Civil rights law. Are my civil rights being violated? Is this agency or company enacting illegal discrimination against me? For example, was I denied an FSA loan for my farm or was I denied access to a farm incubator program, possibly because of my race, gender, religion, or disability?
Business law. How do I form the correct business or legal entity to help me attain my farm goals?
Contract law. How do I write a contract to ensure that I am getting a fair deal in my business with other companies or individuals? How do I write a lease agreement? What do I do if a contract is violated?
Inheritance law. How do I write a will that ensures that my children, or others whom I designate, inherit my land and resources? What can I do with the land I have inherited as an heir-in-common?
Property law. How do I prevent foreclosure on my farm or home? How do I navigate land-use and zoning regulations in my region?
Labor law. How do I comply with labor laws for my employees? How do I make sure I have fair working conditions and wages at my farm job?
UPLIFT
Pigford v. Glickman
For decades the USDA denied loans and relief to Black farmers while providing these entitlements to white farmers, driving the loss of over 12 million acres of Black-owned farmland. For example, a white loan officer took Black farmer Lloyd Shaffer’s loan application out of his hand and threw it directly into the wastebasket on three occasions. At least 25,000 Black farmers had similar experiences of discrimination and banded together to sue the federal government in the Pigford v. Glickman lawsuit. During the deliberations, Black farmers organized demonstrations and civil disobedience, enduring arrest when they attempted to enter the agriculture building in Washington and speak with then Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman. In November 1999 the class-action suit was settled out of court for around $500 million, the largest civil rights settlement in history. In some ways this victory was largely symbolic, as each farmer took home an average of $50,000, not enough for a new tractor, never mind to buy back the farmland lost during the previous decades.4 The USDA refused to admit that they had discriminated against Black farmers, despite the government’s own civil rights reports in 1965, 1970, 1982, 1990, and three in 1997 documenting systemic racism.5 Black farmers continue to fight for fair compensation through Pigford II payouts and cy pres distributions to farmer organizations.6
Should you determine that your legal rights are being violated, as with the USDA’s discrimination against Black farmers, you can sue for discrimination. In the case of discrimination by the USDA, begin by filing a complaint with the USDA Office of the Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights. If you suspect discrimination by an employer, the first step is to file an administrative charge with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the corresponding state agency. In your filing you need to have either direct evidence against your employer or circumstantial evidence, including proof that you are a member of a protected class, that you are qualified for your position, that your employer took an adverse action against you, and that someone who is not in a protected class replaced you or was favored above you.
When an institution is systemically discriminating in disseminating its jobs, scholarships, land, training, or other resources, you may want to seek the help of a civil rights nonprofit to take your case to court. The American Civil Liberties Union, Southern Poverty Law Center, Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, and Legal Aid Society focus on “impact litigation” where they champion landmark cases that set precedent for upholding the rights of the general population.
Education
A university education in agriculture may be inaccessible for aspiring Black farmers. I’ve talked to many Caribbean growers who spent their whole lives farming their family land, immigrated to the United States, and sought to continue their agricultural careers—only to soon learn that agricultural universities were often far from their families and communities, prohibitively expensive, and culturally isolating. We need to expand programs like the USDA 1890 National Scholars Program that provide scholarships allowing farmers of color to complete agricultural degrees at no cost. To address geographic barriers, we need satellite “campuses” in our communities and on land cultivated by existing Black farmers. These degree programs must explicitly address racism in the food system and provide support for healing from land-based trauma.
Knowing that we cannot rely exclusively on formal education to meet our needs for technical advancement, we have created educational networks for peer-to-peer learning. The Southeastern African American Farmers’ Organic Network (SAAFON) was founded in 2006 by Cynthia Hayes and Dr. Owusu Bandele to increase organic and sustainable practices among Black farmers. At the time there were no African American certified organic farmers in several southern states, yet the trainings led by SAAFON indicated there was an overwhelming interest in becoming certified. They now have 121 members, 50 of whom are USDA-certified organic.7 They also work with Black farmers in the Caribbean on organic practices and certification.
Back in the early 2000s, I attended the summer conference of the Northeast Organic Farming Association with the goal of connecting to other farmers of color. There were only about 12 of us who presented as people-of-color in the space, so I went up to each person and handed them a little slip of paper with a meeting time and place. Every single person came, including Karen Washington, who would become a mentor and dear friend. She proclaimed at that meeting, “One day, we will have a conference of our own.” True to her word, Karen Washington started the Black Farmers & Urban Gardeners Conference in 2010. Hundreds of farmers, activists, and chefs from across the nation come together every year to share knowledge in a container that feels more like a family reunion than a conference.
When we come together for a conference, provide apprenticeships for one another, teach workshops, write manuals, or otherwise share knowledge within our community, we are engaging in powerful resistance work. “Each one teach one” is one of our people’s proverbs. During slavery, Black people were denied education, so when someone learned how to read, it became their duty to teach someone else. This duty persists.
