[In Pembroke, the well-intended efforts of mostly white nature
conservationists overlook one thing: The township’s Black farming
community has never fully supported them. Now, a generations-old way
of life is threatened by the push for conservation. ]
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CONSERVATIONISTS SEE RARE NATURE SANCTUARIES. BLACK FARMERS SEE A
LEGACY BOUGHT OUT FROM UNDER THEM.  
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Tony Briscoe, photography by Rashod Taylor
October 14, 2021
ProPublica
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_ In Pembroke, the well-intended efforts of mostly white nature
conservationists overlook one thing: The township’s Black farming
community has never fully supported them. Now, a generations-old way
of life is threatened by the push for conservation. _

Robert Thurman Jr., his daughter Robriana Thurman and his sisters
Candence Thurman, Gail Thurman, Henrietta Thurman and Candace Thurman
wait on Robert Thurman Sr. as he works a field in Pembroke Township.,
Rashod Taylor

 

The Sweet Fern Savanna Land and Water Reserve, in the heart of
Pembroke Township, Illinois, offers a glimpse into what much of the
area looked like before European settlers drained swamps and cleared
forests to grow corn and soybeans.

At least 18 threatened or endangered plant and animal species,
including the ornate box turtle and regal fritillary butterfly, have
been sighted here. Mature oaks tower over verdant fields of clustered
sedge and Carolina whipgrass. Warbling songbirds and buzzing cicadas
add a mellow soundtrack to the tranquil scene.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of
power. Sign up for Dispatches
[[link removed]],
a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive
our stories in your inbox every week.

Sixty miles south of Chicago, this wildlife reserve is among nearly
2,900 acres owned by private individuals and environmental groups —
most prominently, The Nature Conservancy — trying to establish a
network of nature sanctuaries in Kankakee County. Their efforts have
overlapped with those of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which two
decades ago put forward a plan to buy up and preserve thousands of
acres of what conservationists consider a rare habitat, one that
includes the nation’s largest and most pristine concentration of
sandy black oak savanna.

But these well-intended efforts overlooked a key consideration: the
support of the residents of Pembroke and surrounding areas. Across the
region, the acquisition of land by both the federal government and
private conservationists occurred — and planning for more continues
— in the face of persistent objections from local communities,
including residents of this longtime Black farming community.

Hopkins Park Mayor Mark Hodge displays a sign in his yard objecting to
the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s plans for a national wildlife
refuge.

Founded by formerly enslaved people and later a haven for Black
Southerners fleeing racial violence during the Jim Crow era, Pembroke
became renowned as a symbol of Black emancipation and touted as one of
the largest Black farming communities north of the Mason-Dixon Line.
In its heyday, farmers and ranchers here not only raised their own
food but supplied fresh produce to Kankakee and Chicago. Today, a
small number of Black farmers are trying to hang on to what little
they have left, while other parts of the township have struggled as
well, with loss of jobs, a declining population and a crumbling
village hall.

Some land for these nature sanctuaries was purchased at county
auctions after local residents fell behind on their property tax
payments, or from outsiders who picked up the delinquent parcels and
flipped them, raising echoes of predatory practices that have long
plagued Black landowners.

Adding to the opposition in Pembroke is the cold, hard math of
property taxes. Newer environmental designations and restrictions have
allowed outside groups to receive tax breaks that local elected
officials argue are eroding an already precarious tax base.

The loss of Black-owned land in this community exposes a cruel irony.
Pembroke has been one of the few places Black landowners could gain a
foothold in Illinois, in part because this land was passed over by
white settlers who presumed its sandy soils were worthless. And now,
after generations without large-scale development or
landscape-destroying corporate farming, this land has become sought
after by outside conservationists because Pembroke’s savannas remain
largely untouched.

Years of protest have done little to dissuade those pushing for more
land to be dedicated for conservation.

Local residents have already seen what the future might hold. Most of
the sites reserved for conservation ban long-standing local traditions
like hunting and picking wild fruit, restrictions designed to remain
in place forever, even if the land changes hands. In a community known
for Black cowboys, new conservation-minded owners barred horseback
riding but, in a couple of instances, protected the right to
cross-country ski, not a popular pastime in Pembroke.

