In short
This encore Gastropod episode revisits watermelon: where it came from, how it became sweet/red, how to choose a ripe one, and why it became “the most dangerous” and “most racist” fruit in America. It cites FAO stats (about 100 million tons worldwide; largest land area among vegetable crops).
Guests
Harry Paris, Israeli Agricultural Research Service watermelon scientist; grew Crimson Sweet in his Brooklyn backyard in the 1960s. Suzanne Renner, University of Munich biology professor; identifies two key domestication mutations (loss of bitter chemicals; genes for red flesh). Mark Nesbitt (Kew Economic Botany Collection) and archaeology evidence from Egyptian/Sudanese/Libyan sites. David Shields, University of South Carolina; documents Bradford watermelon breeding, shipping, theft, and poisoning/electrocution. Shana Klein, art historian/author Fruits of Empire; traces watermelon stereotypes in 19th-century visual culture and links them to Jim Crow. Adrian Miller, food scholar; discusses stigma and resistance. Stephen Onwubiko, acoustics of African instruments; studies tapping “ripe” melons and correlating sound with Nigerian Iba drums.
Notable examples
Bradford (Sumter, SC), “poisoned” melons, Victorian watermelon utensils, Plessy v. Ferguson era propaganda, and Nigeria’s hollow-knocking/“pale spot” ripeness tests.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOWatermelon Significance
0:28 to 1:18
Exploration of watermelon's importance and interesting statistics about production.
“I mean, I don't know about you, but I'm happy to get together and sing, especially if it's singing about watermelons.”
The Most Dangerous Fruit
1:18 to 2:32
Introduction to the darker aspects of the watermelon’s history in America.
“So the FAO Statistics Yearbook, the Food and Agriculture Organization Yearbook, says that the world produces something like 100 million tons.”
Watermelon Significance
2:41 to 3:11
Exploration of watermelon's importance and interesting statistics about production.
“Support for the show comes from Google Gemini.”
Watermelon Significance
3:24 to 3:48
Exploration of watermelon's importance and interesting statistics about production.
“I'm talking bold styles, cool kicks, backpacks, and even dorm room essentials.”
Harry Paris on Watermelons
3:48 to 6:41
Interview with Harry Paris discussing the origins and characteristics of watermelons.
“To start our watermelon adventure, we called one of the world's great watermelon experts, Harry Paris.”
The Mystery of Wild Watermelons
6:41 to 7:54
Exploration of the wild ancestors of watermelons and their characteristics.
“The outside looks like a watermelon, like, you know, a little green and white.”
Domestication of Watermelons
7:54 to 11:40
Discussion on the domestication process and the mutations that led to modern watermelons.
“And the second mutation is the one that turned it red inside rather than white.”
Cultural Significance of Watermelons
11:40 to 14:00
Examination of the cultural history of watermelons in America, including symbolism and enjoyment.
“They would be watery or refreshing, and they would be sweet.”
The Watermelon's Symbolism and History
14:00 to 22:05
Explore how watermelon symbolizes independence and its historical significance in America.
“And so watermelon became the symbol of independence and agency in ways that other fruits did not.”
The Watermelon's Symbolism and History
22:39 to 23:07
Explore how watermelon symbolizes independence and its historical significance in America.
“You sent a message and it turned out the seller was super chatty, kind of funny, and an avid cyclist.”
Show all 16 chapters
The Legacy of the Bradford Watermelon
23:07 to 28:00
Delve into the breeding, demand, and eventual decline of the Bradford watermelon.
“The Bradford has a very tender rind, and it can't be stacked more than too deep in a boxcar.”
The Complex History of Watermelon and Racism
28:00 to 33:38
Explore the intricate relationship between watermelon and racial stereotypes in America.
“so you can try to grow some Bradfords at home if you want.”
The Complex History of Watermelon and Racism
34:43 to 35:01
Explore the intricate relationship between watermelon and racial stereotypes in America.
“So you were scrolling on Marketplace, and there it was, the bike you'd been searching for.”
The Lasting Impact of Watermelon Stereotypes
35:11 to 42:04
Discuss the continued impact of watermelon stereotypes and personal experiences.
“that it's so pervasive, and that it ends up seeping into the visual consciousness of Americans.”
Sounds of Watermelons and Drums
42:04 to 44:08
Learn about the connection between watermelon sounds and traditional Nigerian drumming.
“As a music listener, as an African-Nigerian music listener, when you hear the drumming of an Iba, you'll be able to identify the pitch of that Iba to the pitch of the watermelon.”
Choosing the Ripe Watermelon
44:08 to 45:02
Discover tips for identifying ripe watermelons using various methods.
“for the pale spot where the watermelon rested on the ground.”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00Nicola Twilley:Summer in New England is my very favorite fruit season. Right about now, I'm eating peaches and cherries and blueberries and, of course, lots and lots of watermelons. Which made us think that it was time to revisit one of our favorite episodes, all about the watermelon. Make sure to listen all the way through for how to choose the best, most delicious specimen from your local farm stand. Enjoy!
0:27Nicola Twilley:It's watermelon weather, that summer kind of weather, when people get together and sing. I mean, I don't know about you, but I'm happy to get together and sing, especially if it's singing about watermelons. Yeah, but I'm sorry, Cynthia. Are you 103? Perry Como? What about some Harry Styles?
