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Welcome neighbors to the Bitter Southerner podcast from Georgia Public Broadcasting

in the magazine I edit The Bitter Southerner.

My name is Chuck Reese and you're listening to the third episode of our second season. My good friend John T. Edge of the Southern Food Ways Alliance once told

me that food on the table among people ought to provoke conversation about where that food came from.

You reach for the Okra, for instance, and suddenly you have a reason to talk about the

African roots of the South.

And the moral of John T's story is that reconciliation is what comes from conversation.

And that conversation is always easier over good food.

But bound up in many iconic southern foods

is our history and truth as southerners.

There are our precious memories of growing, cooking, eating, and sharing them.

But there are also the unavoidable truths about how the white planters of the South

depended on enslaved human beings and put a higher market

value on the slaves who had particular expertise in how to bring those iconic crops out of

the ground.

It was true for peanuts, for rice, and for many others.

When it comes to Okra, there are many stories about how it got to the new world,

but none of them are confirmable. So we really only

know for sure two things about how Okra got to North America. One, the plant is not native to the North American continent. And two, it got here

...