HOW AND WHY WATERMELON BECAME A RACIST WEAPON
During the heat of Summer, do you savor pieces of juicy, red pieces of watermelon? Be honest. I would wager that when it’s perfectly ripe, and you taste it, it is so delightful, that you even close your eyes with gratitude. It really is the perfect food.
THE ORIGINS OF WATERMELON
Although stereotypes about the fruit are primarily associated with the American South and Black American culture, the fruit's vines stem all the way to the African continent.
Watermelon has been grown since prehistoric times and has been known worldwide for centuries and centuries.
Archaeological evidence shows the Egyptians, Sudanese, Ethiopians, Libyans, and Kenyans were cultivating watermelon almost 6,000 years ago. Watermelon appears in Ancient Egyptian painted limestone reliefs dating from ancient Egypt; its seeds and leaves have been found in Egyptian tombs.
Enjoyed by royalty like the Egyptian King Tutankhamen, watermelon soon made it to Rome and Greece, later becoming cultivated in Spain after the Arab conquest.
Ancient Greeks praised watermelon for its healing and restorative properties and prescribed them to people as a diuretic and to children as treatment for heatstroke.
By the 7th century, watermelon had made its way to India, and by the 10th century, it could be found in China. It is thought that it wasn't until the late 16th century and early 17th century that watermelon was introduced to the Americas through European colonists and through the transatlantic slave trade from Africa. Thomas Jefferson's gardens at Monticello were known to have grown watermelons.
By the mid-to-late 19th century, enslaved people would sometimes negotiate informal contracts with their owners to cultivate and sell their own crops on designated plots of land on the plantations where they toiled. As watermelons were easy to grow, they became a popular choice.
Defenders of slavery used it to portray African-Americans as a simple-minded people, who were happy when provided with watermelon and a little rest. The slaves' enjoyment of watermelon was also seen by the Southern people as a sign of their own supposed benevolence. The stereotype was perpetuated in minstrel shows often depicting African-Americans as ignorant and lazy, given to song and dance, and inordinately fond of watermelon.
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| Freed Slaves Selling Watermelons |
Post-Emancipation after the Civil War ended, newly freed African-Americans continued to grow watermelons and sell them to generate income for themselves.
In the mid-to-late 1860s, newly emancipated slaves employed their farming and entrepreneur abilities to produce and sell items like watermelon and the like.
Their personal gardens and the ability to sell their goods after completing their obligations fostered a taste of freedom finally driven by their own efforts and on their own terms.
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| Charles Ethan Porter |
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| 'Cracked Watermelon' by Charles Ethan Porter, ~1890 |
African-American artist, Charles Ethan Porter, created a simple and beautiful painting of watermelon in ~1890.
The following text is the label for the oil painting “Untitled (Cracked Watermelon)” by Charles Ethan Porter around 1890. It is currently on display in The Metropolitan Museum’s American Wing.
From The Met:
The largely Connecticut-based, New York- and Paris-trained Porter was among the first African-American artists to exhibit his work nationally and the only one to specialize in still lifes. This is one of his largest and most impressive works. Its subject—originally an African gourd brought to the New World by 17th-century Spaniards and cultivated by colonists—is also significant. Porter chose to paint a watermelon, an earlier symbol of American abundance—and during the Civil War period one particularly associated with free blacks—when it was increasingly defined by virulent stereotyping. By reclaiming the subject in artistic terms, Porter challenged a contemporary racist trope.
However, this new economic model of freedom upset many former slave owners in the South, who were angered that formerly subjugated African-Americans had carved out a lucrative business niche for themselves and – heaven forbid – were enjoying the fruits of their labor – pun intended.
This air of freedom among those formerly enslaved further humiliated Southern White people.
So, they literally ‘racialized’ watermelon.
The sheer audacity of freed slaves to persevere in spite of the deplorable indignities that they had suffered during slavery, caused a concerted effort and sharp response from Southern White people to create a racist trope around watermelon and freed slaves.
