Unwinding of Past Harm + Investment in Systems of Equity = Modern Vectors of Economic Liberation
"When communities come together to collectively own and manage assets, they can leverage their joint economic power to collectively assert their rights and exercise cultural and political power in a more impactful way than they would on their own. And, when neighbors build community wealth together they create safe and sovereign spaces that foster self-determination and build shared prosperity."
Nwamaka Agbo
Learn about each modern vector of economic liberation below
Envisioning an Equitable Future: a Spoken Word Series by K. Melchor Q. Hall
Summary of Efforts Toward Equity
Land has always been a source of wealth for white people; however, white people have made it nearly impossible for Black people to access and keep land. Using such tools as eminent domain and loopholes in heir's property laws, white people have found myriad ways to rob Black people of their land.
The concept of a Black Commons , or the creation of land parcels held in a trust in perpetuity for the benefit of the Black community, pushes back against the colonial legacy of land commoditization while creating a means of Black economic and political sovereignty. Lands stolen through government action such as eminent domain must be returned, as was the case with Bruce's Beach in California. Because much of Black land was taken through eminent domain for the creation of “public spaces''' like Central Park, Dr. Rashawn Rays of University of Maryland suggests that intervention is necessary to redistribute public lands for the private and collectivized use of African Americans is a form of reparations.
Kavon Ward of Where is My Land works toward land reparations.
Another source of Black Land loss has been through loopholes in Heir's Property Law. The Black Family Land Trusts’ WRAP strategy (Wealth Retention and Asset Protection) creates a model for black wealth retention and asset protection. The organization supports black families in unencumbering deeds and land titles for their own properties and then helps those families protect the land intergenerationally through estate and financial planning. On a national level, organizations like the Center for Heirs Property are advocating for the Heirs Property Act, adopted in 17 states, to end the forced partition sales affecting black landholding families. The WRAP strategy also includes use of legal innovations, like the placement of lands in trusts and conservation easements to secure land and subvert traditional forces of economic displacement.
Black-owned farmlands represent another major area of historic Black land loss. The barriers to achieving success that current and future Black farmers face are intensified by intersectional forms of discrimination. Black farmers therefore require specialized interventions that will help them to access economic incentives, access to capital for business investment, and take advantage of technological innovations. For instance, the Jubilee Justice Rice Project provides farmers with technology needed to grow new varieties of rice more efficiently and access to markets to distribute the rice.
Agencies like the USDA have been historically fraught with racism. To sustain the wellbeing of Black farmers, these agencies must have regular and robust oversight. The Justice for Black Farmer’s Act, is one step in this direction.
Quotes
“There's nothing you could do that is more entrepreneurial than farming. Everything is in your hands.” -Alexander Thompson, Thompson Prawn Farm: Preserving African-American Land Heritage
“At the core of everything we do, we want to drive consumers to land-based education and outreach, getting them onto the small family farms that really sustain those communities and allow that consumer to really build a respect and admiration for the work that goes into raising the food that they're enjoying at their kitchen table,” said Ashley. “Once we connect the farmer to the consumer and other markets, we want to continue bringing new people into the industry through our education and outreach. -Ashley Smith, co-founder of Black Soil: Our Better Nature : Farm Credit and Black Soil Kentucky Partner to Support Black Farmers
“We were watching the murders of Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and all of the other people we can name,” said Ashley Scott, one of the effort’s organizers, referring to Black victims of police violence killed last year. “My friend and I were just depressed and feeling like we needed to be able to do something to protect our husbands and sons.” They found a 96-acre (39-hectare) property for sale in central Georgia, and came up with a 10-year-plus timeline and a vision of using the land to build intergenerational wealth, something financial experts say is key to closing the racial wealth gap. The families purchased the property in August 2020, and after some social media and news coverage, “we went viral,” Scott, 34, a realtor in Atlanta, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a phone interview. “We had thousands of people reach out saying they wanted to move to Freedom.” Today, the group’s 19 founding Black families has amassed more than 500 acres in two parcels. Aiming to be a model for equity, energy efficiency, local food production and more, the Freedom project has drawn political support as an opportunity to build a community from the ground up.
ASHLEY SCOTT The Freedom Georgia Initiative
Land ownership today could look very different. The idea of collective ownership has a long history in the United States. Even during slavery, a piece of ground was granted by slave masters for enslaved African subsistence farming. The Jamaican social theorist Sylvia Wynter called this land “the plot.” The principles of collective land ownership evolved in post-slavery Black America.