1:01Nicola Twilley:singing with a watermelon, frolicking on the beach with a watermelon. It's all good. So hey, listeners, guess what this episode is about? No, not Harry Styles. Or Perry Como. It's about the fruit that's bigger than both of them put together. The watermelon. It's kind of a big deal. A very big deal. Very big deal and growing. So the FAO Statistics Yearbook, the Food and Agriculture Organization Yearbook, says that the world produces something like 100 million tons. Interestingly, of all the vegetable crops, watermelons are grown on the largest land area in the world. They take up the most space of any crop in the world, of any vegetable crop.
1:45And yeah, so they are very important crops.
1:47Nicola Twilley:Important, delicious, and more fascinating than you might even imagine. When I told my partner Tim that we were making a watermelon episode, he was basically like, what is there to say about the watermelon? Tim, your mind is about to be blown. This is Gastropod, the podcast that looks at food through the lens of science and history, or should I say the podcast that specializes in extracting all the watermelon's most fascinating secrets. I'm Nicola Twilley, watermelon lover. And I'm Cynthia Graber, also a watermelon lover. And among the many mysteries that we will solve today, where did watermelons come from?
2:21Nicola Twilley:How did they get so sweet and so red? More importantly, how did the watermelon become the most dangerous fruit in America? The most dangerous and the most racist fruit in America. Plus, what everyone wonders while trying to figure out which watermelon to take home, how can you tell when they're ripe? Support for the show comes from Google Gemini. You know that moment when curiosity strikes? You're exploring a new city with the family and a sculpture catches your daughter's eye. What is that? Who made it? With Gemini, you can snap a picture and get a fully interactive breakdown of its history, architecture, and even hidden secrets.
3:02Gemini is built for moments like that. Whether you're learning something new, solving a problem, or looking for your next favorite thing, Google Gemini is here to help. Download Gemini, Google's AI app, or visit gemini.google.com to learn more.
3:20This episode is brought to you by DeeDee's Discounts. Back to School season is officially here, and DeeDee's has everything on your list. I'm talking bold styles, cool kicks, backpacks, and even dorm room essentials. All the prices that won't hurt your wallet. So don't sleep on DeeDee's. Whether you've got a second grader or a sophomore, Didi's has your whole family covered. Find a Didi's discount store near you and go check it out today.
3:48Nicola Twilley:To start our watermelon adventure, we called one of the world's great watermelon experts, Harry Paris. He has worked on watermelon science for years as part of Israel's Agricultural Research Service. Well, I think the first thing that comes are the first two syllables, water, right? This is a fruit vegetable which has a lot of water and which actually probably the first use by people of this particular natural product was to quench thirst. I've spent summers in Israel and it is basically watermelon paradise. But that's not actually where Harry first fell in love with the watermelon. It all started when his dad grew watermelons in the backyard in their home in Brooklyn in the 1960s.
4:32Nicola Twilley:Then Harry gave watermelon farming a try himself. I was 15 years old and there was a new variety called Crimson Sweet that came out and I planted a few seeds in the garden. And lo and behold, by the fall, we got one nice, big, sweet, high quality watermelon fruit that we grew in the backyard in Brooklyn. And from then on, I was just hooked. Harry was well ahead of the locavore hipster curve in Brooklyn. But the watermelon is neither from Brooklyn nor from Israel. In fact, its origins are a little bit of a mystery. One of the big headlines was back in the mid-19th century when the British explorer David Livingston went to the southern African deserts.
5:11And lo and behold, it was a year in which there was more rain than average. And he found large areas just covered with wild watermelons. These wild watermelons were hard, but as the name says, you have water. So you had to pound them and so on and so forth, but you could squeeze the water out of them.
5:29Nicola Twilley:David Livingston was searching for the source of the Nile, but apparently he was also, as a side hustle, looking for other sources, like the source of our sweet watermelons. And people thought he'd found it, the wild ancestor. But Livingston was wrong about the source of the Nile, and as it turns out, now we know he was wrong about those wild watermelons too. Now that scientists can examine the DNA of melons, they found that the Kalahari Desert wild melon that Livingston came upon is not the ancestor of our sweet watermelon. But DNA is just one of the tools that scientists are using to try to figure out where and when the watermelon was domesticated.
6:02You can't just use one approach. You have to use an archaeology approach. You have to use plant science. You have to use linguistics. You have to go into literature, some of it old, some of it ancient, and even more than that. Of course, with the latest that we know with genetics and genomics can assist us.
6:22Nicola Twilley:So first of all, the plant science. Livingston was at least on the right continent because there are wild watermelons of various different species all over Africa. So the wild relatives of watermelon, their fruits are smaller and rounder, not elongate. They have often perfectly rounded, small fruits. The outside looks like a watermelon, like, you know, a little green and white. But inside, they all have this extremely bitter and usually white, whitish pulp. Suzanne Renner is a professor of biology at the University of Munich, and she's another one of the world's watermelon experts. Suzanne says you could boil these super bitter watermelons for jam, or you could use them medicinally as kind of a purge to clean out your insides.
7:06Nicola Twilley:Basically, the wild watermelon wasn't a tasty thing to eat raw at all. So where did the dessert watermelon come from? There are two things that have to happen to these bitter wild melons to turn them into the watermelons we love today. Two specific genetic mutations. The first one is a mutation that switches off the production of bitter chemicals. And so this mutation occurs in nature. It's bad for the plant because the plant, of course, has this bitterness to defend itself, not to be eaten so that the fruits would not be eaten. For the plant, it's bad to lose the bitterness, but for us it's good.
