Mount Pleasant Magazine March/April 2013

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I f you were born and raised in
Charleston, chances are there’s a pot of rice
on your stove right now, waiting for you to
smother it with lima beans or maybe pork
and beans.
I am not a Charlestonian – I hail from
Virginia – so imagine my surprise when I first
arrived in the Lowcountry to find rice on my school lunch
menu every single day. And, at the time, I wasn’t a fan.
Sometimes the rice was topped with collard greens and pig
tails. I remember asking my mom
why they eat so much rice here;
she didn’t know. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I began
to actually feast upon this delicacy and discover that rice is a
vital part of Lowcountry culinary history.
Coastal South Carolina produced tons of rice during
the Colonial period; the crop dominated the Lowcountry
economy for nearly 200 years. South Carolina was the rich-
est North American colony and Charlestown, now Charles-
ton, its capital and principal port, was the wealthiest and
most fashionable city in America.
Rice wasn’t native to the Americas. The grain got here by
accident in the 1600s, when a sea captain paid for his ship’s
repairs with a sack of rice seeds from Africa. South Carolina
planters had no idea how to grow rice, but they knew who
did. They began importing experts in cultivating the crop
from the rice-growing regions of West Africa. West Afri-
cans made up the largest group of slaves brought to South
Carolina during the 18th century, and many of them came
ashore on Sullivan’s Island, near Charleston.
South Carolina plantation owners adopted a system of
growing rice that drew upon the technical and labor patterns
of their African slaves.
Slaves worked long hours under harsh conditions to
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Rice
by PatrIce SMIth