patch. I can only imagine the mixed emotions that sight would bring -- a beloved and delicious juicy and cool treat you enjoyed with your family as a child, its sight both torturing you with bittersweet memories while simultaneously cheering you with its familiarity. Here was one friend still with you after all those horrors.
Later it became a way to get one over on the masters. One slave recalled how, when his cotton sack was too light at the end of a long hard day in the fields, he would weigh down the bottom with a heavy watermelon. Once the sack was weighed in and approved, he would dig out the watermelon and eat it as a treat.
It is an ironic coincidence that Kherson, recently liberated from its Russian occupiers by Ukraine, is famous for its watermelons.
Thanks for sharing, John. It’s interesting that the watermelon has become a symbol of Palestinian freedom and resistance in recent years as well. As Israel has moved to ban the display of Palestinian flag, the watermelon has appeared in many places, as it bears the same colors as the flag.