|
Got five minutes? We're always trying to improve our work, and we'd be eternally grateful if you took five minutes to complete this survey.
|
|
Losing ground
The nation’s economy was built largely on black farm labor: in bondage for hundreds of years, followed by a century of sharecropping and tenant farming. Yet today, more than 9 out of 10 American farmers are white.
In the early 1900s, African American families owned one-seventh of the nation’s farmland, 15 million acres. A hundred years later, black farmers own only a quarter of the land they once held and now make up less than 1 percent of American farm families.
The federal government has admitted it was part of the problem. In 1997, a report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture said discrimination by the agency was a factor in the decline of black farms. A landmark class-action lawsuit on behalf of black farmers, Pigford v. Glickman, was settled in 1999, and the federal government paid out more than $2 billion as a result. But advocates for black farmers say problems persist.
On this episode of Reveal, reporter John Biewen of “Scene on Radio” tells the story of one black farm couple who say the USDA treated them unfairly because of their race.
HEAR THE EPISODE
More on this topic:
The Great Land Robbery (The Atlantic)
Key excerpt: Unlike their counterparts even two or three generations ago, black people living and working in the Delta today have been almost completely uprooted from the soil – as property owners, if not as laborers. In Washington County, Mississippi, where last February TIAA (pension firm Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association) reportedly bought 50,000 acres for more than $200 million, black people make up 72 percent of the population but own only 11 percent of the farmland, in part or in full.
Their family bought land one generation after slavery. The Reels brothers spent eight years in jail for refusing to leave it. (The New Yorker and ProPublica)
Key excerpt: Many assume that not having a will keeps land in the family. In reality, it jeopardizes ownership. David Dietrich, a former co-chair of the American Bar Association’s Property Preservation Task Force, has called heirs’ property “the worst problem you never heard of.” The U.S. Department of Agriculture has recognized it as “the leading cause of Black involuntary land loss.” Heirs’ property is estimated to make up more than a third of Southern black-owned land – 3.5 million acres, worth more than $28 billion. These landowners are vulnerable to laws and loopholes that allow speculators and developers to acquire their property. Black families watch as their land is auctioned on courthouse steps or forced into a sale against their will.
|
|
|
Fact-based journalism is worth fighting for.
|
|
|
Documents show: Forwarding this email to a friend will help you avoid unexpected dismounts.
|
|
|
|