UPLIFT
Tuskegee University
Lewis Adams, a Black community leader, tinsmith, shoemaker, and harness maker, had a vision for an institution of higher learning for Macon County. Despite having no access to formal schooling under enslavement, Adams taught himself to read and write, and valued education dearly. He struck a deal with a white politician, W. F. Foster, to organize the Black vote in his favor if the politician would persuade the state of Alabama to fund a school for Black people. This came to pass and on July 4, 1881, Tuskegee University opened the doors of its one-room schoolhouse to the inaugural class of 30 students. Booker T. Washington was the first teacher, and helped grow the school into one of the most respected historically Black universities in the nation. Tuskegee students constructed the early campus buildings as part of their work-study. The institution promoted self-reliance and believed that physical labor was not only practical, but beautiful and dignified. Tuskegee trained generations of Black farmers and included in its faculty such outstanding teacher-scholars as George Washington Carver and Booker T. Whatley, who brought us models including “regenerative agriculture,” community-supported agriculture (the CSA), and pick-your-own farming.8
The Black Farmers & Urban Gardeners Conference brings together hundreds of growers using the “each one teach one” model of resistance. Photo by Warren Cameron.
Direct Action
Direct action is the deliberate violation of an unjust law or policy, an exercise of collective power, and a demonstration of principled nonviolence. Direct action includes sit-ins, workplace occupations, camps, strikes, blockades, hacktivism, and sabotage. Direct action may be individual or collective, discreet or public. For example, an employer may discreetly decide to give wages under the table to a person without legal immigration documents, and deny their presence when ICE arrives. In contrast,
when refugee Salim Rambo was being deported back to the Democratic Republic of Congo from the UK, an activist stood up on the flight and boldly refused to sit down until the asylum seeker was removed from the plane and allowed to stay in the country. This action was successful and Salim Rambo was not deported.9 Any of us at any time can choose noncompliance in support of justice.
We can thank our international comrades for their models of collective direct action. In 2014 the Afro-Colombian Solidarity Network organized tens of thousands of strikers to shut down one of the country’s most important international ports, demanding potable water, sewage, and basic services for the Black community.10 Also in Colombia, the Black Women’s Movement in Defense of Life and the Ancestral Territories marched peacefully from their home of Cauca to Bogotá to demand the restoration of their ancestral mining rights and the cessation of megaprojects that displace their people.11 The Proceso de Comunidades Negras (Black Communities Process, PCN) works collaboratively with the aforementioned Colombian formations to protect the right of Black women in southwestern Colombia, through direct action and direct services. Their founding grandmothers, such as Doña Paulina Balanta, taught them that “the territory is life, and life does not have a price” and that “the territory is dignity and it does not have a price.”
Professor Wangari Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement in 1977, organizing women farmers in Kenya to plant over 51 million trees to date. While she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004, her movement was not always met with acclaim. When Maathai denounced President Daniel arap Moi’s plan to build a skyscraper in the middle of Nairobi’s largest park, security forces visited her home in the night. Undeterred, she went on to lead a rally for the release of political prisoners. She and other Green Belt women were beaten and threatened with genital mutilation to force them to behave “like women should.” Members of Parliament suggested that the Green Belt Movement be banned as a subversive organization. The women carried on, occupying a church adjacent to the park for nearly one year. As many of the soldiers were Christian, they refused to break into the church to arrest the women. Of her pro-democracy, pro-environment direct action, Maathai said, “Fear is the biggest enemy you have. I think you can overcome your fear when you no longer see the consequences … you must have courage.”12
UPLIFT
NYC Community Gardens Movement
Former New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani waged war on the city’s community gardens in 1998, placing all of the 700 urban oases up for disposition to private interests. These gardens were primarily the work of Black and Latinx growers who reclaimed the vacant lots left behind from urban renewal and the disinvestment brought on by redlining. The gardeners got organized quickly and began lawsuits, protests, and civil disobedience. In the Esperanza garden on the Lower East Side, gardeners chained themselves to cement blocks as the bulldozers arrived to raze their 22 years of devoted investment in that tiny piece of earth. They also engaged spiritual resistance, erecting a large sculpture of a coqui, which is said to repel attackers in Puerto Rican legend. The police arrived and cut the chains, arresting 31 protesters for trespassing and obstructing justice, and detaining them overnight. A work crew with a backhoe, bulldozer, and chain saws set to work destroying the garden. As they were carted away, the protesters vowed, “We’re going to haunt Giuliani like the Furies from Greek mythology.” The battle was lost, but the war was arguably won. The community gardeners attracted national attention and were able to save 500 community gardens, 200 of which were designated as city parks and others of which became land trust property.13
In 1993 grassroots activists from Colombia and Kenya joined forces with the Haitian Peasant Movement and 200 million other small-scale landworkers on four continents to form La Via Campesina, the international peasant movement.14 Arguably the world’s largest social movement, Via Campesina members have staged direct action in the streets of Cancun, Seattle, Quebec City, and wherever else institutions such as the World Trade Organization, World Bank, and UN meet to discuss food and agriculture. Via Campesina stands against corporate control of the food system under the guise of “free trade” and supports community-controlled sustainable food systems and fair trade. Via Campesina activists have brought international attention to the global food crisis.
