Volume III, Issue I Available for Pre-order Now
“If we don’t do anything about land, the very thing that connects us with freedom, connects us with our civil rights, our foodways, our family life… If we lose all of that then what is there? Why struggle? Land must be re-centered in our struggle because it connects us to everything.” - Savi Horne, Land Loss Prevention Project and NBFJA Leadership Team Co-Chair
Founded February 4, 2015, the National Black Food and Justice Alliance (NBFJA) is a coalition of Black-led organizations organizing for Black self-determination towards Black food sovereignty and liberation. We recognize the first nations of this land as we stand in solidarity with their struggle today towards land reclamation, rematriation, and sovereignty. Colonialism in the U.S. enforced violence of all sorts, codified it via laws, policies and supreme court decisions, resulting in the forceful removal of Indigenous people from their communities, culture, foodways, and life as they knew. This series of acts, “detribalization” and war displaced communities, undermined tribal governance, communal land stewardship, and privatized land holdings, making them susceptible to theft or legal loss. Indigenous people would be forced away from an estimated 98.9 percent[1] of this land over time.
The parceling of land, enclosure, commodification, and subsequent violence around land would also affect many other communities of color, including and especially Black people. Africans, who were often agricultural experts and also Indigenous in their own lands, endured brutal enslavement, dehumanization, and forced labor in order to grow an economy that excluded them. Land and labor would be the heart and lungs of a growing economy rooted in racialized, anti-Black exploitation and Indigenous forced removal. And yet, land would always remain a constant source of hope, instrumental in our freedom. In 1865, 20 Black leaders gathered in Savannah, Georgia following the civil war after the heinous Ebenezer Creek Massacre which left thousands of Black people to drown[2]. The leaders were asked what they wanted following the civil war and this heinous massacre. Their response: land.
General William T. Sherman’s Special Field Order No. 15 - “40 acres and a mule” was subsequently promised to Black people (securing almost 400,000 acres in 40 acre parcels). The promise was later rescinded by Andrew Johnson.
Despite false promises, exploitation, black codes (confining Black people’s ability to move around, leading to what we now know as the prison industrial complex), Black people were still able to scrape, save and find a way to secure land. At its height in 1920, Black people were stewarding approximately 15 million acres–increasing the means to feed their communities, earn income for their families and pass on generational sustainability.
By the end of the Great Depression of the 1930’s, the total Black land steward population was drastically reduced by 50 percent. Ironically enough, during the Civil Rights and Black Power movements, Black land ownership drastically fell to about six million acres.[3] There are many reasons for this catastrophic loss of land–theft and intimidation, including the Great Migration, and discriminatory practices by government departments and agencies that prevented successful farming.
Another major factor driving land loss to this day is the tenure system known as heirs’ property, whereby all the descendants of a land owner with no will have equal rights to the land, inheriting a fraction of the property. In practical terms, this often meant that while one or more descendants lived on and worked the land, they did not have clear title to the land, making it impossible to obtain loans or, up until recently, even a USDA farm number. Furthermore, developers could research which land was under this system and trick family members into selling their fractionated interest in the property and then forcing a sale. By some estimates, 40 to 60 percent of Black owned land is heirs’ property and thus vulnerable to loss.
The period of 1978-2007, showed a 67 percent decline in Black landownership in less than 30 years. This alarming decline was three times that of white farmers for the same period. Today the total estimated Black land acreage is 4.7 million, with the total loss over the years estimated to be worth approximately $326 billion[4].
As Black people fought for the right to vote, the blowback would often include violence and a removal from their land. In response, leaders from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) helped to establish the country’s first community land trust, New Communities, to pool resources, provide housing and food and take care of each other’s basic needs. Other organizations and efforts emerged such as The Emergency Land Fund, established by Black land rights activists in 1973, to address land loss issues stemming from tax sales, foreclosure sales, heirs property sales, and land grabs throughout the rural south. The Emergency Land Fund would later merge with the Federation of Southern Cooperatives, still very much actively leading the fight today.
According to scholar Dr. Monica White, “In the absence of having what we need, Black people create our own.” As late as the 1970’s through the early 1980’s Black folk, most notably members of the New Communities community land trust, were still seeking freedom to establish their own communities on the land. After enduring white terrorism and eventually succumbing to racist financial discrimination, they would eventually join a long list of plaintiffs against the USDA who would eventually win a lawsuit, Pigford vs. Glickman, proving USDA’s systematic, race based discrimination against Black farmers and land stewards (1998 and then 2008 via the 2008 farm bill). To note, Indigenous farmers later filed and also won a lawsuit against the USDA (Keepseagle vs. Vilsack) in 2010.
While the Pigford settlement was a victory, there are important major losses to note. Black farmers remain straddled with debt from the many years they faced (and continue to face) discrimination by the USDA before and after the period covered by the lawsuit. Still today. Black farmers never recovered the land lost during that time. Still today.
Additionally, the settlement was taxed so heavily, it reduced the overall value of the awarded amount. Because of this (and so much more), we join others in the field to continue the work on policy among many other strategies to help Black farmers recover the means to steward land and feed their communities.
From Fannie Lou Hamer’s Freedom Farm in Mississippi, to the New African Independence Movement’s fight to “Free the Land,” and the movement to fight for reparations, our people have always fought back while continuing to create our own solutions. Today, there is a beautiful surge of energy continuing the reclamation of our land based heritage, identity and cultures. Some of those efforts leading to reclamation, retention, and resistance around land are highlighted in this special land issue of the Land, Food, and Freedom Journal. Black people in rural, urban, and even peri-urban spaces are all working to protect, grow, and create the means for our people to come back to the land.
NBFJA acknowledges contradictions in both the process and colonial language associated with recovering “land ownership”; understanding that the privatization, commodification, and parceling of land is deeply problematic. We argue that domination and control over land is inextricably linked to oppression and dominion over our bodies and labor therefore we stand in solidarity with many Indigenous communities worldwide who proclaim that land is our relative and not for sale. However, we also understand for many Black people, land is a means for the acquisition of “generational wealth” and above all, a medium of stability for families, so we use the language for accuracy (historically and contemporary demands). But we recognize that our freedom must be on a broader project to decommodify land–in solidarity with a worldwide movement–and fight for land reform, return to rematriation, and focus on freeing the land.
By any means necessary.