7:41And we can only imagine that native people, every once in a while, tried one of these melons, Maybe for water, maybe, you know, hoping for something to chew on, and then found some that wasn't bitter.
7:51Nicola Twilley:Suzanne says scientists know what that mutation is and how to find it in a melon. They know just where to look. And the second mutation is the one that turned it red inside rather than white. The red color is also well understood. This is well studied, and it's a completely different set of genes. So Suzanne and other scientists know exactly which two mutations they're looking for. Those mutations aren't common in wild melons, so when did they happen? When were watermelons domesticated? Harry says the place to look for those clues is archaeology. In ancient Egyptian tombs, archaeologists have found paintings of whole watermelons on a platter.
8:23Nicola Twilley:They're oblong and striped like watermelons today, not round like the wild bitter ones. But did those ancient Egyptian watermelons taste like the ones we eat? Did they have the mutations for sweetness and maybe for the red color? The painting can't really tell you that. But fortunately, some other watermelon evidence has showed up in a 4 ,000-year-old Egyptian tomb complex. Some of those seeds and leaves from the tomb ended up at the Kew Royal Botanic Gardens in England. Suzanne wanted to find out if those remains held any clues about whether the watermelon had already been domesticated by them.
8:54Nicola Twilley:So she wrote to Mark Nesbitt, who coincidentally starred in our Tonic episode and who runs the Economic Botany Collection at Kew. And she asked if she could borrow a watermelon leaf from the tomb. It was in a glass box encased in a box and he, Mark, opened it and he said it hadn't been open since 1871 or whenever that thing was arrived there. Suzanne and her colleagues analyzed the DNA in the leaf and at first they were thrilled. The watermelon leaf DNA did in fact have the mutations that would have made the fruit sweet and red. But then when we used C14 dating for this material that we had received from Mark Nesbitt, it turned out it was much younger than we thought.
9:34Nicola Twilley:Yep, turns out the watermelon material in the tomb had been left there by a later visitor. Carbon dating showed it was from the late 1800s. Huge bummer. Okay, this is real disappointment. Luckily, other archaeological sites have also been found to contain a few watermelon seeds. There's another tomb in Sudan and an even older one in Libya. Ah, this is a super interesting site. It has an impossible name. Uran Muja is a super important site, apparently. They found a black mummy there. So it was not an Egyptian person. It was a North African person. Okay, it is perfectly preserved. It was embalmed in the most sophisticated way.
10:13And this is where the oldest watermelon seed is found. Not inside that mummy, but near that mummy. Incredible. Incredible.
10:20Nicola Twilley:Suzanne managed to get hold of these even older watermelon seeds, and she sequenced them, and the DNA showed. I cannot tell you yet, because the DNA is much more decayed. You know, it's much older. Now it's really, really old and it's really decayed. Yeah, we have not nailed any mutations yet. Suzanne and her colleagues are still analyzing this ancient DNA, but it hasn't given up its secrets yet. She's still trying to figure out how long ago the watermelon turned sweet and red. So then Harry turned to literature to try to find hints of sweet watermelons. It turns out that one of the first mentions of the watermelon is in the Bible, the book of Numbers.
10:56Nicola Twilley:That book seems to be not quite as old as the ancient tombs Suzanne is studying. So in the book of Numbers, when the ancient Israelites left Egypt, they dreamed about five specific foods they'd left behind. Leeks, onions, garlic, snake melons, which are like cucumbers, and watermelons. In my opinion, if they're associated with vegetables, it doesn't say that they were sweet. They were probably used just as the others. You could eat them raw, you could eat them cooked, you could eat them pickled. To find proof that these ancient watermelons really were sweet, Harry looked at a slightly later piece of Jewish writing, a rabbinic ruling from around the second century.
11:28Nicola Twilley:Watermelons are in a list with grapes, figs, and pomegranates. You don't have to give a 10 % tithe from your harvest if you eat these foods straight from the field. And what do all these foods have in common? They're sweet. There you go. That's exactly what they would be. They would be watery or refreshing, and they would be sweet. That's why anybody who was out there in the hot sun picking them anyhow, that's why he would eat them. That's why he would want them. You can't do the same thing with a stalk of wheat. Finally, a watermelon that we would recognize. But still, I hate to sound like Livingston, but where is the source?
12:01Nicola Twilley:No one can give an exact answer to that yet. But based on archaeology and seeds and tomb paintings and ancient writings and wild relatives, both Suzanne and Harry think that the watermelon was domesticated in northeastern Africa, in Sudan or Egypt or Libya, or maybe all of them at a number of different locations. Harry imagines a story where someone or maybe different people at different times, they come across one of these melons that has the mutation so it's not bitter. and he or she saves the seed. And over time, people come across mutations that are a little more tender and maybe even a little sweeter and one day even pinkish or orange.
12:37Nicola Twilley:And they like those enough to save their seeds too. It's a process that would have taken thousands of years. By the time the process was complete, these delicious, sweet, refreshing fruits were a hit. They took off from northern Africa and spread across the Mediterranean. A few hundred years later, they reached India and after that, China. And they stuck around nearly everywhere people could grow them. One of the places they caught on was North America. But once again, the watermelon is a mysterious fruit, and no one knows for sure how it got here. Some people speculate that European settlers brought watermelons with them, and some think it was Africans transported on slave ships who carried seeds from home.
