Africa developed a rich botanical heritage as generations of farmers selected, perfected, and domesticated crops such as castor beans, watermelons, okra, ancient grains, sorghum, African rice, and black-eyed peas, using communal agricultural traditions that respected the land and balanced food production without depleting the soil. During the 400 years of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, more than 12 million Africans were taken from their homelands and forced to labor in the mines and plantations of the Americas, a tragedy known today as the African Diaspora. In the same era, often called the Columbian Exchange, plants moved widely between the Old and New Worlds as European expansion also brought disease and oppression. African knowledge and agricultural skill helped drive colonial expansion, including teaching South Carolina plantation owners how to grow rice, a crop independently domesticated in both Africa and Asia thousands of years earlier, which soon became highly profitable in the South. The trade also carried New World crops such as corn and peanuts to Africa, while familiar African staples and some Asian plants that had already spread to Africa, including bananas and sugarcane, reached the Americas. To survive on meager rations, enslaved Africans cultivated their own gardens after long workdays, growing crops of the Americas alongside African staples and helping preserve a living connection to Africa’s botanical heritage.