White People Own 98 Percent of Rural Land. Young Black Farmers Want to Reclaim Their Share.

Mother Jones ^ | June 27, 2020 | Tom Philpott

[Trump20162020]

Innovations by Black farmers remain at the core of sustainable agriculture today.

Black people have largely been expelled from the US agricultural landscape. In 1920, nearly a million Black farmers worked on 41.4 million acres of land, making up a seventh of farm owners. Today, only about 49,000 of them remain, making up just 1.4 percent of the nation’s farm owners, and tending a scant 4.7 million acres—a nearly 90 percent loss.

This didn’t happen by accident. Since Emancipation, Black farmers have had to fight for a share of this country’s fertile ground, due to a history of racist policies and land theft. But modern sustainable agriculture owes much to Black agriculturalists, explained Leah Penniman, co-director of Soul Fire Farm in upstate New York and author of Farming While Black, on a recent episode of Bite.

[Jane Long]

Buzz off.

Get a job and buy your own d@mn land....like the majority of the other landowners have done.

Loafers.

[John Milner]

Waiting for Mother Jones to do some “concern porn” about white Professional Football Players.

In 1940 98% of all professional football players were white. They were expelled!!!

Now the NFL is only 17% white! And the percentage in the skill positions is even lower!

How will we ever get things set right again?!? Oh my!!!

(Post Script: Percentages above are made up. See, ANYONE can do fake news. Even without a journalism degree!)

[CrazyIvan]

My family will be selling 245 acres of the best corn belt land there is in Henderson County Illinois at auction in about two months. We don’t care what color you are.

[Jane Long]

What kind of uppity, ignorant post is that???

My grandfather, in the South, hired hands and guess what....he PAID them, out of his own pocket.

When times were tough he still paid them....black, white, hispanic (in later years)...it didn’t matter. They were paid to keep food on their tables.

In which state was your grandfather a farmer?

[Jane Long]

:-)

Why at the auction?

[VeniVidiVici]

Black people have largely been expelled from the US agricultural landscape. In 1920, nearly a million Black farmers worked on 41.4 million acres of land, making up a seventh of farm owners. Today, only about 49,000 of them remain, making up just 1.4 percent of the nation’s farm owners, and tending a scant 4.7 million acres—a nearly 90 percent loss.

This didn’t happen by accident. Since Emancipation, Black farmers have had to fight for a share of this country’s fertile ground, due to a history of racist policies and land theft.

I'm sorry. What?

[Cincinnatus.45-70]

The federal government owns about 28% of land in the US, the vast majority of it being rural. The 98% number is a lie.

[WVNan]

I know for a fact they went to Detroit curing the Great Depression. The men in our neighbor’s family took off for Detroit and left their aging mother alone in the run down house with no support and too old to get a job. My family was living on my grandfather’s farm in another run down house. My parents made a room for her in our house and in our family. She was the love of my childhood. If not for her I would never have known that there is a God and Jesus is His Son. She disciplined us children with a look and sang hymns to us of an evening on the porch. She cooked meals fit for kings from the gardens my mother planted and tended. She picked cotton in the row next to mine and encouraged me to pick cleaner and faster. I can still hear her. Rose is a part of who I am. My childhood was not sad due to our poverty, but magic because one beautiful black woman gave me love and wisdom enough. I trust that I will see her again. I am not happy with what is going on with the blacks. Nothing is expected of them and they are now slaves again under the liberal whip.

[CrazyIvan]

It seems to be the best way here. We’ve done some research and it looks like competitive bidding brings more than enough to cover the auctioneers fee.

[Jane Long]

That’s good...any idea who is buying up most of the rural land?

Is your family still involved with farming?

Wishing you the best ;-)

[oldvirginian]

“Heck you can’t even get black kids to want to code.”

Nah bruh.
That be ackin white ‘n all dat.
I jus sells some crack to de homies n make mad Benjamins.

[CrazyIvan]

This area is very high dollar land. The property has been appraised at 1.7 Million $. We have been selling sections of an original 1275 acres on a schedule to avoid taxes. Best case scenario, two bidders with adjacent land get competitive.

[pangaea6]

Sure, if they were all farmers now they would say whitey is keeping them on the farm and not letting them move up to the city. Wouldn’t it be ironic if cotton was very profitable and they wanted to farm it now?

[CrazyIvan]

We have cash rented for about thirty years.

[Texas Mulerider]

He was from the North, where owning people is abhorrent.

Abhorrent? Are you aware that when Northern states abolished slavery they granted a "grace period" in which slaveholders could sell their slaves south before manumission took effect, thereby recouping their investments? Get off your high horse.

[familyop]

That’s what Uncle Sam taught us in the past, too, in regards to commies in warfare overseas. “Kill a commie for mommy” and all of that. ;)

[ssfromla]

They really want a civil war don’t they?

Yes they do.

No one forced them to run to their big cities. They willingly went for the pie in the sky they thought they were going to get.

Now that those dreams have been burnt to the ground by them and them alone they want to change the truth about what they have done to themselves.

It'll take way the hell more than those punks in the street of their pie in the sky cities to uproot us from our homes we've had for generations.

A little known fact (because they gloss over that shit all the time) is that before and after the civil war there were more poor whites in those cotton fields than there were blacks.

Something else to consider is that the majority of blacks still live in the south. No one forced them to stay. They stayed and moved to cities because they wanted to.

And every city they moved into where once was a beautiful place, clean and happy has been destroyed by them and only them.

Because they destroyed those cities the decent white citizens and decent black citizens fled from them and came out here to live with us in the rural areas where we have no race problems.

[Crucial]

No shelter for whites...

[Crucial]

It’s quite simple. The Marxists want everything.

[JadeEmperor]

>>Difference here is that we’ll shoot the bastards instead of being their victims.

No one is doing anything while the statues are falling. No one. There seems to be an infinite supply of red lines in the sand, other cheeks to run, etc.