13:12Nicola Twilley:Adrian Miller, the sole food scholar you may remember from our mac and cheese episode, he thinks the Spanish were first on the scene with the watermelon. Because watermelons were growing all up and down the eastern seaboard, because they had been embraced by Native Americans. So much so that people later thought that watermelons were native to the American South because they had proliferated so much. So I think it was something that Spanish people brought over. And then Native Americans discovered it and experimented with it, grew it themselves. And then later, when enslaved Africans arrived, it was something that they embraced as well.
13:46Nicola Twilley:Because it was a fruit from home. As we just described, there had already been sweet watermelons in Africa for thousands of years. It was definitely part of the nourishment and especially was really important to the food culture of the Annabellum South because in many cases, enslaved Africans and later enslaved African-Americans were allowed to garden and grow their own food. And so watermelon became the symbol of independence and agency in ways that other fruits did not. This is Shana Klein. She's an art historian and author of a new book called Fruits of Empire. I'll also tell you that the watermelon, as a member of the Gord family, had larger meanings relating to freedom as well, because the drinking Gord was a metaphor for the Big Dipper, the constellation that guided enslaved people north on the Underground Railroad.
14:34And so the watermelon had all of this really rich, empowering symbolism before the Civil War.
14:40Nicola Twilley:Shana says it wasn't just enslaved Africans and Native Americans who loved watermelons. Everyone was eating them. The watermelon wasn't considered an exotic fruit. It really made its way south, north, midwest, and beyond, and was very accessible and cheap to most American consumers. It was cheap, but not so cheap that the rich and famous didn't love it too. Yeah, so Jefferson loved the watermelon. He grew it at Monticello. Henry David Thoreau, he also had annual watermelon parties in Concord, Massachusetts. And then, of course, Mark Twain, famous American author, described watermelon as this beautiful fruit that angels eat.
15:17So it was very well liked in early America, 19th century America and beyond.
15:23Nicola Twilley:Beautiful fruit that angels eat makes the watermelon sound quite delicate and ethereal, but most people didn't see the watermelon in quite that light. It became sort of assimilated and Americanized as this rowdy party fruit that you would eat during watermelon parties, seed spitting contests, also during July 4th parties. Watermelons were also used for imbibing alcohol. So you could take a chunk out of the watermelon and then inject it with alcohol. And this was a way of drinking watermelon wine, watermelon alcohol, which of course temperance supporters hated and despised. Ah yes, the watermelon keg, beloved of frat boys to this day, but let's be honest, not exactly classy.
16:06Nicola Twilley:So some people in the 1800s, in the Victorian period, they tried to make watermelons a little more proper. They tried to kind of clean them up. And so you can read etiquette manual after etiquette manual talking at length about how people should properly eat this messy watermelon. They were told when to eat it, in what room temperature, in what clothing. They were all trying to instruct Americans on how to eat this messy fruit with as much control as possible. They even invented specific utensils to eat the messy watermelon. So watermelon spoons, watermelon knives become invented in the Victorian silverware market.
16:43Nicola Twilley:Watermelons were not just unruly on the plate. David Shields is a professor at the University of South Carolina, as well as the chair of the Carolina Gold Rice Foundation. And he says it was basically watermelons gone wild out in the field. One of the things which is interesting about watermelons was that it was very difficult to wrestle control over them in the early 1800s. Watermelons will cross with one another with promiscuous abandon. So you had all sorts of mongrel melons pop up. Some were mushy, some were hollow-hearted, some were crisp. And so through extraordinary effort, groups of breeders began isolating different melon types and crossbreeding melons in order to create stable market melons.
17:36Nicola Twilley:The first really reliable, really good melon in America was called the Lawson. The seeds were brought from the West Indies by an American Revolutionary War officer called W.B. Lawson. The Lawson watermelon wasn't particularly beautiful. David said it was dumpy looking and it wasn't all that prolific, but it was delicious. So much so that Mr. Lawson was pretty stingy about who he was willing to share the seeds with. He only sent them to breeders who could maybe improve the variety and wouldn't let them grow promiscuously in the field. He had to really deserve the Lawson seeds. One of the breeders who was worthy of the Lawson seed was Nathaniel Napoleon Bradford of Sumter, South Carolina.
18:13Nicola Twilley:And by the late 1840s, he had managed to breed the first truly legendary watermelon, which he modestly called the Bradford. There was a mineral element to the Bradford watermelon that was very appealing. It has a distinctly sweet and inviting flavor. And it has this one inch thick rind, which was used for pickling. Watermelon rind pickles remain one of the great sort of home pickles of the South. After the Civil War, enterprising Southerners sold those super delicious Bradford watermelons up north. The demand was so instantaneous and great that the watermelon crop of 1867 alone kick-started truck farming from the South in the post-Civil War era.
19:06Nicola Twilley:Truck farming, if you haven't heard the term, doesn't necessarily involve trucks. It just means growing crops for a distant market. The entire vegetable production for northern markets was triggered by the enormous success of these watermelons getting into the New York and Philadelphia markets. These watermelons were such a hot commodity that growers had to protect them from thieves. It's not unusual for people to be stationed with shotguns outside of watermelon patches. But even then, you had the problem of organized gangs of pillagers coming and just taking, overpowering the guards and taking the watermelons.
