Photo credit: LC-USF33-012148-M3. Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA/OWI Collection. Photo by Russell Lee.
Notes
1Isabel Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (New York: Knopf Doubleday, 2011).
2Will Allen, The Good Food Revolution: Growing Healthy Food, People, and Communities (New York: Gotham Books, 2012).
3John J. Green, Eleanor M. Green, and Anna M. Kleiner, “From the Past to the Present: Agricultural Development and Black Farmers in the American South,” in Cultivating Food Justice: Race, Class, and Sustainability, ed. Alison Hope Alkon and Julian Agyeman (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011), 47–64.
4On how poor whites sometimes lose white privileges, see Matt Wray, Not Quite White: White Trash and the Boundaries of Whiteness (Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press, 2006).
5Pete Daniel, Dispossession: Discrimination Against African American Farmers in the Age of Civil Rights (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2013), 194. For treatment on the impact of New Deal programs and especially the power of county ASCS committees, see Pete Daniel, “The Legal Basis of Agrarian Capitalism: The South Since 1933,” in Race and Class in the American South Since 1890, ed. Melvyn Stokes and Rick Halpern (Oxford: Berg, 1994), 79–101.
6Daniel, Dispossession, 6.
7On the creation of committees, see Gladys L. Baker, Wayne D. Rasmussen, Vivian Wiser, and Jane M. Porter, Century of Service: The First 100 Years of the United States Department of Agriculture (Washington, DC: US Department of Agriculture, 1963), 159–61. On how committees came to represent the white elite, see Robert Earl Martin, “Negro-White Participation in the A.A.A. Cotton and Tobacco Referenda in North and South Carolina: A Study in Differential Voting and Attitudes in Selected Areas” (PhD diss., Univ. of Chicago, 1947), 242ff.
8Memorandum to Paul W. Bruton, n.d.; Margaret S. Bennett, memo to Paul W. Bruton, March 7, 1934, Cotton, Landlord-Tenant, Records of the Secretary of Agriculture, Record Group 16, National Archives and Records Administration. Hereafter cited SOA, RG 16, NARA.
9William R. Amberson to Paul Appleby, November 21, 29, 1934, Cotton, Landlord-Tenant, SOA, RG 16, NARA.
10See A. B. Book, “A Note on the Legal Status of Share-Tenants and Share-Croppers in the South,” Law and Contemporary Problems 4 (1937): 542–45.
11Jackson v. Jefferson et al., 158 So. 486–87.
12Dulaney et al. v. Balls et al., 102 S.W. 88–90.
13Wilmer Mills to Henry A. Wallace, March 28, 1935; C. H. Alvord to Mills, April 4, 1935, AAA, Rice, Records of the Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service, RG 145, NARA. Hereafter cited ASCS, RG 145, NARA.
14Linda Flowers, Throwed Away: Failures of Progress in Eastern North Carolina (Knoxville, TN: Univ. of Tennessee Press, 1992), 59.
15See especially Fulford v. Forman, 245 F.2d 149.
16David Westfall, “Agricultural Allotments as Property,” Harvard Law Review 79 (1966): 1188–89.
17See Brainerd S. Parrish, “Comment. Cotton Allotments: Another New Property,” Texas Law Review 45 (1967): 734–53; Fulford v. Forman, 245 F.2d 145, 151, 152n20.
18Daniel, Dispossession, 66; “The Federal Agricultural Stabilization Program and the Negro,” Columbia Law Review 67 (1967): 1121–36.
19D. P. Trent, memorandum for C. C. Davis, December 28, 1934, AAA, Production Control Program, Landlord-Tenant, 1933–38, ASCS, RG 145, NARA.
20Ward Sinclair, “Lying Laid Down the Law, but Is the USDA Enforcing It?” Washington Post, September 21, 1987, A13.
21Pete Daniel, Breaking the Land: The Transformation of Cotton, Tobacco, and Rice Cultures Since 1880 (Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1985), 65; see also G. L. Crawford to Boswell Stevens, February 12, 1953, Boswell Stevens Papers, subject files, general, Mississippi Farm Bureau Federation, Mitchell Memorial Library, Mississippi State University.
22For insights on possibilities for meaningful reform, see Jess Gilbert, Planning Democracy: Agrarian Intellectuals and the Intended New Deal (New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press, 2016), and Sarah T. Phillips, This Land, This Nation: Conservation, Rural America, and the New Deal (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2007).
23Medgar Evers and Mildred Bond to Gloster B. Current, January 23, 1956, Mississippi Pressures, Relief Fund, 1956–63, NAACP III, A 233, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Papers, Manuscripts Division, Library of Congress.
