In the summer of 2023, the jazz-funk groove of Herbie Hancock’s 1973 recording of “Watermelon Man” bounced into my ears and fixed itself on a loop. And it’s actually a reimagination of Herbie’s original version, a hard bop standard from 1962 which you may recognize:
Both versions of “Watermelon Man” are highly influential jazz recordings, and they sent ripples of change throughout American music in the 20th century. As a music lover and a DJ, they’re timeless sounds that visit me often, popping up in the hot summertime or when I accidentally blow into an empty beer bottle. It's a rhythm that comes and goes often, like a passing breeze … but this time around, I just couldn’t shake “Watermelon Man.”
It all started when I traveled to Chicago in 2023. I was on the heels of reporting an audio folk story about the Black Republican cherry, and I was in the Windy City for the James Beard Media Awards. My entire experience chasing the story of these cherries affirmed my belief in the power of storytelling. I developed a deep awareness that folk stories hold our history and reveal our shared humanity.
I was deep in my feelings when I went to Chicago. While I was in town, I paid a visit to my long-distance cousins who live on the South Side. My Chicago family hadn’t seen me since I was a little girl they called Button Nose, and they wanted to host me and celebrate the nomination of my fruit story. I went over to my cousin Sherai Troxler’s house, where all my cousins gathered. And while catching up over cake and mimosas, we captivated each other with fruitful fascinations.
Sherai shared that during the long and brutal Chicago winters, she looked forward to the summertime when the family could get together and enjoy a refreshing watermelon. Here's how she recounted it recently:
SHERAI TROXLER: Summertime in Chicago is so fleeting that you kinda want to take in everything that's summertime: the heat, the longer days, time out in the park with your family, and watermelon. It just kinda all goes together: barbecues, watermelon, family. Always in the back of my mind is, in July, I'm going to look for the watermelon man, and I'm going to make sure I get watermelons from him all summer. There's something about just getting the watermelons from the watermelon man during that short window of time when we are just enjoying and making the most of that season.
I was intrigued by this annual anticipation of the watermelon man, and the needle in my head dropped on Herbie’s “Watermelon Man groove.” I asked her what was so special about the watermelons from the watermelon man, and she shared that it was mainly the nostalgia. Every watermelon season growing up, Sherai remembers going to a watermelon man truck in Chicago with her mother.
SHERAI TROXLER: For example, if we were going to get together for a family gathering in the park and barbecue, and on our way there, she'd see the watermelon man, and she'd grab a watermelon. Or even if we weren't getting together as a family, and we’d see the watermelon truck with the watermelon man, and it made her think of home. And she wanted to get a watermelon, every year, every chance she got. You know, there are watermelons in the grocery stores, but she just wanted a watermelon from the watermelon man. And I think I just kind of embraced that.
Enjoying a watermelon together is a summertime ritual that spans back generations in our family.
SHERAI TROXLER: I spent a summer in the south with my grandmother and my great-grandmother. And my great-grandmother, Mary, she was blind from glaucoma. But I remember her telling her daughter that she wanted a watermelon, and to make sure that she got her the sweetest watermelon. So I remember us going what they call uptown, and my grandmother selecting this watermelon for her mother. And I can recall us getting back home, her chilling it, and the discussion about how wonderful and sweet that watermelon was, and how this was the best one that she'd had all season. And, you know, I have to agree that was some really juicy and sweet watermelon, but that is the memory that really sticks with me: that summer that I spent in the south, and her wanting a sweet watermelon, and my grandmother being able to go to the store and pick the sweetest one.
Now that Sherai is older and her mother is a senior, she happily continues the tradition of gifting her mother the specific nostalgia of a Southern watermelon, which are only found in Chicago off the back of a truck.
SHERAI TROXLER: I feel like she anticipates me bringing her this watermelon every season. It's important to me to seek out a watermelon from home and bring it for her.
Up until a couple of years ago, when she found her current neighborhood watermelon man, Sherai never really knew where she could find one. They were like a community phenomenon that you might happen to drive by or hear coming down the street.
SHERAI TROXLER: I've had summers where it's been like, “Wow, I haven't seen the watermelon man.” And then you start asking people, “Have you seen a watermelon truck?” And then, you know, you track down the watermelon man, and you get your watermelon. And I can't really say whether they're sweeter or better, but there's more excitement involved in it, and more, I don't know, there's a happiness that kind of goes with it, because you're anticipating it, then you find him, and then you you get your watermelon, and you probably have it for an event with your family. And I don't know whether it's sweeter or not, but it sure tastes sweet to me.
As Sherai continued raving about the sweet joy, Herbie’s “Watermelon Man” groove grew louder and louder. The sound and feeling exploded into serendipity when I discovered that Herbie composed the melody based on the childhood memory of a watermelon man in the South Side of Chicago.
The same excitement I heard in Sherai’s voice is the same excitement I hear in the song. The connection was astounding: Growing up in Los Angeles, my childhood summers consisted of chasing the ice cream truck man, the elote man, or the fruit cart man. But I’ve never chased a watermelon man … until now.