19:45Nicola Twilley:David says that thanks to the deliciousness of the Bradford and the temptation it posed to watermelon thieves, there were more people killed in watermelon patches than in any other agricultural setting in America, with the sole exception of cattle rustlers. Now, growers didn't necessarily want to stand guard with shotguns to protect their huge watermelon farms, so they came up with another idea. They had to resort to poisoning one of the melons and issuing a warning, you know, pick at your own risk, one of these watermelons is poisoned. The presumption was that, you know, the gruer knew where it was, but sometimes they forgot.
20:25Nicola Twilley:Karma is such a bitch. You inject your watermelon with a cattle syringe full of arsenic, you rub your hands together thinking that'll show them. And then, oops, you forget which one you poisoned. Yeah, when I ran across the newspaper articles that described this, I was dumbfounded. They forgot where it was and they wound up eating it and poisoning their entire families. To be fair, David said this wasn't a frequent occurrence. The fact that it was newsworthy to him means that it was pretty rare. Still, auto-intoxication by watermelon? Kind of ridiculous. Just you wait, Cynthia. Next up, watermelon electrocution.
21:03People would run wires out to watermelons. The electrification of America took place beginning in the 1880s. So this was at the end of the 19th century when people ran wires off their house current to see if they could electrify the snatchers of a watermelon.
Read the full transcript
21:23Nicola Twilley:Electrocution and poisoning to protect their precious harvest, a fruit that spawned an entire industry? These Bradford watermelons sound too good to be true. Why haven't I tasted one yet? It's a sad story. Coming up after the break.
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23:07The Bradford has a very tender rind, and it can't be stacked more than too deep in a boxcar. So if you're shipping your entire year's worth of watermelons north, you aren't going to make a profit if 40 % of them are crushed when they arrive at the station. So there was a great deal of despair.
23:29Nicola Twilley:Almost right away, breeders realized they needed to toughen up the Bradford. It was the perfect watermelon except for that tender rind. And there was a melon that sort of surfaced in the early 1880s called the scaly bark watermelon that you could whack with a sledgehammer. It wouldn't break the melon. Breeders crossed the scaly bark watermelon with a Bradford, and they came up with a baby. The cold's gem. You could stack five deep in a boxcar and it wouldn't bruise the melon. It didn't taste as good. But, you know, hey, it's Yankees who are eating them. We got the good melon in our back patch.
24:07That's the attitude in the post-Civil War era.
24:10Nicola Twilley:Then, of course, because growers have fields full of a single crop, they start getting diseases. and the breeders keep pushing for watermelons that are shippable and disease-resistant and generally sturdy as heck. And unsurprisingly, flavor takes a backseat. And, you know, you can flip forward to 2020 when you have these small, round, seedless refrigerator melons, which have no complexity whatsoever, real high sugar content because, hey, Americans like sugar, no nuance of flavor, no rind to speak of, so you can't make pickles out of their hides. And you have the situation where a perfect industrial product has been created, and the Bradford gets lost in the shuffle.
24:56The last crops are being grown in the 1920s.
25:00Nicola Twilley:One of David's main passions in life as head of the Carolina Gold Rice Foundation is finding lost Southern foods. And there was plenty of documentation about the Bradford from the 1800s, so David did some research and he wrote it up. The greatest flavored watermelon the South ever knew. Gone with the wind, you know, tears streaming out of my eyes on the page. Turns out that someone read this and Nat Bradford, who is the eighth generation descendant of the creator of the Bradford watermelon, wrote me an email at, I guess, 2 a.m. in the morning saying, well, I've got Bradford watermelons I'm growing in Sumter.
25:39These are my family's melons. And I'm wondering, you know, could this be the famous Bradford of the Civil War era?
25:49Nicola Twilley:Nat Bradford had wondered whether his melon might be the Bradford melon. But when he asked a breeder at Clemson University, the breeder dismissed the idea. So he had doubts, you know, instilled by some crop scientist. And it's only, you know, when we really put together the historical record that it became absolutely certain that this was the melon. For David, this was the moment he dreamed of. He wasn't waiting any longer than he had to. As soon as it was harvest season, he was out there in the field with Nat. He handed me a slice. Actually, it was his father who was there who handed me a slice of melon.
26:26And I tasted it, and it indeed was extraordinarily sumptuous. more complicated than most watermelon taste. It had a kind of body to it. And, you know, a lot of watermelon is sort of like sugar water when you eat it. But this one was something different. It had a kind of whiny quality to it. It tasted splendid, but it tasted completely different from my anticipations of what it tasted like.
26:58Nicola Twilley:Nat Bradford's original Bradford watermelons are now the hottest melons in town. He sells some to distillers who make a watermelon brandy, which is sold out. Yes, it was the first thing I checked. He also makes watermelon molasses, which is a traditional recipe from boiled down juice of Bradford watermelons. It sounds delicious, but that too is sold out. I'll be keeping my eye on their website. And if you want to buy a fresh Bradford watermelon, yeah, good luck with that. Three days ago, what is this? This is the 23rd of June here that I'm speaking. A notice was posted by Nat Bradford for pre-orders for the melon.
27:34And people come as far north as Massachusetts to pick up Bradford melon at his farm. They're all pre-sold. He does make deliveries to certain restaurants in Charlotte, Columbia, Savannah, and Charleston. but you have to be in the know in order to pick it up there.
