Veronica Carter was one of the first to participate in the Ancestry Reveal at the 2023 North Carolina Rice Festival. photograph by MALLORY CASH
Veronica Carter, sitting anxiously in front of an excited crowd in the Navassa Community Center, is about to find out who she is. The Leland councilwoman has all the basics. Name: Carter. Birthplace: Brooklyn. Parents’ and grandparents’ homeplace: West Virginia. But what about their grandparents? Their culture? Where did they call home? How did she get here?
Carter had volunteered to be a part of the newest event at the North Carolina Rice Festival in Brunswick County: the Ancestry Reveal. She had previously taken a general ancestry test prior to the reveal that told her that she was West African, but she wanted to know more. During her career as a logistics officer for the Africa unit in the department of peacekeeping operations at the United Nations, she traveled to different African countries many times. Every time she visited a new country, she always had the same thought: I wonder if this is where my ancestors came from. I wonder if I’m really back home.
Plantations used slave labor from Africa’s “Rice Coast” to work their fields along the U.S. coastal South, an area that is now named for the enslaved workers’ descendants: the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor. Photography courtesy of State Archives of North Carolina
The organizers of the Rice Festival invited African Ancestry — an organization based in Washington, D.C., that holds the largest database of African American ancestry in the country — to conduct DNA testing and present the findings at the event. Brunswick County is part of the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor, a designated area that preserves the culture of those who descend from Africa’s “Rice Coast,” a group of countries on the western edge of the continent. “When folks came here from England, nobody knew how to grow rice,” said George Beatty Jr., who chaired the Rice Festival until his death in December 2023. “They discovered that folks from the Rice Coast did know how to grow rice. So they put bounties on their heads to bring them here for their knowledge and manual labor.”
Many of those enslaved people ended up on rice plantations in eastern North Carolina, enduring backbreaking labor. After the Civil War, when slavery was abolished, most of the plantations couldn’t continue operating. Nearly all rice production ceased in this part of the state in the early 20th century, with the last plantation, Orton, closing around 1930. Among the only visible remains of these rice fields are rotting piers in creeks and alcoves.
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The late George Beatty Jr. served as the chair for the North Carolina Rice Festival. photograph by Maddy Gray
Beatty grew up on five acres in an unincorporated community called Phoenix, near Leland, with four brothers, a father who worked at the local fertilizer plant, and a mother with her hands full. “I told my son one day that I grew up rich,” Beatty said in an interview before his death. When his son replied with confusion, Beatty explained: “We didn’t have any money, but I never had a hungry day, I had four brothers I could battle with, I had two parents who I knew loved me but never told me so, and I lived in a little community where there were a gazillion cousins that ran from house to house.”
As a child, Beatty visited his grandfather and cousins in Carvers Creek but never asked much about his heritage. It was only when he grew up, moved away, and had a family of his own that he became interested in his ancestry. DNA testing wasn’t readily available in the 1970s, so he went to family reunions and followed paper trails wherever they’d lead, which, as they did for many African Americans, often ended nowhere. Census documents for most African descendants in the U.S. didn’t begin until after the Civil War. And most documentation, if there was any to be found, only included first names or basic physical descriptions.
Through years of research, Beatty discovered that he was a descendant of the Ebu tribe in Nigeria and the Bissa tribe from Burkina Faso, a country slightly inland of Africa’s Rice Coast. “I think it’s extremely important, for a sense of self-worth, just to know who you are,” Beatty said. This discovery brought him a newfound pride and an appreciation for the history of his hometown. He wanted everyone to experience this feeling.
After moving back to Leland, he became involved with the North Carolina Rice Festival in 2019 and helped put together the main events for the weekend, including history and cultural presentations, music, and the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Gala Dinner. In 2023, he helped plan the festival’s first Ancestry Reveal.
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As the presenters at the ancestry reveal read out the names of tribes and countries from which the other volunteers came, Carter’s head is spinning. What am I going to be?
When the presenters have only one envelope left to open, Carter knows it is finally time to uncover a part of her history she’s never known. A large screen at the front of the room conjures a photo of a green, white, and blue flag. “You are from the Mende tribe of Sierra Leone!” Carter’s hands shoot up in the air, and a rush of pride and recognition spreads across her face. A presenter, a man from Sierra Leone, runs to her, shouting, “My sister!” to which she responded, “My brother!” The two, strangers before today, embrace.
During a trip to Sierra Leone while she was working for the United Nations in the early 2000s, Carter looked around her and thought, as she had done in every African country she visited: I wonder if I’m really back home. After the reveal, Carter now knows. And she has become more interested in her genealogy and finding the answers behind her elusive heritage.
“If we don’t capture this history, we are going to lose it in another generation.”
Looking more closely at pictures of her great- grandmother revealed Sierra Leonean traits. In her research, she discovered that an enslaved man from Wilmington, Thomas Peters, escaped from the United States and went back to Africa to form the modern state that is now Sierra Leone. Once she started looking, she found connections everywhere. In the coming years, she plans on taking a trip back to the country her ancestors came from. “I truly feel, as an African American, that if we don’t capture this history,” Carter says, “we are going to lose it in another generation.”
Carter is one of six people who uncovered a new understanding of their heritage that day. “These Ancestry Reveals are so special to Black Americans because we may not have any other way of finding out who we are or where we came from,” she says. Beatty hoped that this event will do for others in the Lower Cape Fear region and beyond what it did for Carter. “I think we all need to know who we are.”
The St. Philips Church at Brunswick Town/Fort Anderson sits on land once worked by enslaved laborers on Lower Cape Fear River rice plantations. photograph by Matt Ray Photography
Chef Keith Rhodes. photograph by Matt Ray Photography
Visitors at the North Carolina Rice Festival will spend an extended weekend in Brunswick County celebrating the Gullah Geechee culture. Attendees will learn about the language, listen to traditional storytelling, savor Low Country cuisine, and enjoy live Gullah-inspired entertainment. On Wednesday, the festival kicks off with discussions about the significance of rice in the region’s agricultural and cultural history. The Ancestry Reveal is held on Thursday evening, and on Friday, Chef Keith Rhodes of Catch in Wilmington will prepare the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Gala Dinner. Rhodes creates dishes like Gullah-style conch chowder and piri piri roast chicken confit with jollof rice cakes. On Saturday, the festival concludes with a day of music, food, art, crafts, and more at the Brunswick Town/Fort Anderson Historic Site.
For more information, visit northcarolinaricefestival.org.
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