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Black farmer harvesting kale.

Black Earth

In North Carolina, a Black farmer purchased the plantation where his ancestors were enslaved—and is reclaiming his family’s story and the soil beneath his feet.
by Christina Cooke via The Bitter Southerner on November 25, 2024
Reenactment of a group of settlers on the Ellis Trail, walking through prairie grass beside horse-drawn wagons.

Nicodemus, Kansas: The Last All Black Town in the West

Descendants of the first settlers in Nicodemus are working to preserve and share a story of grit, perseverance, self-governance, and homecomings.
by Lane Wendell Fischer via The Daily Yonder on March 20, 2024
Collage of archival documents, map and landscape photo of homestead site, contemporary homestead site and tree photographs.

The Many Legacies of Letitia Carson

An effort to memorialize the homestead of one of Oregon’s first Black farmers illuminates the land’s complicated history.
by Jaclyn Moyer via High Country News on June 1, 2023
Tenant farmers picking cotton in Mississippi circa 1890.

The Black Populist Movement Has Been Snuffed Out of the History Books

Often forgotten today, the black populists and their acts of cross-racial solidarity terrified the planter class, who responded with violence and Jim Crow laws.
by Karen Sieber via Jacobin on May 17, 2023
Black and white photo of an African American family near Southern Pines, N.C. North Carolina Southern Pines

The Black Family, Landownership, and Tobacco Culture

In the US, where less than one percent of the land is owned by black people, Black landownership has historically been a means to challenge economic oppression.
by Kiana Knight via Black Perspectives on November 14, 2022
William Barber III standing in front of Vera Brown Farm.

Rebuilding the Homestead

How Black landowners in eastern North Carolina are recovering generational wealth lost to industry encroachment.
by Cameron Oglesby via The Margin on October 25, 2022
Henry Holt, a farmer near Black River Falls, Wisconsin, in 1937, who was moved off land by the Resettlement Administration.

How the Government Helped White Americans Steal Black Farmland

There was once a thriving Black middle class based on farm ownership. But during the twentieth century, the USDA helped erase that source of wealth.
by Darrick Hamilton, Thomas W. Mitchell, Nathan Rosenberg, Dania Francis, Bryce Wilson Stucki via The New Republic on May 5, 2022
Photograph of a Black farmer, standing in a farm field.

The USDA Versus Black Farmers

Current attempts to correct historical discrimination by local and regional offices of the USDA have been met with charges of "reverse discrimination."
by Matthew Wills via JSTOR Daily on March 11, 2022
Illustration after American Gothic but in the context of the Black experience: African American farmers looking away, house foreclosed, lightning in the sky.

How Thousands of Black Farmers Were Forced Off Their Land

Black people own just 2 percent of farmland in the United States. A decades-long history of loan denials at the USDA is a major reason why.
by Kali Holloway via The Nation on November 1, 2021
Booker T. Whatley

The CSA’s Roots in Black History

Booker T. Whatley introduced the concept in the 1960s for struggling Black farmers, but his agricultural contributions have been excluded from the narrative.
by Shelby Vittek via Modern Farmer on May 17, 2021
Corey Lea, a beef and pork rancher in Murfreesboro, Tenn., who also advocates for Black farmers.
partner

Black Farmers Have Always Faced Injustice. Will the American Rescue Plan Help?

This plight dates back to the era of slavery.
by David W. Dangerfield via Made By History on April 1, 2021

The Great Land Robbery

The shameful story of how 1 million black families have been ripped from their farms.
by Vann R. Newkirk II via The Atlantic on August 12, 2019
partner

How African American Land Was Stolen in the 20th Century

Between 1910 and 1997, black farmers lost about 90% of the land they owned.
by Steve Hochstadt via HNN on July 30, 2019

How USDA Distorted Data to Conceal Decades of Discrimination Against Black Farmers

An investigation found that USDA promoted misleading historical data which ultimately cost black farmers land, money, and agency.
by Nathan Rosenberg, Bryce Wilson Strucki via The Counter on June 26, 2019

In Search of George Washington Carver’s True Legacy

The famed agriculturalist deserves to be known for much more than peanuts.
by Rachel Kaufman via Smithsonian on February 21, 2019
Monica M. White, left, pictured alongside her new book.