Tyler Boudreaux holding a watermelon. Photo courtesy of Tyler Boudreaux.
CHAPTER 1: CHICAGO
I was fascinated with the hustle of the watermelon man and its longstanding tradition in Black neighborhoods across the country. I flew back to Chicago in late July and chased my cousin’s watermelon man to the corner of 83rd and Stony Island Avenue. I pulled up on a hot Friday afternoon to meet Kenny Smith and his truck full of Southern bounty.
KENNY SMITH: Hey, how's it going boss man? Are you looking for a red or you looking for yellow? All the reds are right here. Around what size you looking for: medium, large, or small?
WESLEY RADFORD: Large.
TYLER BOUDREAUX: Are you a repeat customer?
WESLEY: Yes, second time. We will be back.
KENNY: You can give me $17 for this one.
WESLEY: Brother, I don’t have any change, I'm sorry. I'm looking for change in this city.
Stony Island Avenue is a major artery of Chicago’s South Side and Kenny’s 28-foot flatbed trailer is parked along the curb near the gas station. His green oblong watermelons pose like models on a billboard, luring in drivers like Wesley Radford.
Kenny Smith’s watermelon truck parked on 83rd and Stony Island Avenue. Photo credit: Tyler Boudreaux
WESLEY: The fruit here is good. I recommend everybody stop and get some before they're gone.
TYLER: How did you hear about him?
WESLEY: Driving by, probably a week or so ago.
TYLER: What do you guys love about these watermelon so much?
WESLEY: They’re delicious, they're delicious. They're juicy, they taste like they're supposed to taste. This is a watermelon. (Wesley slaps his watermelon.)
TYLER: Will you slap that again?
WESLEY: What, slap it again? You hear that? That's density.
KENNY: It’s life in there. It's life.
Wesley walks away with a $20 watermelon, grown in Mississippi and trucked here by Kenny.
KENNY: Every week I come with fresh ones. I go start off in Florida. Then I go to Georgia – which is Cordele, Georgia – then I go to Mississippi, then I go Missouri. I end up in Indiana at the end of the day.
TYLER: And how long is the drive, usually?
KENNY: Well, Florida is roughly, I want to say, 18 and a half hours. Georgia is 16, and then Missouri is 8 to 9, and then Mississippi is like 10 to 12, and then Indiana is like a 5 or 4 hour ride.
Kenny estimates that he hauls around 2,000 watermelons a week throughout the season. And, as a result, he’s developed a discerning eye and palate for what makes a product worthy of his customers.
Kenny Smith next to his truck full of Southern watermelons. Photo credit: Tyler Boudreaux
KENNY: I'm gonna be looking for color. I'm gonna be looking for seeds. I'm gonna be looking at the rind and I'm gonna be looking at the texture…
Kenny grabs an oblong watermelon with light green stripes and sinks his sharp knife into the flesh.
KENNY: See, that’s good to sell. That's not under-ripe or overripe. See, ain’t no grainy in there.
TYLER: Wow, okay, hold on…
I had to stop rolling so I could use both hands to try the succulent sample. Plus, I couldn’t risk getting juice in my recorder — although the juice did drip down my arm and all over my white linen shirt — but I didn’t care at all. I don’t know if it was the anticipation of finally trying the Southern watermelon for myself, or because I was starving from smelling the nearby barbecue joint all day, but the flavor of that slice completely overcame me. I was pulled into the pleasure of each and every bite.
The Watermelon Man offering a sample. Photo credit: Tyler Boudreaux
Once I recovered, Kenny introduced me to his inventory.
KENNY: Now these are Starbrites, and I have yellow meat watermelon.
Yellow meat watermelon. Photo credit: Tyler Boudreaux
Red meat watermelon. Photo credit: Tyler Boudreaux
Each melon weighs around 25-60 pounds, and is marked with their price based on size.
Watermelons stacked and marked with prices. Photo credit: Tyler Boudreaux
KENNY: The grocery store got a melon that’s $5 and $8, and we selling them for $10, $12, and $20. You know you're gonna get complaints because some people want the quality, but they can't afford it. But nowadays you gotta pay for something that's good.
Kenny’s truck inspires a lot of excitement on the corner, to say the least. As we talked throughout the afternoon, I watched mesmerized drivers come to a complete stop on the busy street, while the frustrated cars behind them swerved around and sped down the wide avenue. Customers pulled over both in front and behind the truck, then lined up along the curb to greet the watermelon man.
While Kenny directs the operation and handles the transactions with customers, his young helper Amari Jackson loads the chosen ones into customer’s cars.
Amari Jackson holding a watermelon. Photo credit: Tyler Boudreaux
Some folks scrutinize Kenny’s prices; other folks savor the free sample and reminisce on their own watermelon memories. Some discuss the health benefits of juicing, and a few share lesser known benefits of watermelon, like that the rind and seeds are “nature’s Viagra.” Watermelon is a great equalizer, bringing all kinds of folks to Kenny’s truck. And it certainly helps that Kenny’s a charismatic guy that’s proud of his work for this community. Very few folks that approach his truck leave empty-handed.
