Evan P. Bennett
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780813039862
- eISBN:
- 9780813043777
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813039862.003.0009
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
No region better illustrates the relationship between crop culture and farm-family potential than the bright tobacco area that straddled the Virginia and North Carolina border. Evan P. Bennett ...
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No region better illustrates the relationship between crop culture and farm-family potential than the bright tobacco area that straddled the Virginia and North Carolina border. Evan P. Bennett focuses on the precarious position of landowning farmers, the role of tobacco agriculture in their lives, and the agrarian vision that resulted and rang as true during the 1930s as it does when voiced by the National Black Farmers Association in 2010. Social scientist Margaret Hagood documented black farm families on the Piedmont tobacco farms, as she did white farm families, and prosperous black farmers such as Burrie C. “Doc” Corbett reacted with caution but shared a family story that indicates the ways that gender, race, policy, credit availability, cooperatives, and tobacco culture affected tobacco farm families and their farm operations.Less
No region better illustrates the relationship between crop culture and farm-family potential than the bright tobacco area that straddled the Virginia and North Carolina border. Evan P. Bennett focuses on the precarious position of landowning farmers, the role of tobacco agriculture in their lives, and the agrarian vision that resulted and rang as true during the 1930s as it does when voiced by the National Black Farmers Association in 2010. Social scientist Margaret Hagood documented black farm families on the Piedmont tobacco farms, as she did white farm families, and prosperous black farmers such as Burrie C. “Doc” Corbett reacted with caution but shared a family story that indicates the ways that gender, race, policy, credit availability, cooperatives, and tobacco culture affected tobacco farm families and their farm operations.
Omar H. Ali
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781604737783
- eISBN:
- 9781604737806
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781604737783.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, Political History
This chapter discusses the history behind the establishment of the Colored Alliance agrarian organization. In 1886, the Colored Farmers’ Alliance and Co-Operative Union (Colored Alliance, for short) ...
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This chapter discusses the history behind the establishment of the Colored Alliance agrarian organization. In 1886, the Colored Farmers’ Alliance and Co-Operative Union (Colored Alliance, for short) was established in Houston County, Texas. The organization aimed to promote agriculture and horticulture, to educate farmers in the science of economic government, to help members in becoming more skillful and efficient workers, and to protect their individual rights as farmers. In 1889, the Colored alliance claimed membership of almost 250,000 farmers, becoming a large mutual aid organization for black American farmers.Less
This chapter discusses the history behind the establishment of the Colored Alliance agrarian organization. In 1886, the Colored Farmers’ Alliance and Co-Operative Union (Colored Alliance, for short) was established in Houston County, Texas. The organization aimed to promote agriculture and horticulture, to educate farmers in the science of economic government, to help members in becoming more skillful and efficient workers, and to protect their individual rights as farmers. In 1889, the Colored alliance claimed membership of almost 250,000 farmers, becoming a large mutual aid organization for black American farmers.
Debra Reid and Evan Bennett (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780813039862
- eISBN:
- 9780813043777
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813039862.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
Beyond Forty Acres and a Mule focuses on America's most-forgotten farmers: black families that cast their lot on their own land and depended on their own labor in a nation that doubted their right to ...