They began to create extremely negative descriptions about African-Americans eating watermelon.
SMEAR CAMPAIGNS
Throughout the Jim Crow era, smear campaigns involving African-Americans eating watermelon began to be spread, partially as a form of bigotry, but also as an attempt to crush African-American businesses. In every possible way, images of African-Americans allegedly stealing, fighting over, or sitting in streets eating watermelon, were depicted, in an effort to "shame” Black watermelon merchants and Black people who enjoyed watermelon as a treat.
Intentionally and cruelly degrading African-Americans by way of watermelon also acted as a ploy to derail Black people from gaining and sustaining positions of power through their financial independence.
By associating the fruit with characteristics like ‘ignorance,’ ‘uncleanliness,’ and ‘laziness,’ their consumption of watermelon was meant to be depicted as an outward expression of their inward inferiority.
For decades, postcards showing Black people comically eating watermelons were popular among White Americans. Many of these so-called "Coon Cards" showed Black people stealing watermelons, fighting over watermelons, even being transformed into watermelons.
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| A 'Coon' Card |
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| A 'Coon' Card |
At the end of the 19th century, there was a brief genre of "watermelon pictures" – cinematic caricatures of African-American life showing such supposedly typical pursuits as eating watermelons, with titles such as The Watermelon Contest (1896), Dancing Darkies (1896), Watermelon Feast (1896), and Who Said Watermelon? (1900/1902).
The African-American characters in such features were initially played by Black performers, but from about 1903 onwards, they were replaced by white actors performing in blackface.
Several of the films depicted African-Americans as having a virtually uncontrollable appetite for watermelons; for instance, The Watermelon Contest and Watermelon Feast include scenes of African-American men consuming the fruits at such a speed that they spew out mush and seeds.
One poem from the early 1900s, entitled, “Who Said Watermelon?” reads:
George Washington Watermelon Columbus Brown
I'se black as any little coon in town
At eating melon I can put a pig to shame
For Watermelon am my middle name
In March 1916, Harry C. Browne recorded a song titled "N*gger Love a Watermelon Ha!, Ha!, Ha!", set to the tune of the popular folk song "Turkey in the Straw.” Such songs were popular during that period, and many made use of the watermelon stereotype.
In 1941, Universal Pictures released "Scrub Me Mama with a Boogie Beat," an animated film that inhumanely distorted Blackness, reiterating racist notions that all Black people do is laze around and jig, while over-indulging in watermelon, instead of working.
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| Jackie Robinson |
In 1947, the year Jackie Robinson broke Major League Baseball's color line, he was confronted with race-baiting taunts and crowds that threw garbage, tomatoes, and watermelon slices at him.
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| An Artifact at The Jim Crow Museum |
The Jim Crow Museum at Ferris State University holds countless memorabilia illustrating exaggerated and dehumanizing examples of the watermelon stereotype.
"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," according to Ferris State University. "These objects not only show Black people lustily eating watermelons, but often portray African-Americans in physically caricatured ways: hideous faces, over-sized bright red lips, darting eyes, and ragged clothing."
21st CENTURY
These racist attacks have continued, even to this day.
Former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson once used the phrase: 'watermelon smiles,' when referring to people (when he was a Member of Parliament) from The Congo as:
Other controversies included a Kentucky Man erecting a statue in 2012 of President Obama holding a watermelon. “He don’t talk. Don’t make no smart comments,” Danny Hafley said of his life-sized Obama display.
The Boston Herald newspaper got in trouble for publishing a cartoon of the White House fence jumper, having made his way into Barack Obama’s bathroom, recommending watermelon-flavored toothpaste to the President.
A high school football coach in Charleston, South Carolina, was briefly fired for a bizarre post-game celebration ritual in which his team smashed a watermelon, with a racist portrait attached to it, while making apelike noises.