The Watermelon Man set up. Photo credit: Tyler Boudreaux
According to loyal customers like Wesley, the watermelon from trucks like Kenny’s taste a thousand leagues better than the flavors found in a grocery store watermelon. Kenny says that’s because of two key factors: Number One, the industrialized supply chain from farm to grocery store, often results in lower-quality fruit being transported under unnatural conditions. And number two, the unique qualities of the soil in the southern states, particularly around Cordele, Georgia, which is nicknamed the “watermelon capital of the world.”
KENNY: Georgia got red soil. Every state got its own soil. Some states have sandy soil. Up here it has a muddy soil. It's based on how you like your melons. To me, honestly, my preference, the melon I like the best is gonna be from Georgia or Missouri.
For Amari, the significance of their melons is about both the flavor and the culture.
AMARI JACKSON: There are so many qualities that I like about Southern grown watermelons. Number one, the emphasis of southern. Black and brown people of course, from a big part of the South. My mom is from Georgia. And the fact that a lot of Black people, especially in Chicago have either family roots or have been born in southern states, Georgia, Mississippi, all that, so I feel like it brings the connection of home. When me and Kenny sell these trucks full of watermelons, all those fruits on that truck are brothers and sisters, they’re all related like us, how we all related.
Another customer named Marilyn Gilbert Mitchell feels the same way.
MARILYN GILBERT MITCHELL: My family is from Mississippi. We used to have all types of farms and things down there. And so it's very important that not only we support Black-owned businesses, but we also know where our food comes from. And so the other stores, they charge by weight. Watermelon is mostly water, so we're paying a lot for not-good quality. And so I come from the other side of the city, and I come over here once a week to buy watermelon and support him, but also because I love it.
Just like Marilyn, my cousin Sherai originally chased down the Southern watermelons from Kenny’s truck, because she knew how happy they made her own mother: my elder Cousin Mary Troxler, who we lovingly call May.
MAY TROXLER: My granddaddy, he was a plantation worker. So I was born on a plantation called Gaillard in Lake Providence, Louisiana. And they grew a watermelon patch out back. And every year I would go and I would spot a watermelon and watch it grow. Then I would go out … When it get right big enough, I would go out and get that watermelon, and I would burst it and sit in the middle of a field, get under a cotton stalk in the shade, and eat watermelon. But that was a great time in my life. I enjoyed that so much.
It’s sweet memories like these that fuel the hustle of the watermelon man. And so that very next day, I picked up May in my baby-blue rental car and drove back to the corner of 83rd and Stony Island Avenue to get a watermelon. We picked up my cousin Chaka along the way, and met up with Sherai at Kenny’s truck. May whacked a few melons with her cane to listen for that vibrant sound that indicates the perfect ripeness.
After a couple whacks, May pointed her cane at a 30-pound Starbrite. And as an extra treat, Kenny helped us pick out a yellow Mountain Sweet. I drove the car, full of cousins and watermelon, to Calumet Park, on the banks of Lake Michigan. And as the cicadas chirped in the trees on that hot July day, my family and I enjoyed the two great human pleasures of food and storytelling.
On my way back north to a friend’s house, I paid a visit to Herbie Hancock’s old neighborhood near Washington Park. I listened to the song again, envisioning the watermelon man’s wagon wheels rolling over the cobblestones in the alley, forming that rhythmic pattern that later became his funky arrangement.
The neighborhood where Herbie Hancock grew up hearing the watermelon man. Photo credit: Tyler Boudreaux
The original 1962 version of “Watermelon Man” was Herbie Hancock’s extraordinary debut as a 22-year-old bandleader. The recording featured Herbie on the keys and solos from trumpeter Freddie Hubbard and saxophonist Dexter Gordon. In 2008, Herbie talked with Elvis Costello on his TV show Spectacle, and discussed where the idea came from:
HERBIE HANCOCK: I started thinking about: What can I write honestly about the Black experience, my own personal Black experience? The funky sound really comes from the Black experience. The watermelon man, what could be more ethnic than that? The watermelon man going through the alleys of Chicago.
Herbie sought to write a song about the Black experience, and crafted the story of the watermelon man.
The following year, the legendary Afro-Cuban percussionist Mongo Santamaria recorded his own arrangement of “Watermelon Man,” after jazz trumpeter Donald Byrd suggested Herbie play it for him.
It became a global sensation and reached the Top 20 of the pop charts – a revolutionary accomplishment for a jazz record in the early ‘60s. Its success helped popularize a new genre called boogaloo, which fused rhythm and blues with Afro-Cuban jazz. Popular artists from a range of genres rushed into the studio to cover the groove in their own style: from Bill Haley and His Comets’ surf rock treatment …
…to Byron Lee and the Dragonaires, with their ska twist….