Before the arrival of private conservationists, there were no
permanent legal restrictions on this land. And, in a place where
neighbors knew each other, landowners permitted horseback riders to
travel historic trails and passersby to pick wild blackberries
regardless of property lines.

Pembroke Rodeo

Sweet Fern Savanna, enclosed by barbed wire and bearing signage
prohibiting horseback riding and motorized vehicles

The tension has become an ongoing case study in how predominantly
white environmental organizations and government agencies —
willfully or not — can marginalize communities of color by
prioritizing conservation goals over the wishes of residents.

For their part, the conservationists working in Pembroke say they are
protecting the area’s most valuable resources and paying taxes on
many properties after previous owners had fallen behind and
contributed nothing. The Nature Conservancy has stopped buying at tax
auctions and says it wants to learn from its experiences in Pembroke.
“We understand that for our conservation goals to work in earnest,
we need to listen to the residents who know their community best,”
the conservancy said in an emailed statement.

But as conservationists and the federal government continue to press
on toward their ultimate goal of preserving savannas, some Pembroke
residents like Cornell Ward Jr. find themselves on the outside looking
in.

One muggy and overcast July afternoon, Ward, a thin-framed 63-year-old
man with salt-and-pepper dreadlocks, stood on a gravel road outside
Sweet Fern Savanna.

Ward remembers a time when much of Sweet Fern Savanna belonged to
Black farmers, including him. Peering beyond the barbed wire fencing
and signs threatening to prosecute trespassers, he could see the patch
of land where he once grew soybeans. The small patch of land — two
adjacent parcels, totaling 3 acres — represented a chance for him to
carry on a family legacy that extends back 60 years in Pembroke. Ill
and unemployed, Ward lost his properties after he failed to pay
$1,511.40 in taxes; they were purchased about a decade ago at county
auctions by the preserve’s owner, an 85-year-old conservationist
from Chicago’s south suburbs.

“How did they get all of this?” Ward wondered aloud.

Cornell Ward Jr.

Humble Beginnings and Lost Land

No one knows how Joseph “Pap” Tetter escaped the horrors of
slavery in North Carolina, only that he, his wife, children and
extended family arrived in what would become Pembroke Township in a
wagon one day around 1861.

Tetter homesteaded 42 acres of land, which he parceled out and sold to
fellow settlers. Proceeds went to help liberate more enslaved people
via the underground railroad, according to oral histories.

Unlike the black, spongy soil that made Illinois an agricultural
powerhouse, Pembroke’s sandy soil — widely considered some of the
poorest in the state — didn’t retain moisture that would allow
commodity crops like corn to thrive. But the land offered a fresh
start for people who had been owned as property and forced to farm
under threat of violence. Through trial and error, they found what
could survive the sandy soil, growing specialty crops like okra,
collards, peas and watermelons.

“It was available for African American farmers to come in and
settle, because it wasn’t being snapped up by European American
farmers,” said Mark Bouman, a program director at the Field Museum's
Keller Science Action Center in Chicago who has worked with residents,
including a local project in conjunction with The Nature Conservancy,
and has studied Pembroke’s history. “And so it was kind of like
the leftovers.”

Ward’s family moved to the area in the late 1950s after briefly
resettling in Chicago following the lynching of 14-year-old Emmett
Till in their home state of Mississippi.

Ward’s father, a construction worker, used recycled lumber and
materials to build the family’s house on land in northeastern
Pembroke, where they raised chickens, goats, pigs and cows. Ward and
his 10 brothers and sisters tilled the fields, sowed vegetable seeds
and pulled the harvest from the earth by hand.

When Ward’s father died in 1999, he left no will. The siblings
couldn’t agree on the fate of the property. Eventually, the family
lost the land due to unpaid taxes. On his own, Ward still owned
properties elsewhere in Pembroke but then lost those as well. Now some
of that land is part of Sweet Fern Savanna.

Farming in Pembroke required long hours in the field, perseverance and
faith; the small operations never yielded great wealth. But families
carved out a modest living, enjoying the tranquility and spaciousness
of the countryside.

