Hulling Rice in West Africa and Georgia
Cultural practices often extend over time and space. The eighteenth-century engraving on the left shows West African women using huge wooden mortars and pestles to strip the tough outer hull from rice kernels. In the photo on the right, taken a century and a half later, African American women in Georgia use similar tools to prepare rice for their families. Library of Congress. / Courtesy Georgia Vanishing Archives Collection, sap093.