…to the legendary singer, Big Mama Thornton, laying her blues thick on the watermelon man.
As recently as 2020, R&B singer Poppy Ajudha covered the song for a Blue Note compilation, adding contemporary lyrics from a Black Lives Matter frame.
And of course, there’s Herbie’s own re-interpretation of “Watermelon Man,” released on his 12th record, Head Hunters. In 1973, Herbie gathered a group of jazz players hungry for success, and together they pushed their artistry into uncharted territory. The group included Herbie on keys, Bennie Maupin on tenor saxophone, Paul Jackson on bass guitar, Harvey Mason on drums, and Bill Summers on percussion. And together, they created a transcendent sound that challenges the listener’s perception of music. The record opened jazz to new audiences, and became one of the best-selling albums in jazz history. The band even went on to name themselves the Head Hunters.
Crate-diggers in the ‘80s and ‘90s were so inspired by the innovative sound of the Head Hunters’ “Watermelon Man” that the rhythm became one of the earliest popular samples in the growing art form of hip-hop. The source was tapped countless times by artists like LL Cool J …
…Digable Planets…
…J Dilla…
…and my personal favorite: a track by Jamaican MC Super Cat, featuring vocals from Mary J. Blige and a hot verse from The Notorious B.I.G.
The impact of Herbie Hancock’s Head Hunters was massive. In 2007, the Library of Congress added the record to their National Recording Registry of “culturally, historically, and aesthetically significant” works. And in 2021, Rolling Stone listed Head Hunters as #254 on their list of 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.
What lies at the heart of “Watermelon Man”’s eternal essence is the sweet feeling bouncing in each chord progression. Its energy lifts your spirits and conjures the shared memory of summertime and the flavor of its sacred gift, the watermelon.
For watermelon enthusiasts like Ellen Ficklen, Herbie Hancock’s song is like gospel. It portrays the excitement of hearing the watermelon man approaching.
WATERMELON ELLEN: The clackety clack is what he heard growing up in Chicago, and that's what he incorporated into watermelon man and once you know that you can, you can really hear it.
Ellen, who was nicknamed “Watermelon Ellen” by the Washington Post, is the writer and publisher of a website and newsletter called Watermelon Times that’s seeded with history and recipes. Ellen’s book on watermelon lore was published by the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, and her scholarship has been cited in both the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture and the Cambridge World History of Food.
WATERMELON ELLEN: He was like 22 when he did that. And so, you know, it's just so great that Herbie Hancock is still with us. For 60 years, he's been clackety-clacking along with his watermelon man, and he's been around to see everybody enjoy it. You can't help but just kind of hop around with it. It's really joyous.
CHAPTER 2: FROM AFRICA
With the influence of his two Watermelon Man renditions, Herbie Hancock pointed the spotlight on a historic Black American tradition and an ancient African fruit that’s loved around the world. I wanted to understand what it was about watermelon that invokes such a devout affection. Talking to Watermelon Ellen, I learned that the human love of watermelon goes way back. She took me to the earliest history of the fruit, and shared the spectacular story of how the citrullus lanatus plant evolved from a wild, bitter desert melon to a cultivated sweet dessert watermelon.
WATERMELON ELLEN: The watermelon comes from Africa. It is a very, very old food. And many cultures had watermelon, and there were lots of different words for watermelon. So it was very hard for people to track back where it came from. For a long time, they thought it came from the Kalahari Desert. And then it was only really relatively recently – I think it was in 2021 – that the gene center, the originating point, was pinpointed as in Sudan.
Ancient watermelons grew wild in patches across the desert, and were a reliable source of clean water and food amid the sweltering Saharan climate. They also lasted for weeks, or sometimes months, if they were kept in a cool and shady place.
WATERMELON ELLEN: It traveled up to Egypt. And there are hieroglyphics with watermelons in them. I mean, you can see them so you know they were there. And that was the same thing in other cultures, there would be art that showed watermelons there early.
A painted relief in the tomb of Chnumhotep near Saqqara, which is dated to 2500 (BCE). Photos courtesy of Susanne Renner.
When archaeologists excavated Tutankhamun’s tomb from 1323 BCE, they discovered watermelon seeds inside. The belief was that he could plant some watermelon in the afterlife.
From Africa, watermelons spread along trade routes to the Middle East, Central Asia, Russia, and further east along the Silk Road to China.
WATERMELON ELLEN: In China, the name for watermelon translates as melon from the west. So they knew it didn't originate in China, it came from the west to China. And then if you go up into Europe a bit, for instance, in Hungary, the name translates as Greek melon. So they got theirs from Greece.
Around the world, the watermelon became celebrated as an easy fruit to grow in warm and sunny climates. But prehistoric watermelon tasted very different than today’s watermelon.
WATERMELON ELLEN: When they were first grown, they were small, they were round, and they were watery – very watery, with some meat inside. But they were not sweet. It was like a melon holding a couple cups of water. So people would actually take these little round non tasting melons with them when they traveled and use it like a canteen. So when you were thirsty, you could open it up and drink water you had brought with you. And of course, you could then dispose of the rind and some of the meat and some of the seeds. And I'm just betting that's how a lot of the watermelon began to travel.