Holding on to the land, however, proved tough. Pembroke’s farmers
have suffered from the same racial inequities that permeate the
American agriculture industry. Without capital or access to loans,
they often used outdated equipment or planted by hand. Most farmed
their land without irrigation systems, commercial fertilizers and
pesticides — the hallmarks of modern agriculture. Many didn’t grow
at the scale that would warrant crop insurance, leaving them
vulnerable to drought or floods.

As time passed, Black farmers in Pembroke owned less and less land,
due in part to financial hardship and lack of access to legal services
that complicated the process of 
[[link removed]]bequeathing
property to heirs
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Their plight was not unlike that of other Black farmers across the
country. In 1920, Black farmers owned about 15 million acres; by 2017,
they owned around 4.6 million acres, according to a federal report.

In Illinois, an agricultural behemoth, Black-owned farms collectively
make up only 18,659 acres — less than a tenth of a percent of the
state’s agricultural lands.

Outsiders Gobble Up Acres

The push to preserve and restore rare natural habitats in Kankakee
County, where Pembroke is the largest township by area, might have
stalled out two decades ago if the only party interested was the
federal government.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service drafted the first plans to create a
national wildlife refuge at the Illinois-Indiana border more than 20
years ago, but it was stymied when local residents raised objections
and an Indiana congressman blocked federal funding. “We will not
establish a national wildlife refuge here until we get funding from
Congress, and Congress will not support funding unless the people want
it,” Bill Hartwig, then-regional director of the service, told the
Chicago Tribune in 1998.

There were no such promises from The Nature Conservancy, which had
endorsed the federal plan and accumulated land on the Indiana side of
the border. Without any announcement or public input, it began buying
on the Illinois side too.

Shango Basu sits on bales of hay used to feed the livestock on his
family’s farm In Pembroke.

The Arlington, Virginia-based land trust has been praised for its
efforts in protecting more than 125 million acres of land globally.
But the organization also has been the subject of scrutiny for its
real estate dealings.

A 1994  [[link removed]]government
watchdog [[link removed]] report
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land trusts, including The Nature Conservancy, had profited handsomely
in some cases from selling land to the federal government. A 2003 
[[link removed]]Washington
Post 
[[link removed]]investigation
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the organization had imposed permanent land-use restrictions on some
of its properties to guard their natural features, but later sold the
land to current and former trustees at reduced prices, some of whom
built houses there.

The Nature Conservancy temporarily suspended that program
[[link removed]] and
later announced it would cease selling land to its board members,
trustees and employees altogether.

In Kankakee County, The Nature Conservancy started by purchasing 128
acres of forest on the edge of a large commercial farm in Pembroke for
$183,000 in 2000. But much of Pembroke consists of tiny, slender
tracts of land, meaning the organization had to work on a much smaller
scale to expand its footprint.

A map of lands owned by conservation entities in Pembroke Township and
surrounding areas. The regional conservation project has been called
the Kankakee Sands by The Nature Conservancy. (Tallmadge Sand
Forest’s name has been changed and the reserve has been expanded
since the production of this map.) Credit:source: The Nature
Conservancy

Some of those tracts became available through public auctions of land
lost due to unpaid taxes in Kankakee County. The Nature Conservancy
said it has collected 201 deeds at tax sales, totaling 448 acres.
It’s not possible to determine the race of all the former owners of
the forfeited land, but the population of Pembroke is predominantly
Black; local residents and politicians say most of the owners affected
by tax sales were Black too.

Because the tax-sale properties tended to be small, those parcels made
up less than one-fifth of the conservancy’s acreage in Kankakee
County, according to the organization’s own figures. But, among
local elected officials, the purchases raised questions about the
ethics of buying land forfeited in financially distressed communities.

Those sales, along with the local belief that conservationists were
serving as an extension of Fish and Wildlife, fueled a backlash. After
an auction in 2015, The Nature Conservancy stopped buying through the
tax sales.

That same year, Fish and Wildlife reemerged to reveal it would be
pursuing the dormant plans for what it called the Kankakee National
Wildlife Refuge and Conservation Area, and the next year it accepted a
66-acre donation to establish the refuge. (The refuge is intended to
be primarily in Kankakee County, with a small portion in Iroquois
County; the initial donation consisted of land in Iroquois.)

During the last ice age, glaciers pulverized ancient rocks into fine
grains of sand as they expanded across North America. When the ice
melted, it left behind the rare sandy savannas found in Pembroke and
nearby areas.

