![]() Millwood's move cemented the pinkish beefsteak tomato's place in history as one of the few vegetable varieties whose name references, however obliquely, slavery or Black contributions to what we grow and eat. Black workers tilled the land, but white Americans have typically gotten credit for importing, breeding and cultivating crops that became critical to the US diet and economy. Despite centuries of forced farming that transitioned into sharecropping and other exploitative labor systems, few plants bear the names of the Black Americans who stewarded flora and fauna in fields and provisioning grounds. Millwood, who was white, suggested adding the Underground Railroad" part to reflect the anti-slavery activity in the plant's apparent home ground, and to acknowledge how enslaved people helped build the nation's agricultural wealth in captivity. Passed from person to person, the seed spread in the small corner of Kentucky and south-west Ohio connected by the Ohio River, a region known for Underground Railroad stops from which runaway enslaved people were secretly ferried to free states.Īt some point, the Kentucky tomato guru Gary Millwood proposed a revision of the plant's name to fellow seed keepers who knew of the variety. I receive a seed catalog from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange and I always order the Aunt Lou’s Underground Railroad Heirloom tomato just because I like the story Lisa J., Talk of the South newsletter reader. Years later, her great-nephew, Francis Parker, began sharing the seeds for what had become Aunt Lou's tomato" with fellow gardening enthusiasts. While there, he gave tomato seeds he'd been carrying to a white woman. His travels took him to Ripley, a town that slavery's proponents characterized as infested with that most odious species: abolitionists. ![]() ![]() No details about when he made this journey are available, but it may have been during slavery or well after emancipation. As the story goes, a Black man entered Ohio from bordering Kentucky. history, dont you) I tried her for the first time in 2014 and she. The oral history of Aunt Lou's Underground Railroad tomato could easily fit on an index card, with room to spare. Amirah worked for four years as an apprentice and coworker at Truelove Seeds, and we. She also describes her work to preserve seeds and stories of African-American, West African, and Afro-Caribbean foodways, how she got to this point, and where she is headed. ![]() It could have been a gift from a runaway enslaved person. The Guardian's recent article retells the beginning of 'Aunt Lou's Underground Railroad tomato.' Legend has it that a Black man crossed into Ohio from Kentucky, carrying precious tomato seeds. In this fifteenth episode, Amirah Mitchell of Sistah Seeds gives us a tour of the African Diasporic seed crops on her farm in Emmaus, PA. ![]()
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