How a Black Commons Could Help Build Communal Wealth - YES! Magazine (yesmagazine.org)
Metrics
“Under the bill, up to 32 million acres would move to Black ownership over a decade — nearly seven times the 4.7 million acres now in Black farms. A new USDA agency, the Equitable Land Access Service, would administer the program. The USDA would buy land from willing sellers at fair market value for use in the program. Up to 20,000 grants of 160 acres would be made annually through 2030. Recipients would be new or experienced Black farmers. Beginning farmers would be required to complete a training program.” - 'Justice' bill would transfer up to 32 million acres to Black farmers | Successful Farming
In their book From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty-First Century, William A. Darity and A. Kirsten Mullen lay out the calculations for the present-day value of the original land distribution reparations that were promised--but never made--to the formerly enslaved as one method of accounting for the wealth that was stolen from their descendants. Noting other scholars’ work, they explain that the price of land in the United States in 1865 was about ten dollars, and at least 40 million acres of land were allocated to be distributed based on the number of freedmen and female heads of household (approximately 4 million). At $10 per acre, the total value of land promised would have been $400 million in 1865. Darity and Mullen use three interest rates to increase earlier values at compound interest--4, 5, and 6 percent. Using a conservative 5 percent, the present value of that reparations land would be $733.2 billion. This does not take into consideration unfulfilled promises of the Southern Homestead Act (the provision of eighty acres of land to be sold to freedmen at $5 total), nor the potential for each of the freedmen to be granted 40 acres as an allocation, an allocation that “would have been equivalent to the average size of land grants given to white families under the Homestead Acts between 1868 and 1934.”
Based on the most conservative size of the plots of land that were to be delivered to the formerly enslaved, each recipient would receive payment of about $18,245 using a 5 percent interest rate. If forty acres were to have been allocated to each freedmen--amounts equivalent to the grants to Whites with the Homestead Acts--the present-day value using a 5 percent interest rate would be more like $2.9 trillion and payments per person would be approximately $74,500. Payments such as these could promote individual Black land ownership and wealth building.
Methods of Liberation
Land Reparations:
Pathways to reparations: land and healing through food justice
Example: California's Novel Attempt at Land Reparations | The New Yorker
Land Reparations & Indigenous Solidarity Toolkit (resourcegeneration.org)
Land Back: A Necessary Act of Reparations - Non Profit News | Nonprofit Quarterly
Democratize Land Ownership though community land trust & black commons
How a Black Commons Could Help Build Communal Wealth - YES! Magazine
Examples:
Earthseed Land Collective & WILDSEED & Kibilio (Refuge) Community and Farm
Support Black Farmers with Technical Aid & Innovation
Example: The Thompson Prawn Farm: “One recent success is the Thompson Prawn Farm located in Cedar Grove, North Carolina. Operated by Joe and Geraldine Thompson, this 80-acre farm has recently become home to a thriving aquaculture enterprise. As Alexander describes it, Joe Thompson raised tobacco for 30 years on the land, but following the tobacco buyout he had to discontinue his operation. He wanted to continue farming, so he reinvented himself as an aquaculture farmer raising prawns. In 2012 the BFLT purchased an agricultural conservation easement on 40 acres of the farm where the prawn ponds are located. Now Alexander says, “Joe makes the same or more money as before and it’s a whole lot easier. With proceeds from the easement, he was able to pay off debt and buy more land.” At the closing, Alexander says, Thompson “stood up with tears in his eyes and said he could lay his dead bones down at peace when the time comes knowing his land will always be used to feed people.”-Preserving African-American Land Heritage
Example: Jubilee Justice RICE Intensification Project
Support Black Farmers with Legal Aid
Estate Planning & Risk Management
Example: FARMS
Protect Heirs’ Property: “...the Uniform Partition of Heirs Property Act, enacted by a handful of states.74 This law requires that courts provide heirs with an opportunity to buy out the share of the person who wishes to sell and instructs courts to consider the noneconomic value of the property, including its cultural or historical significance, when deciding whether to order a partition sale. Finally, the law requires that the property be assessed by a neutral third party and publicly listed.” -Progressive Governance Can Turn the Tide for Black Farmers
Dr. Jennie L. Stephens talks with USDA Deputy Secretary Dr. Jewel Bronaugh
Commit to oversight and regular audits of the USDA
“Progressive governance demands transparency and accountability. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) should regularly audit the USDA to ensure that it is processing and approving loans to black farmers at the same rate as white farmers. Additionally, the USDA should create an online civil rights complaint database that will be jointly monitored by the GAO and periodically publish statistics about the speed at which the complaints are processed, the number of complaints found to have merit, and the number of pending complaints. Finally, Congress must ensure that the USDA’s Office of Civil Rights is sufficiently staffed to process these complaints.”- Progressive Governance Can Turn the Tide for Black Farmers
Timelines of Equity
2011
The Uniform Partition of Heirs Property Act (UPHPA) is made available for states to enact. The act was drafted to stabilize tenancy-in-common ownership for disadvantaged families because for many decades state partition laws have contributed to widespread and devastating involuntary land loss among families who owned tenancy-in-common properties. The three major reforms of the UPHPA were: buyout of cotenant that petitioned court for partition by sale, bolstering preference for partition in kind, and a revamped sales procedure designed to yield higher sales prices.
2020
The Justice for Black Farmers Act is introduced by senators Cory Booker and Elizabeth Warren. The Act would mandate new oversight to dispel racism within the USDA and devote $8 billion annually to buying farmland and granting it to Black farmers. John Boyd, Founder of the President of the National Black Farmers Association (NBFA) called “the most ambitious legislative proposal ever developed to address historic and ongoing discrimination against Black farmers.”