Sharon White, who was Pembroke Township supervisor at the time, joined
with other area politicians from the U.S. Congress, the state
legislature and local government to push back. The Kankakee County
Board voted 22-2 in favor of a resolution objecting to plans for the
refuge.

The Nature Conservancy, because of its deep pockets, drew special
attention, and White met with conservancy officials.

In November 2016, White placed an advisory referendum on the ballot,
asking: “Should The Nature Conservancy be allowed to purchase land
within Pembroke Township to establish a conservation marshland?”

Voters left no doubt about their preference, answering “no” by a
margin of 708-123. (The Nature Conservancy and its supporters say the
vote was misleading because it misstated the type of habitat they are
seeking to safeguard in Pembroke; conservationists want to protect
savannas.)

“Coming from outside, assumptions were made by the conservation
organizations that what they did for the good of the Earth, everybody
would automatically love it,” said Bouman, the Field Museum
director. “They’ve learned.”

In response to the local outcry, The Nature Conservancy took
conciliatory steps, agreeing to temporarily halt land acquisition
efforts for eight months. It also agreed to participate in ongoing
efforts by the Field Museum and local residents in a Pembroke
community planning project.

But conservancy leaders struck a different tone in emails with federal
and state government officials. Those emails were obtained through a
Freedom of Information Act request by ProPublica and examined for this
story. Conservancy officials acknowledged the resistance from Pembroke
residents and elected officials, but minimized the situation as a
“melodrama” in internal documents circulated in a 2016 email.

In an email later that year, Fran Harty, then director of terrestrial
conservation at The Nature Conservancy, urged Fish and Wildlife
Service officials not to scrap the refuge plans despite community
resistance.

“It is important that USFWS does not pull out all together because
it will feed the

idea that all you have to do is throw a tantrum and USFWS will pack up
and leave,” Harty wrote.

In 2017, Harty speculated how financial hardships for farmers might
favor the group’s strategy.

“All it takes is two years of bad corn prices and it changes the
chess board,” Harty told a Fish and Wildlife representative.

Sharon White with her horse at the Pembroke Rodeo

Officials from The Nature Conservancy’s Illinois chapter, including
Harty, who retired in September, declined to be interviewed but
provided a statement saying the organization will continue to work
with residents of Pembroke toward its conservation goals.

“TNC does not tolerate environmental racism or injustice of any kind
as we pursue our land and water conservation work in Illinois and
across the world,” the statement said. “TNC’s pursuit of
conservation must be inclusive and conducted with humility, trust, and
respect.”

White remains skeptical of that commitment, even more so after
learning of a 2015 email unearthed by ProPublica.

In 2015, while White was engaged in talks with The Nature Conservancy,
she was behind on taxes for some of the parcels she owned in Pembroke.
During that time, Harty shared a list of tax-delinquent parcels in
Pembroke in an email to a federal official ahead of a county auction,
with the note: “Fyi. I will let you know how this works out.”
Highlighted in yellow were seven parcels owned by White.

In an interview, White acknowledged she was having trouble keeping up
with her taxes due to financial hardship at that time. She paid her
taxes, plus interest and late fees, to redeem the deeds before her
properties were put up for auction.

In a recent interview, White said she had no idea that her properties,
mostly wooded lots neighboring her three-bedroom home, had been
discussed by The Nature Conservancy and Fish and Wildlife.

“They knew me and they were trying to buy properties from underneath
me,” White said.

Church of the Cross is the location of Hopkins Park’s temporary
village hall. The former village hall was in need of extensive repairs
after its roof collapsed.

A spokesperson for The Nature Conservancy said the organization
wasn’t interested in purchasing these parcels, and only highlighted
White’s properties “on an information basis to show the areas that
were tax delinquent.”

The recipient of the email was John Rogner, who at the time was a Fish
and Wildlife Service coordinator. Rogner, now the assistant director
of the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, declined to comment
about the exchange, saying he did not recall the contents or context
of the message.

Regarding the agency’s push for a national wildlife refuge despite
the longstanding opposition in Pembroke and elsewhere in the county,
the Fish and Wildlife Service said it has sought further public input
and will be publishing a final planning report. The agency also
emphasized that it will only buy land from willing owners.

