By Jermaine Broadnax
Blacks have been practicing farming, for over one hundred thousand years. When speaking of America, there are two versions of black people, those who are Indigenous to America of recent history, and those who born directly from Africa. The Black indigenous people, most commonly known as the Black Indians have been partaking in farming in America since they got to the land. Once America became colonized by Europe after 1607, farming for blacks would change. Black Indians would use farming as a form of weapon and negotiation against the early pilgrims. Africans who landed in Virginia, became indentured servants, but later prisoners of war, then purchased their land, and even owned white slaves, until it was outlawed in the 1660’s.
While Britain was going through another “Dark age” in Virginia, the Dutch were getting busy in New York. Beating the English, to establishing a company created from slavery, stolen land. By 1635, the Dutch West Indies company hired overseer’s to to watch over the Africans working in the company. Once the Dutch finished their settlements, the need for slavery would diminish. So you have New York ending slavery around the same time slavery starts in Virginia and Boston with the Pequot wars in 1638. John Punch would be the first black slave for life in America in 1640.
By 1644, Africans who worked for the company received partial liberty, called half-freedom. They were given land on the outskirts of the Dutch colonies, because a buffer was needed to prevent attack from Native Americans. These African’s farmed their own lands, sold their produce, and kept the profits. These first Black farmers of New York, would eventually own a two-mile long strip of land. Which today is called “Canal Street”. These Black farmers created the first black community in Manhattan, where Washington Square is located today. The total area was more than 130 acres.
Meanwhile, in Virginia, the Powhatan, Pequot, King Phillip, & Bacon Rebellion wars created an animosity, for Free or Enslaved Blacks & Indigenous. Black farmers such as Anthony Johnson were pushed out of Virginia for being black, and relocated to Maryland. New They laws are enacted which say that people of African descent are hereditary slaves. At the same time Virginia gives more power to poor and rich whites, upgrading them into independent farmers and land holders.
After the Civil War the Black Exodus occurred. Close to 30,000 would settle down in Kansas. The trail of tears treaty in Florida, allowed Black Indigenous and Africans to settle in the state of Oklahoma. In the year, 1900 , black farmers owned 1.5 million acres, this would decline in 10 years. In the 1920s, cities like Atlanta, Birmingham, Houston, and Memphis experienced black population growth rates boosting it almost to 90 percent. These black businesses were able to be created, because of a lower cost of living, once blacks started to move in the hotspots of America.
Forty acres and a mule is a reference to the Southern Homestead Act. This law was supposed to grant 46,398,544.87 acres of land to Black farmers in Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and Arkansas . The government’s promise was broken after Abraham Lincoln was murdered. Andrew Johnson, overturned the order and the land was given back to its original slave masters. In addition, the black codes In the south, set it up, so that blacks were not able to claim the land. The Freedmen’s Bureau was switched from a narrative to give blacks free land In the south, into sharecropping, where the blacks got hustled out of their own granted land, and now have to work for their previous slave owners for a percentage. Whites in the south would threaten blacks with military forces to dispel any blacks over land disputes. Look at the Gullah people that is land that was given to them after the civil war, and they never left, and the culture is still the same.
Black farmers made up 14% in 1910. In 1960, 11% of farmers in America were Black. By 1990 only 1.5 % of farmers in America were Black. In 1999, the USDA settled the class action lawsuit and paid more than $1 billion to Black farmers, who claimed they were unfairly denied loans and other government assistance. Fast forward to 2021, Black farmers are an endangered species. Only 50,000 Black farmers exist in America today. During 1920 there was 13,000 Black farmers in Florida. Today, that number is 2,000. If America, has about 25 states catered for farming, 2000 per state sounds about right. Why do they not want Black farmers to have any farm ground? Farm ground gives you power.
