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Black Farmers in America, 1865-2000: The Pursuit of Independent Farming and the Role of Cooperatives
By: United States Department of Agriculture For more than a century after the Civil War, deficient civil rights and various economic and social barriers were applied to maintaining a system where many blacks worked as farm operators with a limited and often total lack of opportunity to achieve ownership and operating independence. |
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Land & Power: Sustainable Agriculture and African Americans
Editors: Jeffrey L. Jordan, Edward Pennick, Walter A. Hill, Robert Zabawa A collection of essays detailing the historical experiences of Black farmers, from the 2007 Black Environmental Thought Conference. |
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Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression
By: Robin D. G. Kelley During the 1930s and 40s, Communists took on Alabama's repressive, racist police state to fight for economic justice, civil and political rights, and racial equality. The Alabama Communist Party was made up of working people without a Euro-American radical political tradition: devoutly religious and semiliterate black laborers and sharecroppers, and a handful of whites, including unemployed industrial workers, housewives, youth, and renegade liberals. |
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Harvest of Shame
Directed by: Edward R. Murrow Watch the entire original broadcast of one of the most celebrated documentaries of all time, 1960's "Harvest of Shame," in which Edward R. Murrow exposed the plight of America's farm workers. |
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Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry (novel)
By: Mildred D. Taylor Why is the land so important to Cassie's family? It takes the events of one turbulent year--the year of the night riders and the burnings, the year a white girl humiliates Cassie in public simply because she is black--to show Cassie that having a place of their own is the Logan family's lifeblood. It is the land that gives the Logans their courage and pride, for no matter how others may degrade them, the Logans possess something no one can take away |
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Black Farmers and Their Farms
By: Vera J. Banks Black farmers represented less than 2 percent of the Nation's 2.2 million farmers in 1982, down from 14 percent in 1920; however, they represented 61 percent of all minority farmers. Black-operated farms continue to be heavily concentrated in the South. By 1982, more than 60 percent of all black farmers were full owners of their farms, compared with only 16 percent in 1930. The average black-operated farm has only about 100 acres compared with the national average of 440 acres. |
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A Brief History of America’s Black Farmers from the Past to Present
By: Eric Meredith The Black community consistently faces high rates of hunger due to social, economic, and environmental challenges. To address the high rates of food insecurity amongst Black people, many people in the Black community are returning to their agricultural roots to ensure their neighbors have access to nutrient-rich foods. This post discusses the historical challenges of Black farmers and current opportunities to address food insecurity by controlling their food systems. |
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Black Farmers Struggle in Face of Structural Racism and Economic Headwinds
By: PBS NewsHour The number of self-identified Black farmers in the United States has dwindled over the last century, in part because of overt discrimination by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The agency is the economic backbone for most American farmers through its financing, insurance, research and education programs. Fred de Sam Lazaro reports on a push to help Black and other underserved farmers survive. |
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