“We want to create a sustainable plan for both people and
wildlife,” Fish and Wildlife said in a statement. “This is a
formative, collaborative process that’s mostly about listening.”

Rogner said that part of the federal process also includes working
closely with private conservation groups. That’s what happened in
Kankakee County.

“They had already brought under protection significant parcels of
land,” Rogner said about The Nature Conservancy, “thus
accomplishing some of what the service might have done under the
refuge authorization. We coordinated with them in that they shared
information about their land conservation so that we could better
define what the service role should be.”

Fish and Wildlife also has a relationship with the Friends of the
Kankakee, a nonprofit created by Marianne Hahn, the suburban woman who
founded the Sweet Fern Savanna.

The group’s stated mission is to support the Fish and Wildlife
Service and the Kankakee wildlife refuge. The 66 acres donated by
Friends of the Kankakee turned the refuge from an idea to a reality.

A Way of Life Threatened

Pamela Basu, the eldest of the Ward children, is the only one who
still owns land in Pembroke and farms there.

As she watches the conservationists buy up parcels and add
restrictions, she sees a way of life disappearing.

Pamela Basu is one of the remaining Black farmers who still own land
in Pembroke.

Evera Ivy didn’t have much interest in farming growing up in
Pembroke, but she is now part of a younger generation looking to keep
traditions alive.

Some of Basu’s herbs.

When Basu was growing up, property lines meant little in a community
where neighbors knew each other. Horseback riders followed historic
trails. Hunters pursued wild game in the woods.

Basu belongs to a thinning cadre of elders trying to carry on the
community’s traditions. She still walks the historic trail on her
property, where she collects wild herbs and berries that she uses to
concoct sauces, jams and tinctures. Each year, she hosts festivals
featuring a farmer’s market, live performances and a nature walk.

“When I was growing up, you could walk from one end of the community
to the other with trails,” said Basu. “You can’t walk through
the woods anymore. You picked berries, herbs — you knew where things
were. We’ve lost that part of our culture, and now you can’t pass
that on to other generations.”

Outsiders are increasingly determining the future of the land. Over
the years, commercial farmers and real estate speculators have
purchased land lost or sold by Pembroke residents. In the past two
decades, conservationists also took an interest in the area.

Even though conservationists share a love of the land with the
farmers, they often have a very different view of how it should be
used.

Among them is Hahn, a retired microbiologist. For years, Hahn
volunteered at a nature area near her residence in Homewood, Illinois.
But she was vexed by her lack of authority in the preserve. “If
somebody wanted to put a trail right through the middle of a prairie,
I couldn’t do anything about it. So I thought, why don’t I get my
own nature preserve?”

Her larger goal: “My concept of all of this is that, in a small way,
I'm saving God's creation.”

A friend and fellow conservationist suggested she make a trip to
Pembroke, an area with cheap land and abundant biodiversity. She did
and was stunned by the rare prairie plants growing right along the
roadside.

This inoperable tractor sits in a fallow field on the Basu property.
Access to new equipment has been an issue over the years for Black
farmers in Pembroke.

She bought 60 acres of land near the center of Pembroke Township two
decades ago. This would become the foundation of the township’s
first state-designated conservation area: Sweet Fern Savanna.

Creating the nature reserve meant that fields that once produced crops
would need to be restored to their previous form. To Hahn, that made
perfect sense.

“The parcels aren’t good for farming; people can’t make a living
on them. They let them go for taxes — anyone can buy them,” said
Hahn, who acquired a small number of the land parcels for Sweet Fern
Savanna from auctions. “Should we not buy something that’s being
offered to the public at an open auction?”

Over the years, the reserve has more than doubled in size. Signs mark
the perimeter, warning, “No Horses. No ATV’s. Violators will be
prosecuted.” The site is cordoned off by barbed wire fences, which
Hahn said she installed after trash, including roof shingles, was
dumped on her property.

Visits to the reserve are allowed only with Hahn’s written
permission. For those she lets onto the property, Hahn permits them to
hike, birdwatch, cross-country ski, camp and hunt. She said she allows
one of her Pembroke neighbors to run his dogs on her property and a
friend to hunt wild turkey and deer. Though she has chided trespassing
horseback riders, she said, she has never prevented any of her
neighbors from picking wild berries there.

