Farmers and Land Loss: A Historical Perspective of the Systematic Loss of African American Farms from the Nineteenth Century to the Present
Encyclopedia of African American History, Vol. 2, 2009
8 Pages Posted: 1 Jul 2009
Date Written: April 1, 2009
Abstract
This encyclopedia article analyzes the history of sharecropping and cooperative farming arrangements in which African-American farmers engaged in the United States since the Civil War. It traces the oppression that they suffered at the hands of Jim Crow laws, USDA policies, unfair white landowners, and depressing economic times, as well as the benefits they realized from organization, the development of self-sufficiency strategies, the Farm Security Administration, and the civil rights movement.
Keywords: farming, land loss, African American, freedmen, Field Order, racism, agriculture, sharecroppingm USDA, FSA, civil rights, land cooperatives
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