The Watermelon Was Used For Healing
The ancient Greeks, Hippocrates (one of the first known physicians) and Dioscorides, praised the watermelon for healing properties. It was used primarily as a diuretic. The wet rind was used on the heads of children to treat heatstroke. Pliny the Elder, a Roman naturalist, described the watermelon as an extremely cooling food.
Negative Imagery of the Watermelon Started in the 1800s
In 1801, a British officer stationed in Egypt described the watermelon as “a poor Arab’s feast,” and called it a meager substitute for a proper meal. He said that the locals left rings all over the streets and that they ate the fruit “ravenously…as if afraid the passer-by was going to snatch them away.” In 1869, Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper published one of the first cartoons of a black eating watermelon. “The Southern negro in no particular more palpably exhibits his epicurean tastes than in his excessive fondness for watermelons. The juvenile freedman is especially intense in his partiality for that refreshing fruit,” read the caption. Black legislators were accused of spending $1080 on watermelon as well as wasting government dollars on liquor and cigars. This was a lie. But D.W. Griffith repeated the lie in Birth of a Nation and this narrative was used it to promote propaganda about how blacks were destroying government.