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| This is the only photo I could find. I did NOT cover their faces. |
In May 2022, NBC reported that six Florida middle-schoolers posted a photo of themselves on social media holding up a letter to spell out a racial slur, and three of the letters were meant to be watermelons – sparking outrage in the community.
The next month, The Indianapolis Children's Museum got into hot water after serving a Juneteenth Watermelon Salad. Although the museum defended its Juneteenth menu, it did apologize and acknowledge the negative impact that stereotypes have on communities of color. “We have removed the salad from our menu. We value our relationships with all of our visitors and communities. We have learned from this experience."
INFLICTING SHAME
The stigma associated with dark skinned, oversized smiles, and red lips eating watermelon, has caused many to socialize younger generations to avoid the fruit – at least in public. The backlash and perception of being associated with the fruit can even be seen today, even if some Black people don't fully understand the historic implications of consuming the fruit.
In 2021, the television comedy series Curb Your Enthusiasm Season 11 episode "The Watermelon" features Larry David helping his friend, Leon Black (J.B. Smoove) to overcome his embarrassment of eating watermelon. Larry takes Leon shopping to purchase a watermelon. At the checkout Larry announces to the store: "It's not a crime for a Black man to like watermelon".
Truthfully, as much as I love watermelon, in researching this blog, it dawned on me that I only eat it in ‘genteel’ cubes (and have even learned how to cut it that way).
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| I Am Very Proud That I Have Learned How To Cube Watermelon! |
How sad that the racialization of watermelon has caused me and so many others to consciously or unconsciously only eat watermelon a certain way – if at all.
Most people would probably be surprised to learn that African-Americans are underrepresented as watermelon eaters. Blacks represent about 13% of the United States population, yet only account for 11% of the watermelon consumption. It is possible that many African-Americans are reluctant to eat watermelon because they do not want to "validate" the stereotype of the shuffling, dull-witted, clumsy, watermelon-eating ‘Negro’ of decades ago.
They tried to make Black people feel shame because of the success and joy that watermelon brought us during and after The Civil War. It was just another form of oppression and suppression. In some ways, they partially succeeded. However, not completely, and not forever.
LOVE ALWAYS WINS
“What racist White people did was wield their ‘soft power’ and start a culture war,” said Chef Adrian Miller, author of: “Black Smoke: African-Americans and the United States of Barbecue” and previous book: “Soul Food: The Surprising Story of an American Cuisine, One Plate at a Time” White people “used entertainment, media, and other things to start putting out these disparaging images of African-Americans and the message was this — these people are less than human, they’re childlike. Why in the world would you ever give them full rights?”
“Never mind that White people also enjoyed these foods. These same items were never used as evidence of White people’s unworthiness to be full participants in American society.”
“I’ve been advocating for African-Americans to take the sting out of these things by showing the complicated history of these foods, but then showing how African-Americans made a significant contribution to making these things that people love,” Chef Miller continued. “By perpetuating the shame, we’re giving that stereotype further power. I’m saying, ‘Let's stop being shameful about it.’”
I agree. We should never allow people to get inside our heads and steal our joy - even when it is so strategic, systematic, and systemic. I admit that I am a work in progress.
Regardless of race and stereotypes, let’s enjoy this beautiful, perfect food. We need to banish the disgusting, racist weaponization of watermelon. We should love it and love it out loud.
Here’s how:
THE BENEFITS OF WATERMELON
In addition to tasting heavenly, a one-cup serving of watermelon will provide just 48 calories. It’s a delicious diuretic and an excellent source of vitamin C and vitamin A. Watermelon also offers significant amounts of vitamin B6 and vitamin B1, as well as magnesium and potassium. Watermelon can also soothe sore muscles, improve circulation, alleviate high blood pressure, and maintain heart health.
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Sources: Insider, CNN, YouTube, Wikipedia, The Atlantic, Boston Globe, Ferris State University, Marabou at the Museum, Google Images
Thank you very much, my friend.
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