Through selective breeding over time, humans evolved the small, bitter, green fleshed melon into the large, sweet, juicy red fleshed melon we crave today.
The luminous sunshine and fertile soil of the American South marked a new flavor evolution of the watermelon. The fruit transformed into a signature Southern delicacy, synonymous with summertime. In Mark Twain’s satirical novel Pudd’n Head Wilson, he writes: “When one has tasted it, he knows what the angels eat. It was not a Southern watermelon that Eve took: we know it because she repented.”
And it wasn’t all just hype. After trying Kenny’s watermelon trucked from Georgia, I tasted “what the angels eat.” I felt like I was enjoying the fruit in its totality for the very first time, and I gained a newfound respect for a fruit I once thought was overrated. What I realize now is that I’d been eating the wrong watermelon all along.
CHAPTER 3: ANTEBELLUM & EMANCIPATION
Enjoying the Southern watermelons in Chicago made me wonder about the Southern watermelon my enslaved African ancestors enjoyed. While speaking with Watermelon Ellen, I learned about one of the only varieties of watermelon linked to an enslaved Black farmer: it’s called the Odell Large White. I looked deeper into the white-meat variety and came across Amirah Mitchell. She’s a seedswoman and farmer currently stewarding the Odell Large White as part of the mission for her production farm, called Sistah Seeds.
AMIRAH MITCHELL: Seeds are so important because they connect us to our ancestors, and they also carry us into the future. It was really important to me to look into stories about watermelon and identify some varieties of watermelon that had been historically stewarded and connected to the diaspora for a number of reasons. Not only because watermelon itself is an African crop, but also because I was familiar with how watermelon had been used against Black people in media, and with harmful, stereotypical images.
The Odell Large White variety was developed in the 1840s by a Black farmer named Harry, while he was enslaved on a plantation in South Carolina. It was named after the plantation owner’s friend, a white man named Milton Odell, who grew a 53-pound melon that attracted the attention of the local papers. Although the variety was nearly wiped out at the turn of the century by a fungus disease, a single family preserved the seeds for generations and recently shared them with Amirah.
AMIRAH MITCHELL: I'm looking for these plants to grow that will connect black growers to our cultural foods. And it's very difficult to find these types of stories because of the history of erasure. Especially when it comes to the time of slavery. You know, so many of Black contributions to agriculture were erased and renamed and absorbed by, you know, the plantation culture and, you know, credit was given, of course, to the white owners of plantations as opposed to the people working directly with the crops.
In addition to the growing advocacy from seed keepers like Amirah, Odell’s Large White Watermelon is a protected variety by the Slow Food Ark of Taste, which catalogs “delicious and distinctive foods facing extinction.”
AMIRAH MITCHELL: It's not white exactly, but it is very pale. It's got this pale green rind, and then inside the flesh is a very pale pink. It's sweet, but not syrupy. Like some of the modern varieties. But it is so, so refreshing … so hydrating. It's absolutely delicious. It's one of my favorites for a hot day.
If an enslaved person’s master allowed them to grow watermelon, selling this fruit became an avenue for economic independence. The seeds were easy to come by, the crop was relatively easy to grow, and it was always in demand come summertime. Folks would sell them in town or at train stations on Sundays, or use them as currency for trade or as gifts. The money made from watermelon was sometimes even used to purchase freedom. And since not every enslaved person was allowed to grow their own watermelon patch, watermelon became an early symbol of abolition.
And the season of watermelon, referred to as “watermelon days,” were a special time of year for enslaved folks, when the crops were laid and the work in the fields was going to be a bit easier for a few months. Folks would observe the harvesting of watermelon and share the fruit like a communion. It’s a fruit that naturally brings people together because … well … you can’t really eat a whole one alone.
Nicole Taylor is a James Beard Award-nominated author. And in her landmark Juneteenth cookbook, Watermelon and Red Birds, she talks about how watermelon was a source of celebration for enslaved people.
NICOLE TAYLOR: When you look at cookbooks that were written in the 1800s and the 1900s, you see folks describing formerly-enslaved people, how they celebrated, and what there would be on the table, and you would always see watermelon. So we know for sure that watermelon is a Black celebration food.
The significance deepened after the Civil War. Newly-freed people celebrated Emancipation holidays like Juneteenth with jubilation, music, dancing, and food. At Juneteenth events, it became tradition to serve particularly red food to honor the blood of the enslaved ancestors who did not make it to emancipation. And with its red meat and summer timing, watermelon became a staple of Juneteenth. Its image and flavor became culturally linked with the resistance and resilience of Black life.
