We are proud to announce our donation to The National Black Farmers Association (NBFA). NBFA is a non-profit organization representing African American farmers and their families in the United States. As an association, it serves tens of thousands of members nationwide. NBFA's education and advocacy efforts have been focused on civil rights, land retention, access to public and private loans, education and agricultural training, and rural economic development for Black and other small farmers.
NBFA’s mission is to encourage the participation of small and disadvantaged farmers in gaining access to resources of state and federal programs administered by the United States Department of Agriculture. Since its inception, NBFA has been a national voice on the issue of farm subsidies, arguing that Black farmers are left out of the massive system of subsidies provided by the government. A 2007 report by Environmental Working Group found a widening gap between subsidies provided to white farmers and those provided to Black farmers.
Black Farmers protest outside the U.S. District Courthouse prior to a hearing on their class action lawsuit against the Department of Agriculture. John Francis Ficara
Historical Context: An Excerpt from “Black Farmers in America”
By JOHN FRANCIS FICARA and JUAN WILLIAM
Old, tangled roots tie Black Americans to the nation's farmland. Black labor on Southern plantations formed the backbone of the nation's first economy, an agricultural economy. The labor of enslaved Africans provided the cheap cotton that set in motion the textile factories at the beginning of the industrial age and the rise of the American economy to the largest in the world.
With the end of slavery, freed Blacks began a struggle of biblical proportions to gain land and enjoy the same economic rewards as whites. At the heart of that gospel lay the failed promise of "Forty Acres and a Mule," which had its genesis in General William T. Sherman's Special Field Order Number 15, issued on January 16, 1865. The general's command allowed former enslaved people to begin farming on land abandoned by fleeing Confederate soldiers. In March of that year, the Congress authorized General Sherman to rent out the land and supply as many plow mules as possible to the new farmers.
At that time, life for most of the four million freed Black people was desperate as they pushed away from the South and plantations with no clear idea of where to go and often with no food. In the words of abolitionist Harriet Tubman, "I was free, but there was no one to welcome me to the land of freedom — I was a stranger in a strange land." Many of the former enslaved people eventually returned to their old plantations, their spirits broken. They resumed working as field hands on farms, laboring under the same conditions as they had when they were enslaved.
In this atmosphere of fear, poverty, and confusion, the promise of "Forty Acres and a Mule" was seen as a sign of God's own deliverance. The offer created a sensation among the nation's Black population, which reacted as if Moses had parted the waters to the Promised Land. They could finally see a place in America where they could be self-sufficient and determine their own future. These newly liberated citizens generally had no resources or education, and farming was the one business that they knew firsthand. In the first six months after General Sherman offered the land to emancipated enslaved people, 40,000 Black people settled on more than 400,000 acres of farmland along the eastern coast, including the Sea Islands off South Carolina and coastland in Georgia and Florida. General Sherman gave speeches trumpeting this land as a first step for formerly enslaved people — a way to feed themselves and their families and even as a way to earn money by selling produce. As an added benefit, the rent they paid helped to support the Freedmen's Bureau.
But in May of 1865, the glimmer of hope faded even for the lucky Black people who had received land and an animal with which it could be plowed. President Lincoln had been assassinated, and his successor, Andrew Johnson, ordered General Sherman to return the land to its Confederate owners as part of the effort to rebuild relations between the federal government and the defeated South. Thus, the offer of "Forty Acres and a Mule" vanished into the status of legend, becoming a catch-phrase for all the broken promises the government has ever made to Black people.
Landowners at Last
Despite Johnson's decree, some former enslaved people made a way where there seemed to be none and obtained land to farm. To them, ownership of a farm meant more than owning a business: the deed to the land signified the end of their days as enslaved, as sharecroppers, as workers for someone else. It was true emancipation — no one could confuse an enslaved person with a landowner. To be a landowner meant status as a voter, taxpayer, and citizen. Thus, possession of land represented a defiant step toward racial equality with white farmers, who had constituted the heart of the ruling class in the early 1800s southland. Now, for the first time, Blacks controlled their own future and fate.
The land offered a promise to future generations, too. No matter what misfortune or oppression might come (short of God's wrath of drought and pestilence), the family could support itself — raise its own food, tend its own pigs and chickens, and pass on that security to children and grandchildren.
The farm, then, went beyond land and ownership. To a Black man or woman it was a ticket to self-sufficiency, as well as a sign of having arrived in the eyes of their neighbors and themselves. The Black farmer, working hard for his own, became the living symbol of the strong, independent Black man. Farming also allowed Black families to move into other businesses, from funeral homes to preaching to construction, and thus served as the bedrock of all Black wealth in America.
The Young People Have Left
Today, so few Black farmers remain that they are a rarity, specks of gold in a mine stripped bare long ago. The solitary, hard-pressed farmer still defiantly working his land has wrinkles not only from worry over money but from age: the young people have left. By 1994, 94 percent of the Black farmers remaining were over thirty-five years old, and 35 percent were over sixty-five. The people now remaining on the land demonstrate a fierce attachment to farming as a way of black life. One half of those with their hands still covered in the good earth a decade ago said farming was their principle occupation despite the low wages. Congresswoman Eva Clayton, a North Carolina Democrat, once told reporters that most of the remaining Black farmers are "farming out of tradition, now — not to make a living." Black people are no longer even the biggest minority group in the American farm business: Native Americans hold that honor, with 87 percent of the farmland operated by American minorities now in their hands.