27:56Nicola Twilley:Nat did release the seeds to a company in North Carolina called So True Seed, so you can try to grow some Bradfords at home if you want. Listeners, I bought the seed. But watermelons take up a lot of space, so I may need to also buy a country estate. Stay tuned. But here's a strange thing about the Bradford story, and actually about the whole watermelon story. Remember all those gangs that were stealing watermelons? David told us the gangs were mostly white Americans, But whenever there was a drawing or painting or any sort of depiction of watermelon theft, the thieves were always portrayed as black.
28:27Nicola Twilley:And Jaina says that's because the watermelon isn't all sweetness and pickles. There's kind of no more fruit attached so closely to racism than the watermelon. What happened was at the exact same moment that Northerners were getting their first taste of the wonders of the Bradford watermelon after the Civil War. At that time period, African-Americans had a modicum of some rights because thanks to the abolition of slavery and the civil rights amendments that passed at the federal level, African-Americans had some social, economic and political rights. Of course, those rights weren't implemented everywhere or equally.
29:02Nicola Twilley:But even just the idea that African-Americans might have these rights was terrifying to a lot of racist white people. So you see this propaganda emerge where essentially there's a cultural war against African-Americans by racist whites to say, hey, look, these people are different. They're inferior. They don't deserve these rights. And here's one example. Look at how they deal with the food, the way they cook it, the way they eat it. They're so childlike. They're bestial. You know, they did anything to take away from their humanity. Adrian says watermelon became one of those toxic foods. So watermelon and fried chicken are probably the most toxic, but barbecue, catfish, all kinds of items were added to the list of foods used to ridicule African-Americans.
29:44And so the goofiest part of all of this is that white people were eating and enjoying the same foods.
29:49Nicola Twilley:Shana already told us that watermelons were considered rowdy. Remember how much the Temperance folks hated watermelons and the Victorians tried to tame them with special watermelon spoons because people were soaking them in alcohol, serving them at parties, using them as diuretics. And so the watermelon accumulated all of these meanings and reputations for being this fruit that maybe had a bit of lack of control, a kind of flooding of digestion, excess and indulgence. That's what makes the watermelon so terribly perfect for the most awful racial trope that emerges in the 19th century. A trope that shows African-American people eating watermelon, drooling over the fruit, having this lustful and insatiable appetite for watermelon, and even stealing the fruit from watermelon patches.
30:35Nicola Twilley:Shana has looked at hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of watermelon images from the period. Engravings in magazines, paintings, illustrated collectible cards, advertisements, even silverware. The watermelon had been used as a shorthand for slovenly, rowdy behavior before. Italians and Arabs had been called watermelon eaters as a way of saying they were lazy and childlike and irresponsible. But that slur was never as pernicious and lasting as the stereotype in America. I want to emphasize that there is no surface that the watermelon stereotype did not touch. And many people talk about it as this racist Southern practice.
31:10But in truth, the visual culture of the watermelon and its racism was a national exercise. This just did not only happen in the South. I mean, people outside of the South, newspaper editors, magazine editors, others were more than happy to recycle these images of African-Americans and to use food as a way to say, you're different and you deserve to be marginalized in the society.
31:34Nicola Twilley:These racist images took a variety of forms. We mentioned the images of Black men stealing watermelons. Other common ones reduced African Americans to base almost inhuman caricatures. One I'm thinking of in particular is by the white American artist Thomas Hovenden. So Hovenden depicts this depiction of a black boy who's holding a cut open watermelon. His lips are moist with watermelon juice. And he's holding this cut open watermelon with a post-coital smile, which many critics remarked upon that there was this lustful, even sexual connotation to this painting. That's fine art, quote unquote. But in popular imagery like the collectible trade cards, the racism is even more overt.
32:17A few in particular show African-Americans not just lusting over the fruit or eating it, but literally morphing and transforming into the fruit. We see African-American men whose heads have exploded into these watermelon rinds and watermelon meat. This is a very meaningful message to send, that African-Americans are not even human on these trade cards, that they are so savage, so barbaric, that their minds, their physicality literally becomes a watermelon.
32:50Nicola Twilley:As Shana studied all these images, she noticed something. Almost none of the people depicted with watermelons were women. And that got me really thinking, why am I seeing so many more black men in the context of this stereotype and not black women? And I think that it's because Black men were much more of a threat in the late 19th century since they, and not Black women, were gaining privileges such as the right to vote and the right to own land with the Homestead Acts. There's a lot of anxiety also in the American North as Black men are moving over the Great Migration and people are feeling that they are taking over white jobs.
33:26Nicola Twilley:So you might be thinking, well, sure, these are nasty images from a different time, but really, how big of a deal were they? But Shana says you can't and you really should not underestimate their impact. That's coming up after this word from our sponsors. This episode is brought to you by DeeDee's Discounts. Back to School season is officially here and DeeDee's has everything on your list. I'm talking bold styles, cool kicks, backpacks and even dorm room essentials. all the prices that won't hurt your wallet. So don't sleep on DeeDee's. Whether you've got a second grader or a sophomore, DeeDee's has your whole family covered.
34:04Find a DeeDee's discount store near you and go check it out today. This episode is brought to you by ChatGPT. Hey, it's Bill Simmons from the Bill Simmons Podcast. Have you guys heard about ChatGPT work? It's the new way to use ChatGPT for bigger multi-step projects. And when you need more than just answers, Give ChatGPT work access to your apps and files, and it can create real work documents like spreadsheets, slides, and structured reports. Get started at ChatGPT.com by selecting work mode available on Plus and Pro plans. This episode is brought to you by Facebook. So you were scrolling on Marketplace, and there it was, the bike you'd been searching for.
