BRUNSWICK COUNTY, NC (WWAY) — The North Carolina Rice Festival took place at the historic site of Brunswick Town and Fort Anderson on Saturday. The festival celebrates the significance of rice to the Cape Fear and the history of the Gullah Geechee people.
The Gullah Geechee are descendants of enslaved Africans brought to the Americas in the 18th century to work on rice and cotton plantations along what is now the southeastern coast of the United States. The Gullah Geechee developed a unique creole language over time, merging multiple African and European languages.
NC Rice Festival Publicity & Promotions Manager Kamili Anderson emphasized the lasting impact rice and the Gullah Geechee to the region.
“A lot of people didn’t know about it,” Anderson explained. “You know, we say there is ‘new and few,’ but we’re trying to spread the word so that more people know about the rice festival and about rice and the history of rice, especially the people who grew the rice and made rice so popular and prosperous for this county.”
During the 19th century, roughly 90% of all rice exports in America was grown in Brunswick County. Chuck Hall, co-owner of Tidewater Grain Company said his company is now the largest rice grower in North Carolina, and that they cultivate the same strain of rice that was once so popular in Brunswick County.
“Carolina Gold Rice, which was the original rice brought to the Americas in 1685, was actually grown from east of 95 from Savannah, Georgia, all the way up through Norfolk, Virginia,” Hall explained.
As Hall notes, centuries later, Carolina Gold Rice continues to thrive in the wetlands of the Cape Fear.
“We did a little test plot to see how it was going, and it flourished,” Hall said.
As historian Jim McKee puts it, the prevalence of rice in Cape Fear cooking has the Gullah Geechee to thank.
“You don’t see a lot of that culture, you don’t hear a lot of that language, but you do pick up a few things here and there. There’re words, there’s phrases. The big thing of the Gullah culture that survives in this area is rice,” McKee said.