Why Black-Eyed Peas Still Matter on New Year’s Day

by Nehemiah Frank, The Black Wall Street Times

As families across the country ring in the New Year, many African American households will do so with a familiar dish on the table: black-eyed peas. Often paired with collard greens and cornbread, the meal is widely described as a symbol of luck and prosperity. But its meaning runs far deeper than superstition.

The tradition of eating black-eyed peas on New Year’s Day is rooted in African heritage, shaped by slavery, and sustained by generations of Black survival in America.

A West African Legacy

Black-eyed peas originated in West Africa, where they were cultivated long before the trans-Atlantic slave trade. When Africans were forcibly taken to the Americas, the peas traveled with them, packed onto slave ships because of their durability and nutritional value.

What crossed the Atlantic was not just food, but knowledge. Enslaved Africans brought agricultural expertise—how to grow, store, and cook black-eyed peas under harsh conditions. That knowledge would prove critical to survival in a new land designed to extract labor, not preserve Black life.

Food as Survival Under Slavery

On Southern plantations, black-eyed peas were often issued as rations or grown in small garden plots maintained by enslaved people themselves. Cheap, filling, and resilient, the peas became a dietary staple for those denied access to abundance.

In this context, black-eyed peas were not celebratory. They were necessary. They sustained Black people through scarcity and the systematic stripping of dignity.

Over time, survival itself became symbolic.

After Emancipation, a New Meaning

Following emancipation, formerly enslaved people continued cooking black-eyed peas as a sign of continuity and self-determination. 

Read more.

Learn more about Africa before captivity.

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