Low Country Rice Carolina’s Gold Coast: The Culture of Rice and Slavery

This project captures scenes of rural life, including farming, rice culture, and rural settings.

Low Country Rice
Carolina’s Gold Coast: The Culture of Rice and Slavery

I began creating rice images after finding out that my grandmother grew her own rice behind her house in what we called the bay in Dorchester S.C. around 40 miles inland east of Charleston. There have been numerous techniques to hull rice. Traditionally, it would be pounded using some form of mortar and pestle.
Rice plantations shaped and reshaped the lowcountry geography and economy, making Charleston one of the richest cities in the world, but it was a wealth built primarily on slave labor.

Lowcountry wealth was intertwined with rice for generations. From the 1720s to the early 1860s, no other commodity was remotely as important to the region.

COASTAL HERITAGE MAGAZINE