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"AFRICAN FARMERS"
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Beyond forty acres and a mule
This collection chronicles the tumultuous history of landowning African American farmers from the end of the Civil War to today. Each essay provides a case study of people in one place at a particular time and the factors that affected their ability to acquire, secure, and protect their land.
The contributors walk readers through a century and a half of African American agricultural history, from the strivings of black farm owners in the immediate post-emancipation period to the efforts of contemporary black farm owners to receive justice through the courts for decades of discrimination by the U.S Department of Agriculture. They reveal that despite enormous obstacles, by 1920 a quarter of African American farm families owned their land, and demonstrate that farm ownership was not simply a departure point for black migrants seeking a better life but a core component of the African American experience.
eBook
Rooted : the American legacy of land theft and the modern movement for Black land ownership
Why is less than 1% of rural land in the U.S. owned by Black people? An acclaimed writer and activist explores the impact of land theft and violent displacement on racial wealth gaps, arguing that justice stems from the literal roots of the earth. To understand the contemporary racial wealth gap, we must first unpack the historic attacks on Indigenous and Black land ownership. From the moment that colonizers set foot on Virginian soil, a centuries-long war was waged, resulting in an existential dilemma: Who owns what on stolen land? Who owns what with stolen labor? To answer these questions, we must confront one of this nation's first sins: stealing, hoarding, and commodifying the land. Research suggests that between 1910 and 1997, Black Americans lost about 90% of their farmland. Land theft widened the racial wealth gap, privatized natural resources, and created a permanent barrier to access that should be a birthright for Black and Indigenous communities. Rooted traces the experiences of Brea Baker's family history of devastating land loss in Kentucky and North Carolina, identifying such violence as the root of persistent inequality in this country. Ultimately, her grandparents' commitment to Black land ownership resulted in the Bakers Acres--a haven for the family where they are sustained by the land, surrounded by love, and wholly free. A testament to the Black farmers who dreamed of feeding, housing, and tending to their communities, Rooted bears witness to their commitment to freedom and reciprocal care for the land. By returning equity to a dispossessed people, we can heal both the land and our nation's soul.
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The First Migrants
The First Migrants recounts the largely unknown story of
Black people who migrated from the South to the Great Plains
between 1877 and 1920 in search of land and freedom. They exercised
their rights under the Homestead Act to gain title to 650,000
acres, settling in all of the Great Plains states. Some created
Black homesteader communities such as Nicodemus, Kansas, and
DeWitty, Nebraska, while others, including George Washington Carver
and Oscar Micheaux, homesteaded alone. All sought a place where
they could rise by their own talents and toil, unencumbered by
Black codes, repression, and violence. In the words of one
Nicodemus descendant, they found \"a place they could experience
real freedom,\" though in a racist society that freedom could never
be complete. Their quest foreshadowed the epic movement of Black
people out of the South known as the Great Migration. In this first
account of the full scope of Black homesteading in the Great
Plains, Richard Edwards and Jacob K. Friefeld weave together two
distinct strands: the narrative histories of the six most important
Black homesteader communities and the several themes that
characterize homesteaders' shared experiences. Using homestead
records, diaries and letters, interviews with homesteaders'
descendants, and other sources, Edwards and Friefeld illuminate the
homesteaders' fierce determination to find freedom-and their
greatest achievements and struggles for full equality.
eBook
Tobe : a critical edition : new views on a children's classic
\"When UNC Press published Stella Gentry Sharpe's \"Tobe\" in 1939, it was hailed as one of the first children's books to offer a dignified portrayal of an African American child and his family. Today, the power of \"Tobe\" lies as much in the questions it raises: Whose story gets told? Who gets to tell it? How do stories shape how we see ourselves and each other? This volume reproduces the original volume's text and images, places the book in the context of its time, and offers thought-provoking ways to read \"Tobe\" with fresh eyes. This new edition of a children's classic opens up questions of race, voice, and power in ways that encourage fruitful conversation and resist easy answers\"-- Provided by publisher.
