Episode 2-

What Happened to Black Farmers?

African Americans have always had a complicated relationship with farming, despite being the backbone of America’s early agricultural industry, only 1% of farmers in the country are currently African American. On this episode we hear from African American Studies professor Dr. Valerie Grim, policy expert Eloris Speight, and renowned writer Natalie Baszile, as we explore the history of African Americans and agriculture, from enslavement and sharecropping, to the systemic challenges that Black Farmers still face today.

In this episode, Deb talks to:

• Dr. Valerie Grim, professor of African American and African Diaspora Studies at Indiana University Bloomington

• Eloris Speight, director of SDFR Policy Research Center at Alcorn State University

• Natalie Baszile, author of Queen Sugar

Episode highlights:

The Failures of Forty Acres and a Mule

• Dr. Grim says that ever since there’s been an “America,” African Americans have been a part of agricultural production in all parts of the United States. First, they worked as enslaved laborers until the Civil War, and then returned to the fields as sharecroppers during Reconstruction.

• Deb explains Special Field Orders No. 15, also known as the 40 Acres and a Mule policy, in which a large swath of land along the eastern seaboard was reserved for newly freed African Americans in the area. When President Andrew Johnson was sworn in after President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, however, he ordered that the land be returned to southern owners who swore oaths of loyalty to the Union.

• The Freedmen’s Bureau, Dr. Grim explains, was founded to assist African Americans in finding work and negotiating labor contracts. But, Deb says, because it never receive full support from the federal government, it dissolved in 1872. 

Sharecropping: A New Form of Slavery

• Sharecropping developed as a new system of attaining labor after the contract system failed, Dr. Grim outlines. In a sharecropping system, a landowner allows a laborer to work the land and retain a certain percentage of the profits from harvest yields. Landowners often exploited their power over their laborers by manufacturing debt, which prevented both their physical and economic mobility. 

• The Black Codes were a slew of laws that codified the sharecropping system as a method of controlling Black bodies. Peonage, crop lien, and vagrancy laws were passed so as to control Black labor and ensure a consistent workforce. Oftentimes, even these laws weren’t enough, Dr. Grim says, so landowners turned to prisons.

Convict Leasing and the Creation of Mass Incarceration

• Dr. Grim outlines how the convict lease system enabled the police to create a system of mass incarceration. Harsh penalties were given out to African Americans who committed minor, sometimes made-up crimes; upon incarceration, they would then be “leased” as laborers in the fields.

Broken Promises of Reparations

• Eloris describes themes she’s heard in conversation with Black farmers through her work at the Social Disadvantaged Farmers and Ranchers Research Center: stories about how the farmers lost their land, how they thought the outcome of the Pigford v. Glickman case would help them, that they were cautiously optimistic about the debt relief program passed in 2020, and that they are treated unfairly by USDA farm service agents.

• Deb explains the results of the Pigford v. Glickman settlement, in which aid was allocated to Black farmers but largely undistributed due to bureaucratic red tape.

• Through the American Rescue Plan in 2020, $4 billion was set aside by Congress to repair discriminatory practices by the USDA, such as the Homestead Acts of 1862 and 1866, are currently on hold due to injunctions in the courts.  

Black Land Ownership 

• Natalie speaks about the concept of heirs’ property, and the fact that many Black landowners did not have the same protections as white landowners. Often, when Black-owned land was passed down to descendents, the land would be divided, there were title issues, speculation ran rampant, etc. 

• A lot of issues in the current cultural conversation, such as Black health and Black income disparity, are tied to land and a lack of access to it, Natalie says. 

• She ends the podcast by remarking that renewed vigor for agriculture by a new generation of Black farmers is encouraging and inspiring.