History of why African Americans have been associated with watermelons and the stereotype created to mock this part of our ancestors culture. But first some history on the orgins of the watermelon, you may find it interesting. African slaves brought many fruits and vegetables to the Americas on slave ships, and watermelon was one of many of these survival foods they carried over...Jayknucklez Ag Facts: Watermelons - Oklahoma State University. Watermelon (Citrullus lanatus) are native to the Kalahari desert of Southern Africa. The first record of watermelon harvest is found in Egyptian hieroglyphics on tomb walls dating back 5000 years. Were left as food to nourish the dearly departed in the afterlife. From Egypt, merchant ships carried watermelons to countries along the Mediterranean Sea. They were document the 10th Century, and in the 13th Century were found throughout the rest of Europe after being introduced by the Moors. Watermelon crossed the Atlantic Ocean and made its way to North America with African slaves. Watermelon first appeared in the English dictionary in 1615. clover.okstate.edu/fourh/aitc/lessons/extras/facts/melon.html (Cucumbers, Melons, and Watermelons - Cambridge University.) Watermelons, which were originally domesticated in central and southern Africa (Whitaker and Davis 1962: 2; Robinson and Decker -Walters 1997: 85), are an important part of the most widespread and characteristic African agricultural complex adapted to savanna zones in that they are not only a food plant but also a vital source of water in arid regions (Harlan, de Wet, and Stemler 1976; Harlan 1992: 64). Indeed, V. R. Rubatzky and M. Yamaguchi (1997: 603) refer to watermelons as botanical canteens. In a number of traditional African cuisines, the seeds (rich in edible oils and protein) and flesh are used in cooking. Watermelon emerged as an important cultigen in northern Africa and southwestern Asia prior to 6,000 years ago (Robinson and Decker -Walters 1997: 24). Archaeological data suggest that they were cultivated in ancient Egypt more than 5,000 years ago, where representations of watermelons appeared on wall paintings and watermelon seeds and leaves were deposited in Egyptian tombs (Ficklen 1984: 8). From their African origins, watermelons spread via trade routes throughout much of the world, reaching India by 800 and China by 1100. In both of these countries, as in Africa, the seeds are eaten and crushed for their edible oils. Watermelons became widely distributed along Mediterranean trade routes and were introduced into southern Europe by the Moorish conquerors of Spain, who left evidence of watermelon cultivation at Cordoba in 961 and Seville in 1158 (Watson 1983). Sauer notes that watermelons spread slowly into other parts of Europe, perhaps largely because the summers are not generally hot enough for good yields. However, they began appearing in European herbals before 1600, and by 1625, the species was widely planted in Europe as a minor garden crop (Sauer 1993: 42). Their first recorded appearance in Great Britain dates to 1597 Watermelons reached the New World with European colonists and African slaves. Spanish settlers were producing watermelons in Florida by 1576, and by 1650 they were common in Panama, Peru, and Brazil, as well as in British and Dutch colonies throughout the New World (Sauer 1993: 43). The first recorded cultivation in British colonial North America dates to 1629 in Massachusetts (Hedrick 1919: 172). Like cucumbers and melons, watermelons spread very rapidly among Native American groups. Prior to the beginning of the seventeenth century, they were being grown by tribes in the Ocmulgee region of Georgia, the Conchos nation of the Rio Grande valley, the Zuni and other Pueblo peoples of the Southwest, as well as by the Huron of eastern Canada and groups from the Great Lakes region (Blake 1981). By the mid -seventeenth century, Native Americans were cultivating them in Florida and the Mississippi valley, and in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries the western Apache of east - central and southeastern Arizona were producing maize and European-introduced crops including watermelons as they combined small-scale horticulture with hunting and gathering in a low rainfall environment (Minnis 1992: 130—1). This fact is ethnographically significant because other transitional foraging—farming groups, such as the San people of the Kalahari Desert of southern Africa, have parallel subsistence practices involving watermelons. Watermelons and melons were also rapidly adopted by Pacific Islanders in Hawaii and elsewhere as soon as the seeds were introduced by Captain James Cook (1778) and other European explorers (Neal 1965). In the cultural history of the United States, Thomas Jefferson was an enthusiastic grower of watermelons at his Monticello estate, Henry David Thoreau proudly grew large and juicy watermelons in Concord, Massachusetts, and Mark Twain wrote in Puddn’head Wilson: The true southern watermelon is a boon apart and not to be mentioned with commoner things. It is chief of this world’s luxuries, king by the grace of God over all the fruits of the earth. When one has tasted it, he knows what the angels eat. Ellen Ficklen has documented the important role of watermelons in American popular culture in numerous areas including folk art, literature, advertising and merchandising, and the large number of annual summer watermelon festivals throughout the country with parades, watermelon-eating contests, seed spitting contests, watermelon queens, sports events, and plenty of food and music (1984: 25). Growing and exhibiting large watermelons is an active pastime in some rural areas of the southern United States. Closely guarded family secrets for producing large watermelons and seeds from previous large fruit are carefully maintained. According to The Guinness Book of Records, the largest recorded watermelon in the United States was grown by B. Carson of Arrington, Tennessee, in 1990 and weighed a phenomenal 119 kg (Young 1997: 413). African slaves also widely dispersed watermelon seeds in eastern North America, the circum- Caribbean, and Brazil. In the southern United States — where soil and climate conditions were optimal for watermelon cultivation — this crop ultimately became stereotypically, and often negatively, associated with rural African-Americans (see Norrman and Haarberg 1980: 67—70). Watermelons have subsequently figured as key symbols in the iconography of racism in the United States as seen during African-American protest marches in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, in 1989, where marchers were greeted by Italian-American community residents shouting racial slurs and holding up watermelons. Read more here: