First-person essays and interviews with unique perspectives on complicated issues.
Growing up, I never imagined living on a farm and working the land as a possible future.
As a poor Black kid in an urban community, farming was a foreign concept. So much of what I saw about farming felt overwhelmingly white, with little mention of Black farmers and their communities.
My parents and others around me would talk about wanting to go down South and living on the land. It sounded more like a dream than a possible reality. The rare coverage about Black farmers was primarily limited to loss and discrimination. Broken promises combined with programs that relied upon white state and local decision-makers stacked the deck against newly independent Black people in the United States. Federal Homestead Acts largely benefited white landowners providing highly subsidized opportunities for ownership.