34:49You sent a message and it turned out the seller was super chatty, kind of funny, and an avid cyclist. The next thing you know, you're in a cycling crew. Well, a community cycling group. The thing about Facebook, you might find more than what you're looking for. From a browse to a bike ride, this summer, find more on Facebook. I mentioned that no surface was untouched by the watermelon stereotype. that it's so pervasive, and that it ends up seeping into the visual consciousness of Americans. And so that's what makes visual images so dangerous, because they help to naturalize and normalize these awful stereotypes.
35:29And to see these repeated over and over again in your trade card, in your dining room picture, in a print in a publication, to seep into the visual consciousness in this way makes these images so dangerous by making these stereotypes seem normal and seem like nonfiction. The goal of the watermelon trope was to constantly visualize Black inferiority and to diminish the status of Black people. Nothing is more relentless in my mind than some of these images of the watermelon trope. And so after decades of this campaign, what happens? Even though certain rights were created in the 1870s, by the time you get to 1895, the Supreme Court decides Plessy v.
36:12Ferguson, which legally sanctions Jim Crow segregation. So the culture war worked.
36:18Nicola Twilley:Adrian Miller has spent his career exploring food's role in the African-American community. And he says the watermelon racist trope was horrible and pervasive, but it was just one of the many aspects of the racist campaigns at the time. Because as much as those images proliferate, most of what I see, especially in periodicals of the time and newspapers especially, is just a constant assault on black intelligence, the idea that black people are dangerous. So you see newspapers reporting all kinds of African-American crime. You know, we have no sense if it's commensurate to the white crime rate.
36:55And we see that even today. So I think it was just part of a culture campaign.
37:00Nicola Twilley:But the watermelon stuff was a powerful part of a powerful campaign, no doubt. Shana says one way to gauge a trope's impact is to look at the resistance. So, for example, early African-American cookbook authors deliberately left any mention of watermelon out of their cookbooks. And then in 1893, there was a super famous World Fair held in Chicago. It was called the Columbian Exposition. There were hundreds of acres of buildings and exhibits. it was one of the most popular events of the year, maybe even the decade. There wasn't an African-American exhibit at the exposition, and Black Americans were only allowed to visit on one day, so-called Colored People's Day.
37:37And they fight to make it a no-watermelon day. This is a day when watermelons were supposed to be distributed for free at this event. And they violently, and rightly so, of course, protest this. We still see the momentum of that today. I know personally African-Americans who do not want to eat fried chicken and watermelon in the presence of whites and definitely do not want to be photographed eating those foods. And just to show you the toxicity of this, even when African-Americans plan a Black History Month event tied around food, if watermelon is on the menu, Black students will protest against that event and get it canceled.
38:16Nicola Twilley:Adrian grew up regularly eating watermelon. He ate it at family gatherings, 4th of July, church events, Juneteenth celebrations. He says as a kid, he was never self-conscious about eating watermelon because he mostly ate it in a community of African-Americans. I really experienced it more when I was in professional settings after college and law school, because in those situations, we African-Americans were definitely the minority. And I guess there was just heightened consciousness about that. So I think the difference is being in a black space and consuming these foods, knowing that there won't be judgment and being in an interracial context where you never know what's in someone's heart.
38:52And we saw that play out with President Obama. I mean, there were several instances where he was eating certain foods. People posted it and made fun of him. And then when they got the condemnation, they just said, oh, I didn't know that was racist. And I was like, yeah, you did, because that's why you posted it.
39:09Nicola Twilley:There were cartoons of Obama featuring watermelon flavored toothpaste. There were images sent around of watermelon patches in front of the White House while he was in office. The watermelon is still an incredibly potent racist symbol. So I think the stigma and the toxicity of it still exists with us today. And in my work, I've been trying to do a lot to address the stigma and remove it because I believe the watermelon is delicious. So I hate to see that this stereotype lives. And I think in many ways we are still giving it life by not taking it head on and just talking about the history of it and trying to reconcile with that and move on.
39:49Nicola Twilley:But given that toxic history, can the watermelon be redeemed? Adrian thinks it can be, but he says it's going to take all the rest of us talking about this history and facing up to it. The burden for that cannot be on African-Americans. Because my own feeling is when someone of color or someone in a marginalized community points out these things and argues about these things, I think for some people, they discount the argument or maybe dismiss it outright because it's so outside their own experience. But when a white peer or somebody they respect speaks to those issues, I think it resonates more deeply.
40:23So I think we have to figure out a way to sit down and talk about this.
40:27Nicola Twilley:Adrian still eats watermelon. He eats it deliberately and without shame. And Shana eats watermelon, too, but consciously. I still eat it regardless, but, you know, I can't not think about the history when I eat it. I'll never be able to eat a watermelon again without thinking of that myself. But we will still be eating it. It's a complicated food, but it's also the taste of summer, and we love it. Even the icebox watermelons at the supermarket, which David says are nothing compared to the Bradford, I'll still take them. But if you want something a little better, even if it's not quite as good as the Bradford, David and Harry suggested looking out for some more farmer's market or homegrown varieties.
41:05Nicola Twilley:The Crimson Sweet, the Amish Moon and Stars, the Charleston Grey, and the Black Spanish. But how do you choose one? You can't look inside a watermelon. You can't taste a watermelon. You aren't going to touch its flesh to see if it's soft like you might with a peach. How do you know if it's ripe? Definitely in Africa, in Nigeria, we actually get to know how watermelons are ripe by tapping them. If you tap an unripe watermelon, the tone seems to be flat. But if you tap a ripe watermelon, there's a sharp tone. Phoning in all the way from Nigeria to answer your questions, Cynthia, it's our next guest.
