African Influences on American Crops & Cuisine

**Please note: this event has been postponed until Spring 2022 to coincide with the opening of the Carolina Trail.

The UNC Charlotte Botanical Gardens’ 5th Annual Urban Roots Symposium will explore the influence of African cultures and crops on Carolina cropland. This full-day event will feature four speakers and begins with a roundtable discussion.

Registration coming Spring 2022.

As the green heart of North Carolina’s urban research university for over 50 years, the UNC Charlotte Botanical Gardens is the central resource for botanical and horticultural information in and around Charlotte. With over 100 years of combined plant research and growing experience, our staff is uniquely qualified to bring together experts on a wide variety of urban plant-related topics, helping people understand our unique place in the plant world. 

This year the UNC Charlotte Botanical Gardens has assembled a group of speakers who are experts on the influence of African cultures and crops on Carolina cropland. From African crops like coffee, black-eyed peas and okra to South American crops that benefited from African involvement like sweet potatoes and peanuts, the influence of Africa and its people on our Carolina crops has been underappreciated and even ignored. This symposium is an initial step in educating the people of the Carolinas about the real background of many of the foods we find on our tables.

Urban Roots: Making an Edible South is presented by The Dubois Center at Center City, in partnership with the UNC Charlotte Botanical Gardens, the Urban Institute, and the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, and made possible by a grant from the NC Humanities Council. 

Location:

Online

Date and Time:

Spring 2022, TBA

Cost: 

TBA

Speakers:

For more information about our speakers, including speaker bios, click here.

Agenda:

9:30-10:00am Welcome & Opening Conversation Roundtable :

The Roots of Southern Crops and Their Meaning for Today’s North Carolinians: Jeff Gillman and all participants

10:00-10:30am First Speaker Session:

Memory Crops: Helping this Generation to Connect to their Roots: Bernard Singleton

10:30-10:45 Stretch Break

10:45-11:45am Second Speaker Session:

Out of Africa: Food Legacies of Atlantic Slavery in the Americas: Judith Carney

11:45am-12:15pm Lunch Break 

12:15-1:15pm Third Speaker Session:

Agricultural Revolution and Food Cultures in Africa Akin Ogundiran

1:15-1:30pm Stretch Break

1:30-2:30pm Fourth Speaker Session:

They Put Their Foot in It! The Enduring Legacy of African American Presidential Cooks: Adrian Miller

2:30-2:45pm Closing Remarks: Jeff Gillman

2:45-3:30pm Optional Breakout Rooms for additional Q&A with speakers

For the full agenda with more information about speaker sessions, click here.