Camping and cross-country skiing will no longer be allowed in 2026,
according to state records that outline land restrictions for the
site. Hahn has also included a special provision to allow a single
burial site.

“It was not my intention to create a park. It was my intention to
have a nature preserve,” Hahn said.

Hahn’s reserve is one of seven protected areas covering more than
1,100 acres in Pembroke. Five belong to The Nature Conservancy, and,
like Hahn, the nonprofit has signed legal agreements with the state
imposing some permanent restrictions on these properties in perpetuity
with little, if any, public input. These designations are proposed by
the landowner, then approved by the Illinois Department of Natural
Resources and, in some cases, the governor.

Within the nature preserves created by the conservancy, hiking and
sightseeing are allowed. But hunting, fishing, camping, campfires,
motorized vehicles and horseback riding are not permitted. The
preserves also permanently ban farming, agricultural grazing and
time-honored traditions like harvesting wild fruit and plants. (Fish
and Wildlife, meanwhile, does allow for wild herbs and fruits to be
harvested on the acres it owns, after getting input from the
community.)

At Tallmadge Savanna Land and Water Reserve, The Nature Conservancy
permits cross-country skiing and deer hunting. But hunting privileges
are only granted to those who have completed eight hours of volunteer
conservation work.

Local residents wonder why recreation in these natural areas has to be
limited.

“I haven’t seen any benefit to the community,” said White, the
former township supervisor, who keeps horses in nearby Watseka,
Illinois, which is in a different township. “I believe in
conservation. There are national parks all over the country where
there are hiking paths, horseback riding and camping. So why is it
that is restricted to that extent in our community?”

Mayor Mark Hodge stands at the edge of a lagoon at Hopkins Park’s
beleaguered wastewater treatment plant. The plant needs more than $1
million in repairs, according to engineers’ estimates.

What Is Best for the Local Economy?

The changes brought on by conservationists go beyond how the land is
used.

After gaining ownership, conservationists have obtained state
designations or imposed land restrictions that drastically reduce what
they have to pay in property taxes.

The Nature Conservancy, for example, has enrolled some of its Kankakee
County land in the state’s Conservation Stewardship Program, which
allows the property to be assessed at 5% of its fair market value.
Separately, conservancy land that is earmarked for nature preserves
are only assessed at $1 per acre.

As a result, the nonprofit didn’t owe taxes on at least 38 of its
parcels in 2020, comprising 382 acres, according to county tax
records. That’s because the amounts owed are so small that the
county treasurer doesn’t even send out a bill. In some instances,
the conservancy pays less than the previous property owners were
billed.

In a community where the median household income hovers around
$29,000, local residents say it has been difficult to have land seized
for failure to pay taxes and then see the new owners get a hefty tax
break. In one instance, a Black farmer forfeited a 3-acre parcel of
land in 2004 after falling behind on a $580.90 annual tax bill. The
Nature Conservancy bought his land at tax sale, and two years later
obtained a state conservation designation that allowed the
organization to pay $19.60 annually in taxes — 96% less than the
yearly amount the farmer lost it for.

But The Nature Conservancy argues that its presence can actually
benefit local tax rolls, which can be hurt when landowners fall into
delinquency. Organization officials say the group has paid more than
$425,000 in county taxes since 2001.

Such arguments, however, have proved unconvincing in Kankakee County.
Politicians and residents — Black and white — have strongly
opposed conservation-related restrictions and tax breaks.

Hopkins Park Village Hall is in need of extensive repairs before it
can be functional again.

Antipathy has been especially intense in Hopkins Park because of the
village’s desperate need to reverse years of economic stagnation and
disinvestment. The conflict pits The Nature Conservancy, which in a
2019 tax filing reported $1.1 billion
[[link removed]] in
revenue, against the mayor of a village that collected less than
$37,000 in taxes for that year. Mayor Mark Hodge has led the chorus of
naysayers who believe The Nature Conservancy moved too quickly to
acquire land, undercutting local development plans along the way.

The conservancy purchased six parcels on Main Street, one of a limited
number of places within the township served by water and sewer lines.
It also bought land within several residential subdivisions. Though
some of these properties were on major township roads, in some cases
these areas still had a rural feel, marked by undeveloped land and
trees.

