A 1909 postcard, with the caption "I'se so happy!"
The watermelon stereotype is an anti-Black racist trope originating in the Southern United States. It first arose as a backlash against African American emancipation and economic self-sufficiency in the late 1860s.
After the American Civil War, in several areas of the south, former slaves grew watermelon on their own land as a cash-crop to sell. Thus, for African Americans, watermelons were a symbol of liberation and self-reliance, while for many in the majority white culture they embodied, and threatened, a loss of dominance. Southern White resentment against African Americans led to a politically potent cultural caricature, using the watermelon to disparage African Americans as sloppy, childish, unclean, lazy, and publicly embarrassing.[1]
^Black, William R. (2018). "How Watermelons Became Black: Emancipation and the Origins of a Racist Trope". Journal of the Civil War Era. 8 (1): 64–86. ISSN 2154-4727. JSTOR 26381503.
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