“Wherever there was water, rice was planted. It changed the land completely,’’ said Kristina Poole, Middleton Place outdoor director, as I trailed her on a paddle up the Ashley River. “But where most human developments harm wildlife, rice left us richer in plant and animal diversity,’’ she said.
Her colleague Clint Noren confirmed this with a worried glance at his newly sown rice paddy, which along with the Versailles-like gardens and ancestral house museum interprets Middleton plantation life. “Unfortunately, rice is a favorite of the bobolink. Slaves had to stand watch with shotguns to protect the harvest,’’ he said. Now I know where the term rice bird comes from - and that Southern edible, rice bird pie.
Once an avoided subject, rice’s other half, slavery, has found expression everywhere, from the outpouring of books and DVDs in Charleston’s Avery Museum gift shop (at Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture) to interracial reunions of slaves and planters’ descendants. In a restored slave cabin, a wall display recognizes the Middleton’s former slaves by name. “It reminds me of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial,’’ a woman next to me said. A few miles away, Magnolia Plantation, world-renowned for its camellias, with sister property Drayton Hall, has also researched its slaves’ histories and made them available to help descendants trace their ancestors.
Nichole Green directs the Old Slave Mart Museum on Chalmers Street, one of 40 former auction sites within three Charleston blocks. Green’s ancestors, like first lady Michelle Obama’s, were Santee River slaves. “I thought I knew rice. But it wasn’t until I went out there in the 103-degree heat with the alligators and water moccasins that I totally got it,’’ Green said.
