Commonly known as African rice, the grain, ranging from a reddish-brown to black or purple hue, was domesticated more than 3,000 years ago, UCLA geography professor Judith Carney told CNN.

“BLACK FIELDS:Furrows in the Rice Field,” 2023, silverpoint, copperpoint, graphite pencil, and colored pencil on tinted gesso. (Special to the Democrat-Gazette/Marjorie Williams-Smith) ...

Happily, with her exhibition “Black Fields: Crops Cultivated by Enslaved Africans — Cotton, Rice and Sugar,” metalpoint artist Marjorie Williams-Smith thwarts efforts to veil the sins of the ...

Rice made South Carolina planters rich. By 1774, the coastal region exported some 66 million pounds annually of the grain, all sowed and harvested by enslaved workers in treacherous fields ...

"Because these fields are so flat and it's such low-lying land, rice is the only thing that won't drown out when you get a 6-inch rain in the middle of the summer," Haynie said, turning the grain ...