By Demetrius Dillard
When President Andrew Johnson maliciously overturned the federal order to grant many newly freed Black families 40 acres and a mule, it seemed to be the start of a trend by the U.S. government of either denying or downright taking land from Black people.
While the Homestead Act of 1862 did give thousands of Black Americans access to their own land, the bill granted millions of acres to Whites. Not only did White America benefit economically from nearly 250 years of free labor through the enslavement of Black people, but were given extra capital to generate and sustain wealth: LAND.
Land has always been a powerful tool for wealth building and self-sufficiency. Land ownership is often the foundation of a community. Without land, no crops can be grown, no houses or other residential developments can be built, no banks or financial institutions can be established, no schools, hospitals, markets or otherwise could be built.
Today, Black people may hold more prestigious positions in corporate America and may be more educated than their ancestors from four or five generations ago, but one place where the Black community has regressed is that they own less land than their predecessors from the Reconstruction, Jim Crow and Civil Rights eras.
“The proportion of the United States under black ownership has actually shrunk over the last 100 years or so,” says an article by the Chicago Reporter.
“At their peak in 1910, African American farmers made up around 14% of all U.S. farmers, owning 16 million to 19 million acres of land. By 2012, black Americans represented just 1.6% of the farming community, owning 3.6 million acres of land. Another study shows a 98% decline in black farmers between 1920, and 1997. This contrasts sharply with an increase in acres owned by white farmers over the same period.”
Oh, how times have changed. Yes, racism might have been harsher in the mid-19th century, but in some Southern communities a slave could purchase his or her freedom and it was far easier to purchase a “plot” of land back then as opposed to now, one could argue.
“The lack of ownership is crucial to understanding the crippling economic disparity that has hollowed out the black middle class and continues to plague black America — making it harder to accrue wealth and pass it on to future generations,” says the Chicago Reporter article, which was written by Julian Agyeman and Kofi Boone last year.
“Land ownership today could look very different. The idea of collective ownership has a long history in the United States. Even during slavery, a piece of ground was granted by slave masters for enslaved African subsistence farming.”
Over the course of the 20th century, Black Americans have lost about 12 million acres of land, according to The Atlantic. This mass land dispossession, characterized as “theft” by Atlantic writer Vann R. Newkirk II in a 2019 documentary, has affected an estimated 98 percent of black farmers.
Well-documented discriminatory practices by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (i.e., denial of federal loans) led to numerous Black farmers being put out of work, losing countless acres of property, and quite frankly, is one of the contributing factors for the sharp decline in Black farmers over the past century or so.
A practice known as “land grabbing” usually involves seizing land in an unlawful manner. This often ruthless acquisition of property is facilitated by domestic and transnational companies, governmental agencies or individuals with power and prestige, and has functioned particularly to the detriment of Black people.
Through all the hardships of white supremacist land grabbing and other discriminatory practices, there remains a lot of hope for Black farmers, according to Ashley McNeil, communications assistant for The Corps Network.
McNeil’s 2018 blog highlighted a Black farmer and activist named Leah Penniman, one of many who are determined to empower their community through farming and land ownership.
Penniman is the founding co-director of Soul Fire Farm in Petersburg, N.Y., where a system has been developed to feed hundreds of community members in that area. In addition, the farm offers informative workshops, a youth program and much more.
“Even as African-Americans gained the right to own land, there were – and continue to be – institutional policies and practices that work against black farmers and landowners,” says McNeil’s piece. “In the modern day, however, farming has become a way for African-Americans to reclaim a piece of history and promote community health and healing.”