The History of Black Farmers Uniting Against Racism

A new book details the cooperative practices of Black farmers in the Deep South and Detroit who played a key role in the Civil Rights movement.
by Cynthia R. Greenlee, Monica M. White via Civil Eats on December 20, 2018
Enoch and Deborah Harris

Mementos of a Forgotten Frontier

The black pioneers who tried to start over out west.
by Anna-Lisa Cox via Lapham’s Quarterly on June 14, 2018
A black and white image of Black farmers on a road with farming vehicles.

Land Theft: The Alarming Racial Wealth Gap in America Today

Brea Baker on Black land ownership, historical injustice, and the hope for Black Americans to own more than one percent of the land.
by Brea Baker via Literary Hub on June 20, 2024
Detail from "the Book of Negroes," listing Arthur Bowler and his family, 1783.

Eight Clues

Recovering a life in fragments, Arthur Bowler in slavery and freedom.
by Jane Lancaster via Journal of the American Revolution on June 6, 2024
A young Black girl picking cotton.

Rings of Fire

Arsenic cycles through racism and empire in the Americas.
by Jayson Maurice Porter via Distillations on February 1, 2024
Old millhouse down a garden path.

Reclaiming a North Carolina Plantation

On a former plantation in Durham, a land conservancy and two determined sisters are pioneering a model for providing land to Black gardeners and farmers.
by Cynthia R. Greenlee via Garden & Gun on April 24, 2023
A group of white veteran students in 1945, beneficiaries of the GI Bill.

The Blindness of Colorblindness

Revisiting "When Affirmative Action Was White," nearly two decades on.
by Ira Katznelson via Boston Review on February 6, 2023
Dark painting of a storm

Reading the Horizon

Predicting a hurricane in nineteenth-century South Carolina.
by Caroline Grego via Lapham’s Quarterly on November 30, 2022
Brian (Bryan) Farm House, Gettysburg

Walking with Enslaved and Enslavers at Pickett’s Charge (and Retreat)

Today, it’s still nearly impossible to see the Black people whose presence, tramped down for a century and a half, is why this commemorative landscape exists.
by Scott Hancock via Muster on November 8, 2022
A Japanese mother and daughter, farmworkers in California, photographed in 1937 by Dorothea Lange

Whitewashing the Great Depression

How the preeminent photographic record of the period excluded people of color from the nation’s self-image.
by Sarah Boxer via The Atlantic on November 15, 2020

Marijuana Reform Should Focus On Inequality

When regulators dictate who grows a cash crop, they can spread the wealth—or help the rich get richer.
by Sarah Milov via The Atlantic on October 5, 2019

The Vexed Meaning of Equality in Gilded Age America

How three late 19th century equality movements failed to promote equality.
by Eric Foner via The Nation on September 24, 2019
Dilapidated boathouse

The Brothers Who Spent Eight Years in Jail for Refusing to Leave Their Family's Land

Their great-grandfather had bought the land a hundred years earlier, when he was a generation removed from slavery.
by Lizzie Presser via ProPublica on July 15, 2019

A Reparations Map for Farmers of Color May Help Right Historical Wrongs

In an effort to address centuries of systemic racism, a new online tool seeks to connect Black, brown, and Indigenous farmers with land and resources.
by Andrea King Collier via Civil Eats on June 4, 2018

The Massacre That Spelled the End of Unionized Farm Labor in the South for Decades

In 1887, African-American cane workers in Louisiana attempted to organize—and many paid with their lives.
by Calvin Schermerhorn via Smithsonian on November 21, 2017
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