Protect Black Land Stewards
Co-Authored by: Amanda Everich & The National Black Food & Justice Alliance
Edited by: Onyx Ramírez
This blog post contains the personal opinions and reflections of the author and is not representative of the voice of the organization.
Revolution is based on land. Land is the basis of all independence. Land is the basis of freedom, justice, and equality.
- Malcolm X, Excerpt from “Message to the Grassroots,” 1963
Co-Authored by Amanda Everich, Community-led Investment Committee Facilitator at Black Farmer Fund & LeeAnn Morrisette from the National Black Food & Justice Alliance
In the United States, Black land ownership peaked in 1910 with over 16 million acres across the country. This was 16 million acres for Black people to live, work, create, connect, and build. As of today, Black land owners have been dispossessed of 90% of that land, and Black farmers only constitute a mere 1% of farmers across the country. Here, we’ll share the history and strides toward reclamation.
It is no secret that the history of this country is steeped in harmful practices that forcefully create restrictions on how Black people occupy spaces, let alone own and interact with the land. The violence of enslavement and exploitation of sharecropping, coupled with the racial and ethnic segregation of Jim Crow, is the bedrock of the racist and classist strategies of colonialism. Along with redlining and the brutality of the prison industrial complex (the New Jim Crow), these systems of oppression have incapacitated how Black people build relationships with themselves, each other, and the land for hundreds of years. These deeply rooted systems of oppression have been passed down through generations-taking different forms but exacerbating the same harms.
The unwritten history of the United States shows us how Black people, alongside the stewardship, knowledge, and wisdom of Indigenous nations, have worked with this land and built the foundations of our food systems but have been restricted from fully experiencing the benefits and rights of these contributions. From Fannie Lou Hamer’s Freedom Farm Cooperative, Booker T. Whatley’s CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) model, George Washington Carver’s many agricultural inventions and regenerative farming practices, and The Black Panthers Free Breakfast Program, Black land stewards, activists, and countless unseen community members have created essential resources of care for people and the land while dealing with systems set up against them. There has never been a just restitution for the impact that this subjugation and massive extraction of wealth has had on the Black community.
After the Civil War and Reconstruction Era, states across the Antebellum South passed the Black Codes, harsh laws rooted in the codes of enslavement that were later adapted into the Jim Crow laws. These codes controlled the way of life, including access, activities, and behavior of Black people. The idea and remnants of these codes are still felt and used today to harass and violate Black people’s connection to agency, space, and land.
“To steward land with liberation is to be connected to the spaces we inhabit; it is to be grounded in a process of exploration and learning about living with the ecosystems and elements around us. The land holds ancestors, lessons, culture, memories, stories, and nourishment.”
There are still stories of Black farmers being harassed off their land, from people threatening or acting against their safety with violence; to obstructing access to roads, killing livestock, or damaging equipment. Nothing could be more true for the Mallery family, owners of Freedom Acres Ranch in Yoder, Colorado, whose public demand for justice after being victims of racially biased policing and harassment from neighbors garnered national media attention in January of this year. The Black farming family operating on over 1000 acres is feeling the brunt of oppressive racial violence. Not only have many of their animals been slaughtered and property destroyed by locals, but they have also been characterized as criminals. Despite their record of pleas for support from local law officials to intervene as neighbors have attempted to sabotage their farming operations through vandalism and physical force while arresting and charging them for felony charges of stalking. Sadly, this story is one of many we have seen and heard in our work with Black farmers. Whether through acts of domestic terrorism or institutionalized racism, Black farmers are in the fight of their lives to preserve not only their land and livelihood but also their legacies. Black farmers must be protected by any means necessary.
This was one of the aims of establishing the National Black Food and Justice Alliance, a coalition of Black food justice organizations and farmers working collectively toward Black food sovereignty and land justice. With the loss of Black land and Black farmers, many of our communities have lost their foodways which is evident by the horrific and racialized statistics around food access within this country. In contributing to the drafting of the Justice for Black Farmers Act, they seek to help Black farmers preserve their land; and in consideration of the stark land loss, regain land through land grants as well as other institutional programs such as the creation of a farm conservation corp and more accountability to finally put an end to discrimination within the USDA.
It is also important to stand together for our community. Only we can fully support the needs of our community because only we can understand them. Black Farmer Fund is an example of what the vision for the future of community care can look like. Black Farmer Fund’s initiation of a $20 M integrated capital fund seeks to provide Black farmers and food business owners in the Northeast with the capital, technical assistance, and community connections necessary to grow their businesses and feed their communities. By providing access to capital and putting the decision-making power in the hands of the community through our Community-led investment Committee, Black Farmer Fund is empowering Black food actors to lead the change in our broken food system and creating spaces where we can exchange ancestral knowledge and traditions on the land which may have been lost through this massive displacement.
It’s crucial for us to learn about this history of violation against Black peoples’ connection to the land so that together we can create reparative futures that can correct the injustices and protect Black farmers from these racist systems. We come from the land. The empowerment to know this and have agency in caring for this reciprocal relationship is both a right and a sacred way of being that we should all have access to experience.
To steward land with liberation is to be connected to the spaces we inhabit; it is to be grounded in a process of exploration and learning about living with the ecosystems and elements around us. The land holds ancestors, lessons, culture, memories, stories, and nourishment. This is a right that must be protected for Black farmers for the preservation of our culture and for the enactment of our own self-determination. Along with the many Indigenous nations and communities that lived here before colonization and continue to live here, with many taken through violence or displaced along the way, Black land stewards deserve the space, resources, and safety needed to rebuild their relationship with the land.
Looking back to the past, we can see the repetition of oppressive tactics against Black farmers to sustain the hunger of white supremacist greed. We can also learn from the vision, strength, and movement toward building reparative frameworks for the future from our ancestors and the land stewards around us now that are taking care of the land and food systems that hold us all. We must learn from the past and care for the present to ensure these revolutionary futures come into being.
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