After the Civil War, white Southerners, already embarrassed because they lost the war, grew sensitive and “uneasy” about being associated with poverty and sharecropping. But they weren’t that pressed because giving up their cheap Black labor wasn’t something they were ready to do.
We once picked peaches freely, with white people considering the fruit a cheap afterthought. Yet, when Southern farmers found out they could grow peaches with cheap Black labor, they didn’t hesitate. And after some price gouging, peaches went from being a Black staple, to a “white fruit.”
Georgia gained the nickname, The Peach State for its peach production. Peaches also became synonymous with white beauty, with the popular Elberta breed being named after a white woman praised for her “peaches and cream complexion.”
In 1895, Fort Valley High and Industrial School trained our people in the art of peachtree cultivation. In other words, this HBCU turned peaches and cream into Black power.
Through the ugliness of former cotton plantations, something beautiful blossomed with the peaches. We pulled ourselves out of the pits of hate and created joyful Black staples like cobbler. Isn’t that just peachy?