Soul Food Guide: Fried Okra

Did you know that the word “okra” comes from several West African languages to describe the tall, hearty plant? In Nigeria’s Igbo language, it’s called “ k r ” and in Ghanaian languages, it’s “nkruma.” To this day, okra is still used as a thickening agent for African soups and stews (that’s why it’s used in modern-day gumbo), but the history of its existence in the United States is the direct result of the Transatlantic Slave Trade. The lore goes that enslaved Africans carried okra seeds with them in their hair across the Atlantic, where the plant thrived in the humid southern climate, but there’s simply no way to prove the veracity of this claim. “I don’t always do my due diligence in telling the truth of the story because I think it’s such a romantic story,” says Cassandra L. Jones, associate professor of Africana Studies at the University of Cincinnati, who co-created the school’s African Diaspora Foodways Health course. “This is not, in fact, true, but it’s a story that we love t