2021
March
President Biden includes $5 million in aid for socially disadvantaged farmers in COVID relief bill. element of President Biden’s massive stimulus relief package would pay billions of dollars to disadvantaged farmers — benefiting Black farmers in a way that some experts say no legislation has since the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
April
Congress advances slavery reparations bill H.R. 40. H.R. 40 would establish a federal commission to study the legacy of slavery in the United States and its ongoing harm and develop proposals for redress and repair, including reparations. The bill has been introduced at every congressional session since 1989 but has never before reached a committee vote, normally the first step toward passing legislation.
May
California Governor Gavin Newsom signs AB 3121, authored by then-Assemblymember Shirley Weber (D-San Diego), which established a nine-member task force to inform Californians about slavery and explore ways the state might provide reparations
August
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announces it is providing $67 million in competitive loans through the new Heirs’ Property Relending Program (HPRP), which aims to help agricultural producers and landowners resolve heirs’ land ownership and succession issues. Intermediary lenders — cooperatives, credit unions, and nonprofit organizations — can apply for loans up to $5 million at 1% interest.
September
California Gov. Gavin Newsom signs SB 796, authorizing the county to transfer land taken by eminent domain, back to the Bruce family after nearly 100 years. The land had been stolen after local Whites became angry about a Black family’s success and beach resort that served Black customers.
Changemakers
11 female farm influencers redefining rural entrepreneurship (southernstylesandsteeds.com)
National Farmers Union - Canada
Sustainable Economies Law Center (theselc.org)
Family Agriculture Resource Management Services
Northeast Farmers of Color Land Trust
National Black Food and Justice Alliance
Center for Heirs Property Preservation
Solidarity Through Land | Kingston Land Trust
Black Church Food Security Network
Little Jubba Central Maine Agrarian Commons
Kibilio (Refuge) Community and Farm
Home | Athens Reparations Action
Articles
Why the US Should Use Federal Lands to Pay Reparations for Slavery (businessinsider.com)
Repatriation and Reparations: Land-Based Indigenous and Black Futurity (seattleu.edu)
The Non-Tragedy of the Commons - Land Stewardship Project
An Enormous Land Transition is Underway. Here's How to Make it Just. | Civil Eats
Progressive Governance Can Turn the Tide for Black Farmers
Proposal for a "Black Commons" - Schumacher Center for New Economics
New Laws Help Rural Black Families Fight for Their Land | The Pew Charitable Trusts
Restoring Hope for Heirs Property Owners: The Uniform Partition of Heirs Property Act
Vermont Land Trust seeks to expand BIPOC farm land ownership in VT
Chef Adrian Lipscombe is buying land to preserve Black foodways
Preserving african american historic Places
Preserving Black Historical Resorts Is a Radical Act - YES! Magazine
'Justice' bill would transfer up to 32 million acres to Black farmers | Successful Farming
Black Soil Is Reshaping the Future of Black Farmers in Kentucky | Travel + Leisure
Books
Farming While Black: Soul Fire Farm's Practical Guide to Liberation on the Land by Leah Penniman
Freedom Farmers: Agricultural Resistance and the Black Freedom Movement by Monica M. White
The Commoner’s Catalog for Changemaking - Chelsea Green Publishing
Systematic Land Theft by Jillian Hishaw
Don’t Bet the Farm on Medicaid by Jillian Hishaw
Podcasts
A Black Family Got Their Beach Back — And Inspired Others to Fight Against Land Theft
Reparations, Bruce's Beach, and Black land loss.
Solving Heirs Property--Episode 2
Point of Origin: Farming While Black on Apple Podcasts
Pay Check Podcast Season 3: My Family's Land Shows How Black Wealth Is Won, Lost - Bloomberg
Proof Podcast | America's Test Kitchen (americastestkitchen.com)
Film/Video
A Gift of Justice: The Central Virginia Agrarian Commons
FEMA Changes Document Rules For Assistance To Families Living On Heirs’ Property
Black Farmers - If You Don’t Know, Now You Know | The Daily Show
The Gullah’s Battle to Keep Their Homes and Way of Life
Black Farmers in Search of Justice Film
The Freedom Georgia Initiative
Webinar: Farm Legacy and Estate Planning: Strategies for Risk, Resilience, and Culture
Dr. Jennie L. Stephens talks with USDA Deputy Secretary Dr. Jewel Bronaugh
Questions for Research and Reflection:
- How do all Americans benefit from programs designed to reduce Black land loss, e.g. the Heirs Act?
- How can diverse land ownership contribute to a more resilient food system?
- How can Black land restoration contribute to greater economic stability for Black people? What would be the benefit to white people?
- What are the benefits of democratized land ownership and the establishment of localized Black Commons?
Taking Action:
Consider your family's heritage and the areas your ancestors once lived. Consider how you might invest your time, resources and agency to benefit a community struggling with land loss:
- Contribute to an agency that aids Black families struggling with Heir's Property cases
- Contribute to a Black Land Trust
- Contribute to a Black Farming Cooperative
- If your ancestors' plantation lands are still in existence, consider working with descendant communities to place a monument to those who were enslaved there, restore a graveyard, etc.