24Equal Opportunity in Farm Programs: An Appraisal of Services Rendered by Agencies of the United States Department of Agriculture (Washington, DC: US Commission on Civil Rights, 1965), 93; The Decline of Black Farming in America: A Report of the United States Commission on Civil Rights (Washington, DC: US Commission on Civil Rights, February 1982).
25Daniel, Dispossession, 4–5.
26Daniel, Dispossession, 89–97.
27Daniel, Dispossession, 61.
28Daniel, Dispossession, 82.
29Daniel, Dispossession, 90.
30Daniel, Dispossession, 100. The 1964 COFO effort to win ASCS seats is covered on pages 58–99.
31Daniel, Dispossession, 133.
32Daniel, Dispossession, 58–132.
33Daniel, Breaking the Land, 9–10; P. O. Davis to H. H. Williamson, June 16, 1950, Alabama Cooperative Extension Service (ACES) Papers, Record Group 71, box 58, Archives and Manuscripts Department, Auburn University. Hereafter cited ACES Papers, Auburn.
34See, for example, Carmen V. Harris, “The South Carolina Home in Black and White: Race, Gender, and Power in Home Demonstration Work, Agricultural History 91 (Summer 2019): 477–501; Daniel, Dispossession, 156–215.
35John B. Jordan to J. R. Otis, February 29, 1948, box 358, ACES Papers, Auburn.
36Clipping, Pittsburgh Courier, December 15, 22, 1951, General Correspondence, 1940–55, box 3, Negroes, SOA, RG 16, NARA. On 4-H clubs, see Gabriel N. Rosenberg, The 4-H Harvest: Sexuality and the State in Rural America (Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 2016).
37Daniel, Dispossession, 205–10.
38Ibid., 156–95; Willie L. Strain v. Harry M. Philpott, 331 F. Supp. 836 (1971).
39Greta de Jong, You Can’t Eat Freedom: Southerners and Social Justice After the Civil Rights Movement (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2016).
40Joe Henry Thomas to Fay Bennett, January 25, 1963, box 41, Alabama Appeals for Help, folder 25, National Sharecropper Fund Papers, Walter Reuther Library, Wayne State University. Hereafter cited NSF Papers.
41James Franklin Estes to Dwight D. Eisenhower, April 6, 1960; K. L. Scott to E. Frederick Morrow, May 12, 1960; H. C. Smith to Scott, June 6, 1960; Scott to Morrow, June 29, 1960, farm credit, loans, box 339, SOA, RG 16, NARA.
42Richard M. Shapiro and Donald S. Safford, interview with Fred Amica, Marshville, Georgia, March 9, 1964, box 1, CFLID, US Commission on Civil Rights Papers, RG 452, NARA.
43Ira Kaye to Fay Bennett, February 9, December 18, 1962; January 7, March 4, 1963, box 46, folder 44, NSF Papers.
44T. T. Williams, interview with John S. Currie, Jackson, Mississippi, May 13, 1964, box 46, folder 44, NSF Papers.
45William Seabron to J. William Howell, October 29, 1965, box 4254, Civil Rights, GC, 1906–76, SOA, RG 16, NARA.
46Statement of Cato Lee, Lowndsboro, Alabama, n.d., box 57, Alabama, folder 35, NSF Papers.
47Orzell Billingsley Jr. and Harvey Burg to Robert C. Bamberg, July 20, 1965; “The Substance of Reverend McShan’s Testimony Offered to Alabama State Advisory Committee of the US Commission on Civil Rights,” July 10, 1965, box 4255, Civil Rights, GC 1906–76, SOA, RG 16, NARA.
48Daniel, Dispossession, 216–45.
49On female farmers, see Judith Z. Kalbacher, “A Profile of Female Farmers in America,” Economic Research Service, USDA, Rural Development Research Report Number 45, January 1985; Daniel, Dispossession, 246–64.
50Daniel, Dispossession, 92.
51Campbell Gibson and Kay Jung, “Historical Census Statistics on Population Totals by Race, 1790 to 1990, and by Hispanic Origin, 1970 to 1990, for Large Cities and Other Urban Places in the United States,” working paper no. 76 (Washington, DC: US Census Bureau, 2005).
52National Agricultural Statistics Service, selected years 1920, 1997 (Washington, DC: US Department of Agriculture).
53Joe Brooks, former president of the Emergency Land Fund, cited in Vann R. Newkirk II, “The Great Land Robbery,” Atlantic Monthly, September 2019,https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/09/this-land-was-our-land/594742.
54Census of Agriculture (Washington, DC: National Agricultural Statistics Service, 2007).
55Darrick Hamilton and Dania V. Francis, cited in “The Grand Land Robbery.”
56National Agricultural Statistics Service.
57Pigford v. Glickman, 182 Federal Rules Decision 341 (US District Court for the District of Columbia, 1998).
