Rice Culture Project helps black kids see their image

Jonathan Green compares the Lowcountry agriculture economy of the 1700s to today’s Silicon Valley in California. “The work that they did!” Green says of the enslaved Africans who helped make Charleston one of the most wealthy communities in the world. “They did everything.”

Green refers to the many cultural contributions of the slaves beyond rice cultivation and other agriculture such as indigo, cotton and tobacco. “My great grandmother was a seamstress,” Green says. The website notes that slaves “contributed in a myriad of ways to life in the Lowcountry over the centuries.”

Green founded The Lowcountry Rice Culture Project, a nonprofit with the purpose “to discover and revive the significance of rice cultivation and its legacies, and to use this history as a launching off point for broad discussions of race, class, art, trade, history and economics,” according to the nonprofit’s website. (www.lowcountryriceculture.org)

Green returned to his native state five years ago by way of Naples, Fla., the Midwest and the Art Institute of Chicago. Now based in Charleston, he is the keynote speaker Friday of the 45th anniversary celebration of The Rice Museum in Georgetown. Jim Fitch, director of The Rice Museum since 1976, feels Green is “a perfect fit” to talk at the 45th anniversary.

In an article by Steve Palisin of The Sun News, Fitch notes that Green has scheduled the “Lowcountry Rice Culture Forum Focusing on the Arts” in Georgetown in September. The first such forum, in 2013, was held over three days in Charleston at Middleton Place, the Culinary Institute of Charleston and the College of Charleston. The idea is “to get solid information and teaching materials to individuals who are in a position to pass it along to a broader audience of both locals and visitors,” the website says. A 2016 forum will be in Charleston as part of “The Colour of Music” festival.

Dwight McInvill, director of the Georgetown County Library, is among the 10 members of The Rice Culture Project advisory council.

In April 2014, 150 African-American students from two Charleston schools visited The Rice Museum and the Georgetown County Museum. Richard D. Weedman, secretary-treasurer of The Rice Culture Project, describes the field trip as “a wonderful, wonderful experience.” It showed the middle and high school students the many vital cultural contributions of the Gullah Geechee people.

“White kids can find their image anywhere they go,” Green says. “Black kids can’t see themselves.” He feels society must heavily invest in children, through educational opportunities such as thriving art departments in schools.

Millions of western Africans – Green estimates seven or eight million – were enslaved and brought to the Lowcountry in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, primarily for the cultivation of rice. “From the 17th through the 19th centuries, South Carolina led the nation’s rice production,” according to The Rice Culture Project.

“If you remove culture, all you have is workload,” Green says. “It’s culture that sustains you as human beings.” The Lowcountry Rice Culture Project is Green’s effort at “enriching our humanity.”

Specifically, the website adds, The Rice Culture Project hopes “to confront differences of opinion directly, ... and find common ground on which whites, blacks, Native Americans, immigrants and others can express mutual respect, dampen false debates and celebrate a common heritage.”

This story was originally published April 28, 2015 at 3:15 PM with the headline "Rice Culture Project helps black kids see their image."