“They bought property on our Main and Central streets,” Hodge
said. “When they own the property, that means a house can’t go
there, a business can’t go there because they are not willing to
relinquish it. That would be tax revenue that we would receive for any
water, sewer and other utilities. It’s unfortunate.”

He added: “It’s obvious that this is David and Goliath, the big
guy trying to crush the small guy.”

The Nature Conservancy said it is unaware of any instances where its
landholdings have blocked potential development. Conservancy officials
said they considered selling one Main Street parcel to a developer
interested in bringing a discount store to the site, but the developer
withdrew for unknown reasons.

An elementary school building named for pioneering agricultural
scientist George Washington Carver has been abandoned for several
years in Hopkins Park.

Hodge himself has picked up property this way, although he notes that
the land he buys does not end up getting tax breaks in the ways
conservationists have. He has been criticized within the community for
his foray into commercial and residential real estate, but he says his
personal investments also help the village by refurbishing properties.

In recent years, despite the legacy of farming in Pembroke, the
community has become better known for its endemic poverty and lack of
basic amenities. The township has lost more than half its population
since 1980, and now has fewer than 2,000 residents. There are no
grocery stores, pharmacies or banks in the 52-square-mile community.

Hopkins Park is marked with artifacts of disinvestment and broken
promises. A factory building that once churned out military rations,
and later products for Nestlé, is mothballed. Concrete silos sit
abandoned on an unnamed road, the remains of a state plan to build an
1,800-bed women’s prison that officials predicted would bring 900
jobs to the area. The project was scrapped due to state budget
constraints — after $13.2 million had been spent on site work.

Hodge said the constraints on development and the tax breaks amount to
“community genocide.”

The garage area in the Hopkins Park Village Hall in need of extensive
renovations.

Mayor Hodge.

When landowners reduce or eliminate their tax payments, the remaining
property owners in the tax district must pay more to make up for the
lost funding needed for things like schools and roads, said Nick
Africano, Kankakee County’s treasurer.

“These are communities that can least afford a hit to their school
and village budgets,” Africano said. “They struggle for every
nickel. I think it works for one set of people, and unfortunately most
have no stake in our community.”

Still a Tension in the Air

In the face of intense criticism, The Nature Conservancy in 2016
invoked new principles and procedures for conservation in Kankakee
County.

In addition to ending purchases of land through tax sale, the charity
said it has been much more judicious with its land acquisition, ending
the purchases of properties connected to village water and sewer lines
— in other words, land that has development potential. Since its
land-buying moratorium was lifted in late 2017, the organization has
acquired roughly another 230 acres, most recently a 10-acre parcel in
November 2020.

It now acknowledges that there have been missteps. “We want to ...
understand where we may have fallen short of our values, and adjust
our approach where necessary,” the Illinois chapter said in an
October statement to ProPublica.

Johari Cole, a Pembroke farmer, sees some hope in the adjustments made
so far and said that disdain for the conservationists is misguided.
She owns a home and 40-acre tract of land where she farms vegetables
and raises goats. She’s also been an ardent supporter of
environmental preservation, leading the Fish and Wildlife Service’s
program to teach local adolescents about conservation in 2019. The
agency, along with The Nature Conservancy, helped fund the program
through the community nonprofit Cole runs.

Cole argues that the landholdings of private conservationists are
dwarfed by the acreage held by outside commercial farmers. Like
private conservationists, they, too, have also purchased
tax-delinquent property at county auctions, contributing to Black land
loss, Cole said. And because the assessed value of farmland in
Illinois is based, in part, on soil type (and the soil in Pembroke is
considered poor), they pay little in taxes.

“We’re dealing with two extremes: locking land up in conservation
and locking in commercial ag,” said Cole, who is board president for
the Community Development Corporation of Pembroke and Hopkins Park.

“I’ve told the mayor, you’ve got the same issue on both sides,
but you’re only looking at one.”

The Nature Conservancy has cited Cole’s group as one of its local
partners as it seeks community input. It also has worked with the
Black Oaks Center for Sustainable Renewable Living, a nonprofit with
the goal of reclaiming 1,000 acres in Pembroke for Black farmers,
letting its apprentices farm on portions of conservancy land at no
cost.

