Putting black land loss in its proper context

I just posted the following to the gofundme.com site. I think it is important enough to repost here.

Thanks to the authors for allowing this.

The following excerpt from the pens of Drs. Spencer Wood and Cheryl Ragar and their article, "Grass Tops Democracy: Institutional Discrimination in the Civil Rights Violations of Black Farmers" (2012), captures the importance of land for the Black community.

The Grant place has its own conflicted history. Stepping out of Gary’s front door and looking east, you see, with a little imagination, a once-thriving agricultural enterprise surrounding Matthew and Florenza’s (deceased 2001) house. The house, now occupied by Evangeline, Gary’s sister and eldest daughter of the family, is a “project house” built around 1935, during the New Deal Resettlement Administration’s experiment in land reform and active involvement in the area. The machinery, in sheds filled with the trappings of farm life, sits unattended as do the out buildings and garden. A glance northwest toward the timeless Roanoke reveals an innocuous brushy wood lying in the middle of a farm field, unkempt and untilled. The indentations scattered throughout the wood are the sunken graves of the former enslaved who once worked the plantation that has since been partitioned to yield part of the Grant farm.

The cemetery of the enslaved stands as a poignant reminder of the area’s slave-holding past, connecting the struggles of the Grant family to a much larger and more inimical tradition of racism and racial inequality. The Grant family farm stands, listing for the time being, in staunch defiance of the persistent mechanisms used to maintain racial inequality. It represents emancipation, equality, and opportunity. Sharing physical and cultural space along a continuum from bondage to freedom the farm and cemetery symbolically encapsulate the colonial origins of global racism and nearly five hundred years of struggle.

Black Land Loss Summit: Howard University, February 20 and 21

Willie still farms on a place his grandfather purchased years ago. His modest single-wide sits beneath a beautiful oak tree whose limb stretches across the sandy loam road named for his deceased wife. His candor and gift of hospitality caught me off guard, as did his stories of how he almost lost his land.

It was a "ball and chain," he said, the practicalities and the humiliation of working under a supervised account, something that the white farmers did not have to do. He could not buy used equipment that would serve him well. He had to buy what the supervisor told him to buy. He got poor advice from an agent he trusted and lost money on his corn crop and pig farm operation.

While other farmers were getting their farm loan operating money in December, he would get his in April or May. That was too late to lease the good land, purchase the best seeds, get fertilizer into the soil. While his crops were just beginning to break through the dirt, his neighbors' crops were maturing. "My darkest days were when I would get a letter in the mail saying they were going to foreclose on me."

To supplement the family income, he had to drive hours away from the farm. His children grew up without him. His wife had health problems. She was diagnosed with asthma. She died from congestive heart failure. All, Willie says because he could not afford good medical care.

He came very close to losing his land, the land his family owned for generations. He prevailed under Pigford I. He barely kept his land.

His story is deep with themes of struggle and resilience. The stories left me stunned.

"My name is written in the land," he said. His story is written on my heart. I am committed to telling his story and stories of other farmers in places and spaces where they cannot go.

The stories must be told.

You will find more information at: http://www.gofundme.com/jgaaq4

Would appreciate your support in getting black farmers to the summit at Howard University on the 20 and 21st, Washington, DC.