CHAPTER 4: STEREOTYPE
During Reconstruction, angry racists fought against the fruit’s newfound symbolism by twisting it into an emblem of Black laziness, infantile behavior, and overindulgence. They created Black caricatures like Sambo, or pickaninnies with big watermelon-eating grins, and published these images on trading cards and posters, in films and in songs… – in pretty much every corner of American culture. In the 1860s, conservative newspapers across the South generated mass hysteria about Black watermelon thieves.
And all of this rhetoric had real, and terrible, consequences.
In 1871 in Spartanburg, South Carolina, a Black sharecropper named Wallace Fowler was lynched by the Ku Klux Klan. They shot him and set his body on fire, in front of his own family, for accusing a white man’s son of stealing his watermelon. Wallace’s widow later testified to Congress about her husband’s lynching, and even then had to clarify to the Congressmen that Wallace himself was not accused of stealing watermelons.
In spite of the terror and shame that stemmed from the stereotype, many Black folks refused to let the negative associations get in the way of making ends meet. Watermelon’s value continued to contribute to Black upwards mobility.
NICOLE TAYLOR: I think about the entrepreneurship that happened after emancipation, where you had newly freed and always-free Black people who use watermelon as a way to send their kids to newly established historically-black colleges; to buy land; to start their journey into entrepreneurship.
Black folks grew watermelons on farms in the rural south, and watermelon men would haul them to the cities, loudly announcing their goods with rhyming jingles. From horses and buggies to rumbling trucks with wooden flatbeds, they drove day-long journeys back to the rural areas of the South that were still thick with Jim Crow. Their mission was to smuggle Old Dixie’s heavenly fruits back to the eager migrants craving a slice of home. After all, selling watermelons was not only a reliable and profitable venture, it was sweet and meaningful work.
CHAPTER 5: THE GREAT MIGRATION
At the turn of the century, these entrepreneurs expanded their watermelon-selling routes to meet the growing demand of the Great Migration, the Black American exodus from the South that took place from 1910 to 1970. Nearly six million people exercised their freedom to pursue opportunities in cities across the country – leaving behind an atmosphere of racial segregation, Jim Crow legislation, and the plantation economy of the sharecropping system. And to these newly settled migrants, Southern watermelons became a direct link to the American South, and an even deeper link to the African Motherland.
Among them was my Grandmother, Reola Lewis. She was one of the 1.4 million Black folks that landed in Illinois during this time. Grandmother rode the second wave of the Great Migration that followed the economic boom of the Second World War. In 1956, she left the Gaillard sharecropping plantation near Lake Providence, Louisiana and boarded a train bound for Chicago.
GRANDMOTHER: I think that was the first time I had been on a train was the ride to Chicago. The first time I had been in a big city. It was strange, but I really really enjoyed myself. Because there, I had no future. So my brother and I caught Amtrak and never went back to live.
TYLER: Why Chicago?
GRANDMOTHER: Well, that was really the only city that I had family, my mother's sister. I moved in with her, my brother and I. That was in June of ‘56. And in December of ‘56, I had my own apartment.
Years later, she was joined by her niece, May, who you heard at the beginning of the story. My Grandmother eventually traded the cold winters of Chicago for the warmer weather of Los Angeles … and every year, when summer came around, she longed for the familiarity of watermelon’s sweet joy.
As an adult raising a family of her own in Southern California, really good watermelon – like the kind she grew up harvesting in the watermelon patch out back – was hard to come by. That’s why my Grandmother always loved it when my Papa, Henry J. Lewis, would bring her bounty from Sam’s Watermelon: a stand located in South Central Los Angeles, not too far from their house.
GRANDMOTHER: I think he just happened to be passing there one day, and he saw what he went in. And Sam, they have what they call a cutout: he would cut a plug, and if it wasn't sweet, you didn't have to pay for it and all that. So we got hooked on that. And until he passed away, that was the only place we would go. That's the closest I could get to what my dad had.
CHAPTER 6: LA’S WATERMELON MAN
I drove to South Central and chased my Papa’s watermelon man to the corner of Normandie and Gage.
Sam's Watermelon stand on Normandie and Gage Avenues in Los Angeles, CA. Photo by Tyler Boudreaux.
It’s a loud and busy urban intersection, shared with a senior housing complex and the Normandie Church of Christ. Among other trucks and old cars parked on the property, there are two Volkswagen bugs with watermelons painted on the doors. Handmade signs decorate the building, their colors faded from years in the sun. And an assortment of watermelon trinkets, tchotchkes and souvenirs hang from the awning.
Trinkets and tchotchkes hang from the awning. Photo by Tyler Boudreaux
I was greeted by Amelia Minter, who stands behind boxes of red and orange meat watermelon, smiling at the passersby and greeting onlookers. Her watermelon manicure matches the watermelon slices she displays on chairs to face the street corner. Her husband Tyrus took over the business from his late dad, who was the Sam in the name.
AMELIA MINTER: I met my husband when I was 23. We started dating, we got married, and I started selling watermelons as well.