More recently, following questions from ProPublica about its
activities in the township, the conservancy said it had assigned two
top officials who specialize in diversity and equity to work with the
Illinois team in Pembroke. There also will be a review of “our
interactions with the community in Pembroke Township and the Village
of Hopkins Park.” (The conservancy did not make those officials
available to be interviewed for this story.)

In Hopkins Park, Hodge remains unimpressed by the conservancy’s
efforts. He said communication still is lacking and the conservancy
remains mum on basic information like how many acres it intends to
buy.

Even though the conservancy is consulting with diversity and inclusion
experts, “they are going against people’s wishes,” Hodge said.
“The people have voiced their objection clearly. They do not want
this refuge in our community. We want to set aside some land in the
community for conservation. But we don’t want to set our community
aside for conservation.”

His skepticism extends to government officials at the state and
federal levels. And, across the region, tension ratcheted up again in
recent months when the Fish and Wildlife Service moved forward on its
large-scale conservation plans, after it found new funds for land
acquisition beyond the original 66 acres.

In July, the service unveiled a plan for protecting and restoring up
to 12,700 acres of land in an area that includes parts of eastern
Pembroke Township, Momence Township and Iroquois County.

It didn’t take long for the Kankakee County board to once again
voice its displeasure, passing a resolution that month to reaffirm its
objection to the government’s plans in a 24-0 vote.

The service’s public meetings on its plans revealed a wide range of
concerns from county residents. Among them: Roosevelt Smyly, whose
family has owned land in Pembroke for more than 70 years.

He attended a Fish and Wildlife open house to voice his opposition. He
feels that conservationists are insulting local residents with the
implication that they are not capable of taking care of the land.

“That’s what really offends people like me,” Smyly, 71, said in
an interview. “You’ve come from somewhere else and you’re going
to upset the way that I live.”

Hoping and Praying

On a slate gray morning in late May, Robert Thurman Sr. grabbed a
paper bag of string bean seeds and poured them into the hopper of a
garden seeder. He lined up the two-wheeled contraption and leaned into
it as he planted his first row.

Soon, six of Thurman’s children brought trays of burgeoning tomato
plants from their greenhouse. They placed each in the ground by hand,
watered them with a 5-gallon bucket and packed the soil tight around
them.

Thurman’s family has owned land in the township for around 80 years.
Skeptical of financial institutions, he only pays for farm equipment
out of pocket. He typically buys older equipment for fear of being
“tractor poor.” And he’s at the mercy of weather because he
doesn’t have crop insurance in the event of drought or flooding.

Robert Thurman Sr. on his farm

Thurman's family has owned land in Pembroke for over 80 years.

“I’m hoping and praying to God that we can be on a bigger scale,
because right now I can’t afford it,” Thurman said. “If
something happens to my crop, it just happens.”

As the number of Black farmers in Illinois and across the country has
tumbled, the state and federal government have said they want to stem
Black land loss and encourage more diversity in agriculture. Gov. J.B.
Pritzker brought a delegation to Pembroke earlier this year to
acknowledge the racial disparities that exist in the state’s No. 1
industry.

“We have to face the often brutal history of why we work the land
but no longer own or have access to the land,” said Lt. Gov. Juliana
Stratton, the first Black woman in Illinois history to hold that role,
standing before a podium in the gymnasium of a local elementary
school.

It hardly makes any difference to Thurman. He had no idea the governor
was in town and hasn’t paid a lot of attention to the controversy
surrounding preservation. He knows there are no promises in farming.
But so long as he has his land, it’s an opportunity he intends to
pass down to his children.

“I’m going to live a certain way of life,” he said. “If it
comes to a point to where they try to take me off my land, they are
going to have to do a helluva move. Because I’m gonna be here as
long as God sees fit to have me on this earth.”

Sweet corn on the Thurman farm

Robert Thurman Jr. and his daughter Robriana

The Thurman family burial plot on their land in Pembroke

_Haru Coryne
[[link removed]] contributed data
analysis and research._

_Art direction and visual editing by Andrea Wise
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Design and production by Allen Tan
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_TONY BRISCOE is a reporter for ProPublica._

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_RASHOD TAYLOR is a fine art and portrait photographer based in
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