ISSUE 31, PRODUCE MARKETS, Part 3: Savannah Market Seller
Savannah Market Vegetable Seller
Of all the surviving visual documentation of the life of the southern markets, no painting conveys more than Hal Morrison’s (1848-1928) “Market Scene Savannah” @1880. It portrays a middle-aged African American market woman with her wares. She is assisted by her husband. The background reveals that she has a mule at her disposal. The plentitude of her table reveals a summer surplus.
The turbaned, be-gowned woman huckseter displays money in her hand. Her person is emblematic to the extent that black women controlled city market commerce in all of the southern cities and in the West Indies in both the slave era and the post-Civil War era. They controlled the money, they arranged the produce displayers, they sourced their wares. Spouses and male employees operated as labor and assistance in the produce market. Men controlled the meat, game, and fish markets. The 1880 census records can reconstruct who the major vegetable sellers were in the Savannah, Charleston, and New Orleans markets.
We can also identify the vegetables being sold. Both the striiped GA rattlesnake and the solid green SC Bradford melons appear in the lower right corner. Savoy cabbages nestle in a basket. Two golden beets rest upon a basket of Early Rose Potatoes. On the huckster’s left flank a basket of yellow pumpkin yams serve as counterpoint. Drumhead cabbages, pin, and goose eggs. The Cantaloupe maybe an emerald gem melon.
On the market table parsnips, white globe turnips, rutabagas, okra, collard, spinach, and grapes dominate on the left. On the right there are large purple eggplants, pattipan squashes, brown onions, large white Spanish onions, parsley, and apples in a basket. There is corn, potatoes, apples and a melon.
So what don’t we see that we might expect: pole beans, field peas, peanuts, celery, and cauliflower.
What is surprising and informative: the corn is 8 row sea island white flint, the favorite grits corn of the Lowcountry. The live poultry.