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Beyond Forty Acres and a Mule focuses on America's most-forgotten farmers: black families that cast their lot on their own land and depended on their own labor in a nation that doubted their right to control either. Rural African Americans have long been perceived as dependent tenants, sharecroppers, and agricultural laborers. This collection of essays indicates that one in four black farm families overcame numerous obstacles by 1920 to own farm land. It does this without diminishing the serious nature of the opposition that limited their right to property and independent decision making. These essays indicate that black farmers who became farm owners and landowners should not be dismissed as anomalous economic success stories. Instead, they should be evaluated within the context of a larger social historical milieu. White landowners attempted to protect white's privileged status within the American agrarian ideal that linked landownership to morality and full citizenship. Black farm families had to overcome this philosophical barrier and additional obstacles posed by racism and sexism, the crop lien system of labor, debt, and unstable markets. Additional factors such as geographic isolation, limited crop and stock choices, mechanization, personal relationships, and kinship networks all affected black farm families in numerous and inconsistent ways. Beyond Forty Acres encourages readers to re-conceptualize small farms not as failure when compared to large-scale production agriculture but as an alternative approach specific to a time and place.Less
Beyond Forty Acres and a Mule focuses on America's most-forgotten farmers: black families that cast their lot on their own land and depended on their own labor in a nation that doubted their right to control either. Rural African Americans have long been perceived as dependent tenants, sharecroppers, and agricultural laborers. This collection of essays indicates that one in four black farm families overcame numerous obstacles by 1920 to own farm land. It does this without diminishing the serious nature of the opposition that limited their right to property and independent decision making. These essays indicate that black farmers who became farm owners and landowners should not be dismissed as anomalous economic success stories. Instead, they should be evaluated within the context of a larger social historical milieu. White landowners attempted to protect white's privileged status within the American agrarian ideal that linked landownership to morality and full citizenship. Black farm families had to overcome this philosophical barrier and additional obstacles posed by racism and sexism, the crop lien system of labor, debt, and unstable markets. Additional factors such as geographic isolation, limited crop and stock choices, mechanization, personal relationships, and kinship networks all affected black farm families in numerous and inconsistent ways. Beyond Forty Acres encourages readers to re-conceptualize small farms not as failure when compared to large-scale production agriculture but as an alternative approach specific to a time and place.
Omar H. Ali
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781604737783
- eISBN:
- 9781604737806
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781604737783.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Political History
Following the collapse of Reconstruction in 1877, African Americans organized a movement—distinct from the white Populist movement—in the South and parts of the Midwest for economic and political ...
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Following the collapse of Reconstruction in 1877, African Americans organized a movement—distinct from the white Populist movement—in the South and parts of the Midwest for economic and political reform: Black Populism. Between 1886 and 1898, tens of thousands of black farmers, sharecroppers, and agrarian workers created their own organizations and tactics primarily under black leadership. As Black Populism grew as a regional force, it met fierce resistance from the Southern Democrats and constituent white planters and local merchants. African Americans carried out a wide range of activities in this hostile environment. They established farming exchanges and cooperatives; raised money for schools; published newspapers; lobbied for better agrarian legislation; mounted boycotts against agricultural trusts and business monopolies; carried out strikes for better wages; protested the convict lease system, segregated coach boxes, and lynching; demanded black jurors in cases involving black defendants; promoted local political reforms and federal supervision of elections; and ran independent and fusion campaigns. Growing out of the networks established by black churches and fraternal organizations, Black Populism found further expression in the Colored Agricultural Wheels, the southern branch of the Knights of Labor, the Cooperative Workers of America, the Farmers Union, and the Colored Farmers Alliance. In the early 1890s, African Americans, together with their white counterparts, launched the People’s Party and ran fusion campaigns with the Republican Party. By the turn of the century, Black Populism had been crushed by relentless attack, hostile propaganda, and targeted assassinations.Less
Following the collapse of Reconstruction in 1877, African Americans organized a movement—distinct from the white Populist movement—in the South and parts of the Midwest for economic and political reform: Black Populism. Between 1886 and 1898, tens of thousands of black farmers, sharecroppers, and agrarian workers created their own organizations and tactics primarily under black leadership. As Black Populism grew as a regional force, it met fierce resistance from the Southern Democrats and constituent white planters and local merchants. African Americans carried out a wide range of activities in this hostile environment. They established farming exchanges and cooperatives; raised money for schools; published newspapers; lobbied for better agrarian legislation; mounted boycotts against agricultural trusts and business monopolies; carried out strikes for better wages; protested the convict lease system, segregated coach boxes, and lynching; demanded black jurors in cases involving black defendants; promoted local political reforms and federal supervision of elections; and ran independent and fusion campaigns. Growing out of the networks established by black churches and fraternal organizations, Black Populism found further expression in the Colored Agricultural Wheels, the southern branch of the Knights of Labor, the Cooperative Workers of America, the Farmers Union, and the Colored Farmers Alliance. In the early 1890s, African Americans, together with their white counterparts, launched the People’s Party and ran fusion campaigns with the Republican Party. By the turn of the century, Black Populism had been crushed by relentless attack, hostile propaganda, and targeted assassinations.
