Ray Winbush 22 mins · The year was 1841. Edmond Albius, a - TopicsExpress



          

Ray Winbush 22 mins · The year was 1841. Edmond Albius, a 12-year-old French-owned black slave from the Bourbon Islands, figured out what other botanists had tried to do for centuries. Albius discovered that the vanilla plant could be pollinated by hand using a blade of grass or a swipe of a thumb. It was effective and labor-intensive, but once folks figured out how to pollinate the plants, vanilla as a flavor became more accessible. His discovery prompted French botanist Jean Michel Claude Richard to claim that he had in fact taught Albius the technique years earlier, and some of the French press would later claim that Albius was white. (This journal article from 1900 acknowledges that Albius was a black slave, and also says his master had him study botany. Even with food there, racist history exists. Thanks Judy Harrison-Gordon for this.
Posted on: Mon, 24 Mar 2014 04:46:29 +0000

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