Gardening as Resistance
During the antebellum period enslaved Africans in states like South Carolina commonly cultivated subsistence gardens behind their quarters. The raised crops that their ancestors cultivated in their homelands such as yams or sweet potatoes, cow peas, and other types of legumes, rice and various greens like okra, collards, and kales. These gardens allowed them to resist the starvation like food rations they received from their captors. Gardening provided nutritious food and served as an act of resistance as they exercised the agency to determine what they planted, harvested and ate.