Kendra Taira Field
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780300180527
- eISBN:
- 9780300182286
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300180527.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, American History: 19th Century
Chapter 3 traces the migratory life of Alexander “Elic” Davis, the African-American farmer and preacher who led his cousin, Monroe Coleman, to Indian Territory. Davis’s life illuminates the ...
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Chapter 3 traces the migratory life of Alexander “Elic” Davis, the African-American farmer and preacher who led his cousin, Monroe Coleman, to Indian Territory. Davis’s life illuminates the devastating poverty and disfranchisement that shaped the lives of most freedpeople after Reconstruction, precipitated the nadir of African-American history, and instilled in millions of rural black southerners the desire to “pick up” in the name of racialized peoplehood and self-determination. At the turn of the twentieth century, broadening narrower emigrationism of the antebellum era, rural farmers like Davis participated in the early construction of twentieth-century black nationalism and modern pan-Africanism.Less
Chapter 3 traces the migratory life of Alexander “Elic” Davis, the African-American farmer and preacher who led his cousin, Monroe Coleman, to Indian Territory. Davis’s life illuminates the devastating poverty and disfranchisement that shaped the lives of most freedpeople after Reconstruction, precipitated the nadir of African-American history, and instilled in millions of rural black southerners the desire to “pick up” in the name of racialized peoplehood and self-determination. At the turn of the twentieth century, broadening narrower emigrationism of the antebellum era, rural farmers like Davis participated in the early construction of twentieth-century black nationalism and modern pan-Africanism.
Alison Collis Greene
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252039997
- eISBN:
- 9780252098178
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252039997.003.0008
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
This chapter tells a pair of stories—a grassroots beginning and a white backlash sparked by charges of outside agitation—that suggest an all-too-familiar civil rights narrative. Yet, in 1940s North ...
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This chapter tells a pair of stories—a grassroots beginning and a white backlash sparked by charges of outside agitation—that suggest an all-too-familiar civil rights narrative. Yet, in 1940s North Carolina, two communities—the black farmers and professionals in Tyrrell County and the multiracial network of leftist Protestants who applauded and supported their work—open up a new kind of civil rights story. Theirs is a story of interaction, interdependence, and partnerships built on a shared belief in the inseparability of economic and racial justice. Historians have long emphasized the turn from a Depression-era emphasis on economic and racial justice as two parts of a greater whole to a Cold War-era focus on civil rights and racial integration.Less
This chapter tells a pair of stories—a grassroots beginning and a white backlash sparked by charges of outside agitation—that suggest an all-too-familiar civil rights narrative. Yet, in 1940s North Carolina, two communities—the black farmers and professionals in Tyrrell County and the multiracial network of leftist Protestants who applauded and supported their work—open up a new kind of civil rights story. Theirs is a story of interaction, interdependence, and partnerships built on a shared belief in the inseparability of economic and racial justice. Historians have long emphasized the turn from a Depression-era emphasis on economic and racial justice as two parts of a greater whole to a Cold War-era focus on civil rights and racial integration.
Angela Stuesse
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780520287204
- eISBN:
- 9780520962392
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520287204.003.0003
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Latin American Cultural Anthropology
This chapter traces the widespread integration of African Americans in Mississippi poultry industry to the federal agricultural policy incentive to keep cotton fields fallow in central Mississippi. ...
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This chapter traces the widespread integration of African Americans in Mississippi poultry industry to the federal agricultural policy incentive to keep cotton fields fallow in central Mississippi. This program, combined with the rising prominence of the mechanical cotton picker, made it difficult for ordinary Black farmers to make a living; thus forcing them to work in the poultry industry. The chapter also discusses how the deskilling and intensification of poultry industry labor, the waning of opportunities for small Black farmers, as well as the mounting political pressure on them contribute to the increase in number of Mississippi African Americans poultry workers.Less
This chapter traces the widespread integration of African Americans in Mississippi poultry industry to the federal agricultural policy incentive to keep cotton fields fallow in central Mississippi. This program, combined with the rising prominence of the mechanical cotton picker, made it difficult for ordinary Black farmers to make a living; thus forcing them to work in the poultry industry. The chapter also discusses how the deskilling and intensification of poultry industry labor, the waning of opportunities for small Black farmers, as well as the mounting political pressure on them contribute to the increase in number of Mississippi African Americans poultry workers.