58Settlement Agreement, In re Black Farmers Discrimination Litigation, No. 08-mc-0511 (February 18, 2010, revised and executed as of May 13, 2011), available at https://www.blackfarmercase.com//Documents/SettlementAgreement.pdf.
59In recent years, I have been labeled as being “black and green,” as if being close to the land and caring for the natural world were a white thing.
60My sister, Marsha, died in 1952 because the segregated hospital did not provide the proper care for her pneumonia. Our mother experienced a “nervous breakdown” and spent time on the farm with her mother to heal from the trauma of losing her only daughter. Inspired by my mother’s healing, I have spent many years providing therapeutic horticulture programs to groups that serve “women at risk,” as outlined in these articles: “Greenhouse 17 Combines Gardening, Business and Healing for Survivors of Domestic Violence,” www.kentucky.com/living/home-garden/article44613195.html; and “From Family’s Farmland, Jim Embry Brought Knowledge, Passion to Lexington’s Community Gardens,” www.kentucky.com/living/home-garden/article44614398.html.
61Our family members who are great storytellers in the African griot style assembled this oral family history into a written document for our first Ballew Broaddus Simpson Noland Family Reunion in 1942. As we have done additional research in various archives, we have simply corroborated our oral historians.
62This region of Kentucky, which sits at the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains and is part of the Kentucky River watershed, was the ancestral homeland of the Shawnee, Cherokee, Chickasaw, and other native peoples for thousands of years before the colonial period.
63We retrieved from the National Archives the military records of Jackson and George, which contained not only military service records but also names and birthdates of their children.
64The seven minor children were Ann, Mary, Harriett, Sophia, Lyman, Don Buel (DB), and Jackson.
65We always wondered why our great-grandfather had such a long name. As I was doing research for articles in the Encyclopedia of Northern Kentucky, I read that Union Army General Don Carlos Buell served in Kentucky and was known for not confiscating and destroying property of the farms in the South and for court-martialing pillagers. DB’s owner, George Ballew, was evidently pleased with the general’s policies and most likely named the next born on his farm after General Buell.
66“Lifting as we climb” was the founding principle of the National Association of Colored Women, organized in 1896 with chapters in Kentucky. Core members, who were educators, entrepreneurs, and social activists, believed that by elevating their status as community organizers and leaders, black women could improve the public image of black women, bolster racial pride, and elevate the status of their entire communities.
67Books by such authors as Monica White (Freedom Farmers) and Jessica Gordon Nembhard (Collective Courage) describe these intentional efforts of building community through farm cooperatives, mutual-aid societies, and other forms of solidarity and collective action.
68The bulletins were published between 1898 and 1943; see https://www.tuskegee.edu/support-tu/george-washington-carver/carver-bulletins.
69The Daily Register, Richmond, Kentucky, June 30, 1920.
70Monica White, Freedom Farmers: Agricultural Resistance and the Black Freedom Movement (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2018).
71I met Jimmy and Grace Lee Boggs in 1974, maintained a close personal and organizational relationship with them over the years, served as the Boggs Center board chair for six years, and moved to Detroit in 2000 to serve as its first director. See Boggscenter.org. See also Curt Guyette, “Down a Green Path,” Detroit Metro Times, October 31, 2001.
72Frances Korten and Roberto Vargas, Movement Building for Transformational Change (Bainbridge Island, WA: Positive Futures Network, 2006). These retreats included such luminaries as Vincent and Rosemarie Harding, Danny Glover, Belvie Rooks, Tom Goldtooth, Drew Dillinger, Joanna Macy, and Fran and David Korten.
73Thomas Berry, The Great Work (New York: Three Rivers Press, 1999).
74I explore this more in my article “Transforming the Heart of Agriculture,” Biodynamics Association Journal (Fall 2018): 8–13. Leah Penniman shares a similar framework in “Movement Building,” chapter 15 in Farming While Black: Soul Fire Farm’s Practical Guide to Liberation on the Land (White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green, 2018).
75“Indian Education for All,” Montana Office of Public Instruction website, https://opi.mt.gov/Educators/Teaching-Learning/Indian-Education-for-All.
76“About Us,” Slow Food, https://www.slowfood.com/our-network/indigenous/about-us.
77Through the lens of quantum science and spirituality, Barbara Holmes dissects white supremacy, the cult of whiteness, and the acceptance of reason/logic and western scientific methods as superior to intuitive indigenous practices for obtaining knowledge. Barbara Holmes, Race and the Cosmos: An Invitation to View the World Differently (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press, 2002).
78George W. Carver, “Nature Study and Garden for Rural Schools,” Bulletin of the Tuskegee Agricultural Experiment Station, no. 18 (1898): 3.
79Anthony S. Parent Jr., Foul Means: The Formation of a Slave Society in Virginia, 1660–1740 (Chapel Hill and London: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2003).