Episode 26: Black Land Loss
In 1910, Black farmers owned as many as 16 million acres of farmland in the United States. While that was only 1.8 percent of total U.S. farmland at the time, Black farmers own even less farmland today: as of 2017, only 2.9 million acres, or 0.32 percent.
After the death of her grandfather — who had managed to buy back land in the South years after his family’s displacement — writer Brea Baker went looking to understand him and, through him, her lineage. In rebuilding and reckoning with her family tree, she pieced together a personal story that reflected the greater history of Black America. In this episode we talk to her about her book, “Rooted: The American Legacy of Land Theft and the Modern Movement for Black Land Ownership,” in which she clearly maps out the United States’ progression from slavery to Emancipation and Black land acquisition — followed almost immediately by a pattern of violent land theft and devastating loss. She makes plain this country’s racist history, ultimately connecting the dots to today’s persisting racial wealth gap.
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“A deed record will tell me that my great grandfather lost 250 something acres of land over a $10 debt that he couldn't repay, but family lore and history and oral tradition will tell me that it was a predatory loan with interest rates that were impossible to pay back. And that the company that got the land is a company that got a lot of Black families’ land.”
Episode guest:
Brea Baker
Brea is a freedom fighter and writer who has been working on the frontlines for over a decade, first as a student activist and now as a movement journalist and national organizer. Her book, “Rooted: The American Legacy of Land Theft and the Modern Movement for Black Land Ownership,” is about her family’s experiences across the South and why reparations are a critical economic, racial and environmental justice policy that we need to embrace. For her work in coalition with other activists and organizers, Brea has been recognized as a 2023 Creative Capital awardee, a 2019 i-D Up and Rising and a 2017 Glamour Woman of the Year.
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Top photo by Kristina Blokhin/Adobe Stock.