In the United States, the Black farmer organizations taking the lead on direct action are the National Black Food & Justice Alliance and the Black Land & Liberation Initiative. On Juneteenth,* 2017, they occupied 40 acres’ worth of vacant lots across the nation demanding reparations of land for Black people. The occupants offered free bag lunches to children and held a celebratory barbecue, demonstrating what productive land use should look like. The National Black Food & Justice Alliance (NBFJA) brings together dozens of farming organizations to act together to protect Black-owned farmland, including the recently foreclosed land of Eddie and Dorothy Wise in North Carolina. NBFJA’s strategies also include organizing, building visibility, reframing narratives, and building institutions.15
As Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. wrote in 1963, “Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored … The purpose of our direct action program is to create a situation so crisis packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation.” As we confront unjust policies, we can consider direct action as a means to open negotiation. Consider organizing an occupation, blockade, or other visible noncompliance to call attention to your struggle.
Occupation of land or buildings can be an effective resistance strategy. Here, activists occupy city hall to protest the incarceration of our children. Photo by Sun Angel Media.
Land Defense
Land and freedom cannot be disentangled. As early as 1650, kidnapped African people escaped to the Seminole territories of Florida, the Great Dismal Swamps of North Carolina, and the shores of Lake Borgne in Louisiana to form maroon communities. Free African Americans also started their own towns, like Lyles Station, Indiana, a community of Black farmers whose population peaked at 800 and persists to this day. “The old men were smart men, and they taught us the land was important,” says Stanley Madison, a Lyles Station resident.16
Today the struggle for Black land continues, led by the Federation of Southern Cooperatives Land Assistance Fund, founded in 1967. The federation’s 20,000 members engage in direct action, litigation, and education in defense of land. They sponsored the 1992 Caravan of Black and Native American Farmers to Washington, DC, to demand reparations for USDA discrimination. Together with Land Loss Prevention Project and other allies, they fought and won legislative battles to fund the Outreach and Assistance for Socially Disadvantaged Farmers and Ranchers Program (the 2501 program) and the 1890 Land Grant College scholarships.17 Most recently, the federation is on the frontlines of the heirs’ property battle.
Due to lack of financial resources and legal assistance, 81 percent of Black landowners in previous generations did not make wills. Their descendants inherited the property without clear title and were consequently limited in what they could do with the land. So-called heirs property is not eligible for mortgages, home equity loans, FEMA aid, USDA programs, or any of the loans or conservation programs that keep many rural farmers in business. Additionally, any of the co-owners has the legal right to sell their share or to bring the entire parcel to court-ordered auction. Predatory developers take advantage of this legal loophole and entice faraway relatives to sell their share for peanuts, then flip the property for huge profits. The dispossession crisis among the Gullah people has been driven largely by heirs property exploitation.
This Indigenous elder in the Triqui region of Mexico has successfully resisted many corporate and governmental attempts to take her family’s land.
The Federation of Southern Cooperatives, Land Loss Prevention Project, Black Family Land Trust, and other advocacy groups are
working to pass the Uniform Partition of Heirs Property Act, which would add due process protections for families, such as notice, appraisal, and the right of first refusal. These organizations also provide free legal support to farmers so that they can create wills to protect their property and save their land from foreclosure and other forms of theft.18 As Savi Horne, executive director of Land Loss Prevention Project, reminds us, “Never forget that food justice requires land justice.” Currently, leaders in South Africa are considering comprehensive and radical land reform that would transfer certain farmland from white ownership to Black ownership without compensation. This model encourages us to think creatively and expansively about what is possible in terms of reclaiming land sovereignty.
UPLIFT
Sojourner Truth
Sojourner Truth was born in bondage in 1797 in Ulster County, New York, and escaped to freedom with her infant daughter in 1828. In addition to her acclaimed contributions as an abolitionist and women’s rights advocate, Truth was arguably one of the first Black American activists to champion landownership as a means to self-determination for her people. In 1870 she met with President Ulysses S. Grant at the White House, and asked him to give formerly enslaved people land grants in the West so that they could attain economic independence and be free from southern white racism. She persisted in her land grant quest for seven years, offering several public speeches on the matter, but the government refused.19
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