Black Southern culture is rooted in agrarian lifeways. From black-eyed peas on New Year’s Day to spitting on okra seeds before planting, the roots of the Black experience in America are Southern, and the water within those roots is collective work.
SAAFON’s 2025 Watermelon Convergence intimately honored this lineage. From a panel boasting over 200 years of wisdom, to a farm tour that laid bare the present-day realities of watermelon cultivation alongside visions for tomorrow, this gathering dug deep. It reached all the way back to the African origins of the crop, through the Middle Passage, to its transformation into a symbol of Black communal labor, resistance, and renewal in the American South.
Our first day opened with storytelling, grounding us on the very land where we stood, Petal, Mississippi, nestled within the Sheeplo community. Sheeplo is made up of Black families, mostly farmers, whose ancestors fought for the Union during the Civil War. Where most communities carry land deeds, Sheeplo holds a land patent signed by Abraham Lincoln himself.
Years later, this same land became home to the Indian Springs Farmers Association. After decades of farming and going to market together, a group of farmers, including Ben Burkett Sr., formalized their collective efforts in the late 1970s and early 1980s into what we now know as the Indian Springs Co-op.
That legacy continues to thrive. Ben Burkett Jr. walks in his father’s footsteps and does so shoulder to shoulder with his community. A fourth-generation steward of land his family has owned since the 1880s, Mr. Burkett has spent over four decades as a leading voice in agro-activism and cooperative economics. While Mr. Ben played a central role in organizing the convergence, it was his daughter, Darnella Burkett, who held the space – she is the continuation of the Burkett legacy. With care and clarity, she guided us through the history of Indian Springs and brought us firmly into its present. Her words offered a vision rooted in the past yet alive in the now, committed to the continuation of a collective legacy.
The second day brought the stories to life through labor. We worked alongside co-op members in and around their facilities to lend our help in the spirit of collective work. With more than thirty member-owners, the co-op remains vibrant, holding several certifications that sustain both the organization and the farmers who built it. With large orders going out, peas coming in, and audits just beyond the horizon, there was plenty to do. So, we rolled up our sleeves—packing boxes, patching walls, hanging food safety signs in the fields. We made good on the saying: many hands make light work.
The convergence concluded at The Hub Kitchen in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, home of the brilliant Valerie Clark. She catered the event with meals that were true to Southern foodways, true to Mississippi. Every vegetable came from the Indian Springs Farmers Association. Val summoned the ancestors through her cooking, calling each meal “Thanksgiving.” And though the 2025 Watermelon Convergence wasn’t Thanksgiving, it felt like it – family reunited after long travels, soul-deep conversations with relatives newly met or long unseen, and plates stacked high with fried catfish, rib tips, speckled-peas, and okra. It was a homecoming.
Watermelon is the pinnacle of Black agrarian legacy. It makes our land a portal, not just soil, but memory, spirit, and resilience. Gatherings like this reclaim watermelon from the grip of racist caricature. They remind us of its true role: a symbol of economic independence, communal pride, and cultural rebirth. That alone is a chapter in our story of how we got over.
This convergence wasn’t about commerce – not yet. It was created for us to connect, to deepen our relationships, to heal. It wove historical fact with personal and communal truth, and birthed our experience from the womb of always, a poetic invocation of Black time, ancestral knowing, and the long journey home. A place where sun-browned hands meet sun-browned fields, and within that red clay, our seeds are pocketed like memory.