Amelia Minter stands in front of a box of watermelons. Photo credit: Tyler Boudreaux
Amelia Minter’s watermelon nails. Photo credit: Tyler Boudreaux
She gives me a tour of the watermelons, which have a lighter green rind and are more oblong than the ones from Kenny’s truck in Chicago.
AMELIA MINTER: We get them from Tyler, Texas, Arizona, Utah, and Bakersfield. My husband usually do the driving, but I go with him on occasion. And we've been far as Utah and Texas. We have driven and got them ourselves, or we have them trucked down.
Amelia tells me that because the soil in Southern California stays warm longer, the Minter family are able to sell fresh melons from early May until October.
Her husband Tyrus is currently on a trip to get more watermelons, but Amelia tells me that I should talk to her youngest son, Trysten, who is parked outside of Woody’s Bar-B-Q on Slauson Avenue. Trysten is a college student in his early twenties now, but ever since he was a baby, he was in the back of the truck, playing and napping on the watermelons.
TRYSTEN MINTER: I actually say most of our customers are repeat customers since my grandpa. Because, I swear, everyone come by and say, “Oh, I remember when you was a baby.” I don't remember everybody, but, you know, they seem to have known me since before I could even remember. So, yeah, we definitely have a family formed over here for our customers.
Trysten enjoys providing his customers with the fruits of our history.
TRYSTEN MINTER: It's definitely more than a piece of fruit to us. It’s our whole livelihood. And it brings us together: every summer, our entire family gets together. I'm seeing family I haven't seen in forever coming by to get a watermelon. I say the watermelon even represents family at this point.
Amelia and Trysten stand together. Photo credit: Tyler Boudreaux
A week later, I returned to Sam’s to find Tyrus standing behind the boxes of watermelon, wearing a watermelon shirt and greeting customers. He has golden hair, and a big and bright smile that spreads into warm laughter when he looks back on his childhood selling watermelons.
TYRUS MINTER: Well, I started with my dad. He's from Shreveport, Louisiana. And when he was a kid, he worked with his dad on a horse and buggy, which they pulled into town to sell fruit.
The Minter family has been selling watermelons since the early ‘60s. Tyrus first came to this corner in 1972 to sell watermelons on a truck with his brother. They bought the property a few decades later in the ‘90s.
In addition to the stand on Normandie and Gage, and Trysten’s spot at Woody’s Bar-B-Q, Tyrus’s middle son Tyler usually parks his truck near the Slauson Swap Meet. His eldest son, Tymel, parks on South Central Avenue near the 105 freeway, close to a senior care facility.
TYRUS MINTER: My mom and dad taught us that if you're going to sell something, you should try to make it available to other people who can't get to it, so they can enjoy it. Because here in South Central LA, a lot of the markets are not accessible. I mean, there may be one market within two miles sometimes. So, with us parking trucks in certain areas, they're accessible to fruit. And so that is what I've been taught to do, and I pass it on to my kids, and we keep that tradition going.
Since Tyrus is the second generation owner of the business, a lot of his most faithful customers have been buying his watermelons since they were kids, and are now passing it on to their kids. Tyrus says that same sense of tradition also extends to their relationships with the growers.
TYRUS MINTER: Once we find good growers, we stick with them. And what makes people keep coming to get our watermelons is that it just has a very good taste to it. And the farmers that do the job, I can't take credit for them. It's the same farmers that my dad's been buying from for years, and the same farmers that's been out there selling to the public. When the older farmers pass on, their kids take over the business. And my dad's passed on, and my parents, so I meet with them, and then I start doing business with them. So my kids are now starting to meet the farmers' kids, and they're doing business with them. So the tradition continues to go.
But when Tyrus looks to the future, he’s concerned about the dwindling support for the watermelon trucking industry.
TYRUS MINTER: Our main customers come from the South, which always been buying off of a truck that came down the street, or a truck parked on the corner, and a neighborhood fruit stand. And those are dying. There's not much any left anymore. So we see some young people that still come. bBut their kids, they sit in a car and they go, “Mom, why didn't we go to the store?” And they tell them, “No, because it's better to get it from a fruit store, because it's fresher.” There used to be many more fruit stands and fruit trucks out, and they're not around anymore. There are farmers’ markets around, but they're on certain days in certain areas.
The youngest Minter son is proud to carry on his family’s tradition, even despite the watermelon stereotype.
TRYSTEN MINTER: This is deeper than just me. This is roots, and I'm not ashamed of it, because this is how we make our living, and it goes back farther than me. And I'm actually proud to be out here doing what I can for my family.
Before heading out from Sam’s, I soaked in the sight of the busy street corner. Cars pull over along the red curb, people descend the bus with their foldable carts, and every customer leaves with a big smile and a big melon. It’s profound to witness how both Kenny Smith in Chicago and Sam’s Watermelon in Los Angeles, paint their unassuming corners with colorful joy, and counteract food deserts with a tangible source of fresh fruit.
