The Turnip - An American Symbol of Freedom
While perhaps not as well known as his northern counterpart Johnny Appleseed, Terrence Turnip is considered a greater American icon by many in the South. Born a slave in Arkansas in 1793, Terrence Deacon ran away from his plantation at the age of 17 with only a bag of turnip seeds.
For five years he evaded capture, making his way up and down the Mississippi River. At every stop on his route, he planted acres of turnips leaving notes encouraging other runaways to partake in his crops. Sadly, they were never eaten. As one fellow runaway put it--"I was starving, but who the hell wants to eat turnips!? They're nasty, especially without a good wine sauce."
It was in the 1830s, when Alexis de Tocqueville began his famous journey across America in search of the essence of American democracy, that the turnip became a universal American symbol of freedom and civic responsibility. It was on this quest that de Tocqueville witnessed a poor farmer in Michigan risk his own survival to share the last of his turnip harvest with a member of his community whose wife and daughter had been abducted by a band of misguided Quakers. De Tocqueville was deeply touched by this "uniquely American act of civic responsibility" and submitted his treatise to his publisher with the title The Star-Spangled Turnip. The title was quickly rejected, but Democracy in America quickly became an American classic.
Democracy in America made Oprah's Book Club in 1843 and became the best selling book of all time about French people touring America to figure out why it is such a better place to live than France. It became so popular that in separate press conferences on March 13th 1847, the then mascot-less Democratic and Republican parties, both unveiled the turnip as their new icon. This inevitably created a constitutional crises and required the intervention of the United States Supreme Court. Chief Justice Taney, in the majority opinion, wrote "I didn't join the Supreme Court to deal with this crap. For god's sake, just pick another stupid icon--and preferable not a winter vegetable." Later that year the now famous elephant and donkey made their débuts.
The turnip remained an icon for freedom through the twentieth century. In fact, the image of buxom and scantly clad woman hurdling a bomb was the only more commonly used symbol painted on fighter planes by servicemen in World War II. Air Force legend has it that as Hitler watched the P-51 Mustang Fighting Turnip release its arsenal on his bunker, he yelled his last words--"nicht eine andere verfluchte Rübe! (Not another damn turnip!)"