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My work is that of conservation
George Washington Carver (ca. 1864-1943) is at once one of the most familiar and misunderstood figures in American history. In My Work Is That of Conservation, Mark D. Hersey reveals the life and work of this fascinating man who is widely-and reductively-known as the African American scientist who developed a wide variety of uses for the peanut. Carver had a truly prolific career dedicated to studying the ways in which people ought to interact with the natural world, yet much of his work has been largely forgotten. Hersey rectifies this by tracing the evolution of Carver's agricultural and environmental thought starting with his childhood in Missouri and Kansas and his education at the Iowa Agricultural College. Carver's environmental vision came into focus when he moved to the Tuskegee Institute in Macon County, Alabama, where his sensibilities and training collided with the denuded agrosystems, deep poverty, and institutional racism of the Black Belt. It was there that Carver realized his most profound agricultural thinking, as his efforts to improve the lot of the area's poorest farmers forced him to adjust his conception of scientific agriculture. Hersey shows that in the hands of pioneers like Carver, Progressive Era agronomy was actually considerably \"greener\" than is often thought today. My Work Is That of Conservation uses Carver's life story to explore aspects of southern environmental history and to place this important scientist within the early conservation movement.
eBook
No small potatoes : Junius G. Groves and his kingdom in Kansas
\"The life of Junius G. Groves, a sharecropper in Kansas who grew a modest potato farm into a potato kingdom.\"-- Provided by publisher.
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Freedom Farmers
In May 1967, internationally renowned activist Fannie Lou Hamer
purchased forty acres of land in the Mississippi Delta, launching
the Freedom Farms Cooperative (FFC). A community-based rural and
economic development project, FFC would grow to over 600 acres,
offering a means for local sharecroppers, tenant farmers, and
domestic workers to pursue community wellness, self-reliance, and
political resistance. Life on the cooperative farm presented an
alternative to the second wave of northern migration by African
Americans--an opportunity to stay in the South, live off the land,
and create a healthy community based upon building an alternative
food system as a cooperative and collective effort. Freedom
Farmers expands the historical narrative of the black freedom
struggle to embrace the work, roles, and contributions of southern
Black farmers and the organizations they formed. Whereas existing
scholarship generally views agriculture as a site of oppression and
exploitation of black people, this book reveals agriculture as a
site of resistance and provides a historical foundation that adds
meaning and context to current conversations around the resurgence
of food justice/sovereignty movements in urban spaces like Detroit,
Chicago, Milwaukee, New York City, and New Orleans.
eBook
The last stand
A little boy is excited to work alongside his Papa as they collect eggs, plums, peppers and pumpkins to sell at their stand in the farmer's market, but when Papa cannot make it to the stand, his community gathers around him, with dishes made of his own produce.
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Black, White, and Green
Farmers markets are much more than places to buy produce. According to advocates for sustainable food systems, they are also places to \"vote with your fork\" for environmental protection, vibrant communities, and strong local economies. Farmers markets have become essential to the movement for food-system reform and are a shining example of a growing green economy where consumers can shop their way to social change. Black, White, and Green brings new energy to this topic by exploring dimensions of race and class as they relate to farmers markets and the green economy. With a focus on two Bay Area markets-one in the primarily white neighborhood of North Berkeley, and the other in largely black West Oakland-Alison Hope Alkon investigates the possibilities for social and environmental change embodied by farmers markets and the green economy. Drawing on ethnographic and historical sources, Alkon describes the meanings that farmers market managers, vendors, and consumers attribute to the buying and selling of local organic food, and the ways that those meanings are raced and classed. She mobilizes this research to understand how the green economy fosters visions of social change that are compatible with economic growth while marginalizing those that are not. Black, White, and Green is one of the first books to carefully theorize the green economy, to examine the racial dynamics of food politics, and to approach issues of food access from an environmental-justice perspective. In a practical sense, Alkon offers an empathetic critique of a newly popular strategy for social change, highlighting both its strengths and limitations.
eBook