The view of Sam’s Watermelon from the intersection of Normandie and Gage Avenues. Photo credit: Tyler Boudreaux
The next day, I brought a 25-pound, seeded red-meat watermelon from Sam’s to my Grandmother’s house for our 4th of July barbecue. And while sharing stories and slices of crispy crimson melon, we reveled in the warm memories of family I’ve never met – my Grandmother’s father, the extraordinary farmer … her baby sister, the partner-in-crime to sweep their tracks … and my Papa, the loving husband and father, who was the light of my family’s life.
CHAPTER 7: RESISTANCE AND RESILIENCE
Learning about the legacy of the watermelon man tradition helped me understand the legacy of the watermelon itself as a reliable crop; as a means of economic independence; as a conduit for connection; and as a symbol of freedom for oppressed people. Watermelons came from Africa, and never stopped traveling. They carry the flavor of humans’ desire, and the history of our resilience.
When watermelons were weaponized against Black people, it became a gesture of resistance to publicly eat watermelon with joyful abandon. Food writer Nicole Taylor believes that Black folks should enjoy the fruits of our history.
NICOLE TAYLOR: I would like to believe in 2024, after the death of George Floyd – excuse me, after the murder of George Floyd – when joy became the rallying cry for Black Americans, that it's like, bump all the stereotypes. If this is something that’s joyful, if this is something that connects us back to our mothers and our grandmothers and our great grandmothers, we should be excited and happy about the fruit and reclaim, reclaim it and to take the narrative and flip it on its head. I would like to think right now that positive note that more Black Americans are going beyond the round grocery-store container of diced watermelon, and looking at the fruit as something deeper. And looking at a fruit that sustained us for real – on a health front, on a psychological front, on a money front – and is still doing that.
Over time, watermelon grew from a symbol of freedom for Black people to a global symbol of resistance against occupation and colonization. Here’s Amari Jackson, Kenny Smith’s helper from the beginning of our story:
AMARI JACKSON: Watermelons, especially, connect all Black and brown people. Especially with the recent events in Falastin. Watermelon has the same color as the Palestinian flag: red, black, green, white.
The image of the watermelon first became associated with Palestine in 1980, after the Israeli military raided a political art exhibit in Ramallah. Since then, the fruit’s symbolic power as a proxy for Palestine has intensified. In today’s social media vernacular, watermelon emojis represent solidarity against occupation and an end to genocide. This same symbolism is represented in another modern war. In Kherson, a small farming city in Southern Ukraine known for their watermelons, the fruit became a symbol against Russian occupation. When Ukrainian soldiers came to liberate the city, farmers presented them with watermelons as gifts. Here’s Amari again:
AMARI JACKSON: When people eat watermelons, they spit the seeds out, not knowing that one day that this could grow it to a whole new generation, or a whole new era of people, and create a whole new era of history.
I circled back with my cousin Sherai at the end of the summer. And we discussed all that I had learned throughout my journey chasing the watermelon man. From an idea that sprouted from our initial conversation in the South Side of Chicago, to meeting my grandparents’ watermelon man in South Central Los Angeles; from the ancient history of the fruit to the modern history of watermelon’s global symbolism. Sherai was moved.
SHERAI TROXLER: Tyler, I want to thank you for this experience. Who knew the parallels that existed, and that revolve around watermelon and the watermelon man? And just realizing how much that means to me, and how deeply rooted it is, and how it's like a ritual. I didn't know it. I thought it was just something that was unique of me and my family, but it really isn't. It's something that is a shared experience among my community and my people, and it's wonderful to know more about it.
On August 14th, my story of the watermelon man came full-circle. Herbie Hancock celebrated the 50th anniversary of Head Hunters by reuniting the original band, with bassist Marcus Miller filling in for the late Paul Jackson, to play the album in full at the Hollywood Bowl. Basketball legend and renowned jazz cat Kareem Abdul-Jabbar introduced the band and celebrated them for “adding another dimension to jazz.”
As percussionist Bill Summers offered an African prayer and blew the immortal opening notes into the bottle, the crowd cheered and synced with the groove of the Watermelon Man. A powerful sense of serendipity washed over me again, while experiencing Herbie Hancock and the Head Hunters playing the song live at the height of watermelon season, after a hot summer spent chasing the watermelon man.
The ancestors were speaking through Herbie Hancock when he translated the feeling of the watermelon man into music. The fruit, the song and the watermelon man are all spiritual vessels, forever connecting the joyful memories of our ancestors with the joyful memories of our inner child.
Chasing the Watermelon Man is a KCRW Original Production. It was written, produced and hosted by Tyler Boudreaux. Our editor is Myke Dodge Weiskopf. Special thanks to Gina Delvac, Jennifer Ferro, Phil Richards, and Arnie Seipel. Extra-special thanks to my guests and sources for this story: Dr. William R. Black, Ellen Ficklen, Amari Jackson, the Minter family, Amirah Mitchell, Marilyn Gilbert Mitchell, Wesley Radford, Kenny Smith, and Nicole Taylor. Extra-extra special thanks to Reola Lewis and Sherai and May Troxler … and, of course, Herbie Hancock.