41:42Nicola Twilley:Stephen Onwubiko, who studies the acoustics of African musical instruments. Stephen knew all about tapping watermelons to find the best one. They're popular year-round in Nigeria. And he noticed that the sound of the watermelon reminded him of something else. If you're listening to African music, you will definitely hear a tone, a slapping tone when you listen to African drumming. It goes like this, pa, pa. As a music listener, as an African-Nigerian music listener, when you hear the drumming of an Iba, you'll be able to identify the pitch of that Iba to the pitch of the watermelon.
42:27Nicola Twilley:Stephen wanted to test this idea, so he made some recordings of people slapping ripe watermelons and of people slapping the traditional IBA drums, and he teamed up with Tracy Nielsen from Brigham Young University. Tracy is a physicist. Once I do the research and make the recording, she puts it into a spectrograph that is able to analyze the pitch pattern of the watermelon and correlate it with a Nigerian drum. Tracy found similarities in the beginning frequencies and the duration of the two recordings. And that means the ripe watermelon and the igba drum sound kind of the same. Stephen thinks that listening to traditional drumming can help familiarize people with the sound they should be listening for when they slap a melon.
43:08But the watermelon varies in size, so there'll be two now differences in each watermelon.
43:15Nicola Twilley:But even if you aren't steeped in the sound of traditional Nigerian drumming, you can definitely hear the difference between a ripe watermelon and an unripe one. It's not watermelon season here yet, so we turned to the internet, and it turns out that a lot of people have made videos of tapping watermelons. This one is from the YouTube channel of Getty Stewart. This is the hollow knocking test. Okay, listen closely. Which one of these two watermelons is ripe? This is watermelon number one. And this is watermelon number two. Okay, we'll play it again. Think carefully about this. It's the difference between deliciousness or basically a giant watery cucumber.
43:55Nicola Twilley:Watermelon number one. Watermelon number two. If you guessed the first one, you have a really sweet treat ahead of you. But if you don't feel like swatting at fruit as you decide which one to buy, there are other methods. One is to look for the pale spot where the watermelon rested on the ground. If it's cream-colored, almost yellow, it means the watermelon had more time to ripen and should be sweeter. If that spot is small and white, the fruit might not be quite as sweet. People also say that riper watermelons are less shiny, their skin is duller and bumpier. My method, honestly, is to hold the watermelons.
44:28Nicola Twilley:Heavier is definitely juicier, at least. And I'm lucky that there's a farmer's market a short walk from where I live, so I just wait until the farmers tell me that the melons are ripe, and then I carry them home. I carried a watermelon. I wanna take you out cause I'm a love man That's what they call me, I'm a love man I carried a watermelon That ending clip might not be as funny for you as it is for me if you haven't watched Dirty Dancing many, many times, actually. So go see it. And then you too can walk around saying, I carried a watermelon? Thanks this episode to Suzanne Renner, Harry Paris, Shana Klein, David Shields, Adrian Miller and Steven on Woobico.
45:08Nicola Twilley:We have so many super great links and images and video from them up on our website. Books, watermelons lapping, and more, all at gastropod.com. If you are hungry for more watermelons and are wondering when and how the watermelon lost its seeds, that'll be in our special supporters newsletter, as well as the story of Japanese cube-shaped watermelons, gastropod.com slash support. Thanks also to listener and scientist Lori Shapiro. She studies cucurbits, and she suggested we do this episode. She also pointed us to the biblical connection. And a huge thanks to superstar summer fellow Sonia Swanson, who helped put this episode together.
45:46Nicola Twilley:Hope you enjoyed this encore presentation. We'll be back in a couple of weeks with a brand new episode. Till then. This episode is brought to you by Didi's Discounts. Back to School season is officially here, and Didi's has everything on your list. I'm talking bold styles, cool kicks, backpacks, and even dorm room essentials. All the prices that won't hurt your wallet. So don't sleep on DeeDee's. Whether you've got a second grader or a sophomore, DeeDee's has your whole family covered. Find a DeeDee's discount store near you and go check it out today. This episode is brought to you by ChatGPT.
46:24Hey, it's Bill Simmons from the Bill Simmons Podcast. Have you guys heard about ChatGPT work? It's the new way to use ChatGPT for bigger multi-step projects. And when you need more than just answers, give ChatGPT work access to your apps and files, and it can create real work documents like spreadsheets, slides, and structured reports. Get started at ChatGPT.com by selecting work mode available on Plus and Pro plans.
From the publisher
It's the epitome of summertime: there’s nothing like a cold, juicy slice of red watermelon on a swelteringly hot day. But, once upon a time, watermelons were neither red nor sweet—the wild watermelon has white flesh and a bitter taste. This episode, we scour Egyptian tombs, decaying DNA, and ancient literature in search of watermelon's origins. The quest for tasty watermelon continues into modern times, with the rediscovery of a lost (and legendarily sweet) varietal in South Carolina—and the Nigerian musical secret that might help you pick a ripe one. But the fruit's history has often been the opposite of sweet: watermelons have featured in some of the most ubiquitous anti-Black imagery in U.S. history. So how did the watermelon become the most dangerous—and racist—fruit in America? (encore)
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