If it ain't got okra it ain't gumbo...

I don't see how you can make tomato soup without tomatoes.I don't see how you can make gumbo without gumbo (okra). Edlin User (blogger)
If it ain't got okra it ain't gumbo. Rice and okra tie the Carolinas and the Louisiana swamps together - many crops that were grown in the coastal Carolinas migrated to La. & Texas after the Civil War. Okra came to the New World with the slave trade; it was such an important part of the culture, the seeds adorned the hairdos of the kidnapped people. As the slaves’ foods became part of the diet of the land, Native Americans began to use it to thicken their stews instead of ground sassafras root, which is known as file’. The West African word for the vegetable was nkruma, which became okra; Swahili name for the plant was “ gumbo” and so it became the name for stews using it in the southern U.S. The pod also traveled up the Nile and eastward on the spice routes where it is revered in Indian cuisine – curried, pickled or steamed like asparagus. Once considered a relative of the hibiscus because of its delicately lovely flower, it now considered as being in a genus of its own - Abelmoschus.
“So few people eat okra that it never even makes it onto the lists of Top 10 hated foods.”
Julia Reed