History Lesson

Some of the most tastless and vile things in history produce the best things.
I'm thinking of slavery.
In the 1700's, the slave trade pretty much rocketed after Bacon's Rebellion in Colonial America, when the good old white folk were looking for a new source of labor without standards, and with more color. Their eyes turned to Africa, where prisoners of war and the such were being auctioned off by triumphant warlords and slave traders to make a hefty profit for their man-hunting efforts. They sold to the highest bidder, packed them into a freighter and sent them on a horrific trans-Atlantic journey to death by overworking.


Most of these slave were sent to plantations in the Indies, but a decent amount were sent to the Southern Colonies that relied on Agriculture for their profit, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, and Connecticut. The temperatures were humid and hot, malaria and other diseases were rampant. This was all terrible, terrible, terrible.
Why am I discussing the Slave Trade on a blog about food?
Food comes from people, and groups of people who are together in one place. These Africans were lumped together in the southern plantation colonies, and they survived. Did you know that the word Gumbo was brought from Africa? And Goober? Even okra.
A combination of African-Americans and the resources down there gave us dishes today like Gumbo, fried okra, black-eyed peas, collard greens with ham hocks, and they perfected the art of cooking scrap food for slaves, and making it into something delicious. Collard greens, turnips, mustard greens, corn, sweet potatoes, and biscuits. Rice was used alot and hushpuppies are still something people drive miles for, if it's good. Chitlins and pigs feet, melons, eggplant, and kola nuts. These were all foods that were taken during a horrible time, and now it's something that is a cuisine. It's a delicious and famous type of food, and it came about at such a horrible time, like most foods do.
People eat "soul food" practically every week. Collard greens, or fried chicken and waffles. Things that people who were living in squalor took with them as they rose up in the social ladder to keep as their own. Food that we eat 300 years later, and we still enjoy, even though we might not really think about how it came about. Just think about it next time you got to KFC.
Heck, think about where your food really came from next time you go anywhere.