Landreth Seed Co. turns 225, launches African American collection

"I've gotta give it up for the sister. She makes me feel a lot more positive than a lot of images do," Twitty says.

The Landreth collection includes interesting vegetables like Brown Crowder cowpeas, actually ancient beans that originated in Africa, and West India burr gherkins, a round, spiky cucumber that also comes from Africa. The Spanish and Portuguese brought it to the New World in the 1500s.

Food historian William Woys Weaver notes that slaves themselves did not bring seeds with them. "They came mostly naked. The slavers and other people involved in that trade did bring seeds because they knew what African people liked to eat," he says.

Their food, like all food, tells a story, Twitty adds - of survival, heritage, and possibility.

"Just think about corn," he says. "They took corn and made it into hominy, grits, mush, hoecakes, cornbread, ashcake, corn pone, dumplings, meal to coat things for frying, into pudding.

"They made something out of nothing," he says.

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