cambridge.org/us/books/kiple/cucumbers.htm Blacks and Watermelon-Ferris State University, Jim Crown Museum. The Jim Crow Museum itself has hundreds of images of African Americans -- usually with very dark skin, blood red grinning lips and raggedy clothes -- eating watermelons. These images on postcards, sheet music, ashtrays, and souvenirs are visual expressions of the stereotype of Blacks as ignorant, mindless buffoons. Why worry about persistent patterns of institutional racism and racial economic and health disparities when you can just eat a watermelon ? The association of Blacks with watermelons is, at its root, a mean -spirited attempt to insult and mock Blacks. Keith M. Woods, from the Poynter Institute, wrote: Since the earliest days of plantation slavery, the caricature of the dark -skinned black child, his too-red lips stretched to grotesque extremes as they opened to chomp down on watermelon, was a staple of racisms diet. Over time, the watermelon became a symbol of the broader denigration of black people. It became part of the image perpetuated by a white culture bent upon bolstering the myth of superiority by depicting the inferior race as lazy, simple-minded pickaninnies interested only in such mindless pleasures as a slice of sweet watermelon. Like all racial and ethnic stereotypes, this ones destructive properties have, through the decades, stretched far beyond mere insult. It has helped poison self -esteem, pushing some people to avoid doing anything that seemed too black, lest they be lumped into the company of Uncle Remus, Aunt Jemima, or some other relative of racism. 1 Woods essay, Talking Race Over a Slice of Watermelon, explores the controversy of using a photograph of watermelons in a series of journalistic articles that dealt with Juneteenth, the annual remembrance of the day the last of Americas enslaved black people learned they had been emancipated. After much discussion, some debate, and a lot of I didnt know that, the journalists decided to use the photograph. They concluded that the photograph was relevant -- and though it danced close to stereotyping -- was neither malicious nor damning. During the discussions, Woods shared a personal account that I believe resonates with many African Americans: As we talked, I told the group how my own life had been poisoned by the stereotype. Just a few days earlier, I told them, Id found myself in a familiar internal debate over whether to take a slice of watermelon from a luncheon fruit tray. In the pause before my fork stabbed a couple of slices, I worried anew that white people looking on would follow the crooked path of bigoted logic that says if one stereotype is validated, all the others must be true. 2 Most Americans would probably be surprised to learn that African Americans are underrepresented as watermelon eaters. Blacks represent about 13 percent of the United States population yet only account for 11 percent of the watermelon consumption. 3 It is possible that many African Americans are reluctant to eat watermelons because they do not want to validate the stereotype of the shuffling, dull-witted, clumsy, watermelon -eating Negro. It seems almost silly to say that watermelons have been racialized, but that is exactly what happened in this culture. For much of this countrys history, postcards showing Black people comically eating watermelons were popular among White Americans. Many of these so -called Coon cards show Black people stealing watermelons, fighting over watermelons, even being transformed into watermelons. The Jim Crow Museum houses a 1930s parlor game called, 72 Picture Party Stunts. One of the games cards instructs players to Go through the motions of a colored boy eating watermelon. The card shows a dark Black boy, with bulging eyes and blood red lips, eating a watermelon almost as large as he is. This is racial stereotyping as family entertainment. The museum has dozens of three dimensional objects showing African Americans eating watermelons, including banks, ashtrays, toys, firecrackers, cookie jars, match holders, dolls, souvenirs, doorstops, lawn jockeys, and novelty objects. These objects not only show Blacks lustily eating watermelons but often portray African Americans in physically caricatured ways: hideous faces, over-sized bright red lips, darting eyes, and ragged clothing. The problem is not that African Americans are shown eating watermelons. Rather, the problem is that Blacks are portrayed as contented Coons, Toms, Mammies, and Picaninnies, with all their hopes, dreams, and fears sated by eating watermelons under the shade of great trees. The stereotypical association of Blacks with watermelons remains a common occurrence in the United States. For example, anti- Blacks jokes often include watermelons with a level of disdain toward African Americans that is reminiscent of the racial hatred common in the early 1900s. Sometimes the jokes are hardened by including racial slurs -- sometimes softened by not using racist epithets. A redneck is driving down the road one day and sees a sign that says coon season is in. He goes a bit further down the road and sees a field of niggers picking watermelons. He stops, takes out his gun and starts shooting. A cop comes up and asks him what hes doing so he says, I saw a sign back there that said coon season was in! The cop says, Yea, but youre hunting in a baited field! (From Racist -Jokes). Whats the difference between a truckload of watermelons and a truckload of nigger babies ? You cant unload watermelons with a pitchfork! (From tightrope.cc/jokes4.htm). [Chanted:] Basketball, watermelon, Cadillac car. We aint as dumb as you think we . . . is. (From polymath -systems/misc/jokes/black.html ) In 1947, the year Jackie Robinson broke Major League Baseballs color line, he was confronted with race-baiting taunts and crowds that threw garbage, tomatoes, and watermelon slices at him. In 1989, Blacks protesting the killing of a Black boy by Whites in Bensonhurst, New York, were taunted by Whites, some of them holding watermelons above their heads, yelling, Go home, Niggers go home. In 2001, a debate in the Mississippi statehouse on whether the state flag should be retired (it included the Confederate battle flag in one corner) degenerated into shouting diatribes. An African American senator was mocked with references to a watermelon as he spoke, and another was told he was lucky his ancestors were slaves. There are literally hundreds of instances in recent years where the watermelon (and its supposed association with Blacks) has been used as a tool of insult against African Americans. Read more here, bookmark. ferris.edu/jimcrow/question/may08/
Posted on: Mon, 21 Apr 2014 19:57:42 +0000
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