Black Agrarianism: The Significance of African American Landownership in the Rural South

Agrarianism is important in the American mythos. Land represents both a set of values and a store of wealth. In this article, we ask how land matters in the lives of rural, southern, Black farmland owners. Drawing on 34 interviews, we argue that, since the end of slavery, land has continued to opera...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Rural sociology 2018-09, Vol.83 (3), p.677-699
Main Authors: Quisumbing King, Katrina, Wood, Spencer D., Gilbert, Jess, Sinkewicz, Marilyn
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
African Americans
Agricultural land
Dominance
Elites
Emancipation
Farmers
Freedoms
Land ownership
Owners
Protection
Resistance
Rural areas
Rural communities
Rural sociology
Sharecropping
Slavery
Social exclusion
Wealth
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Summary:Agrarianism is important in the American mythos. Land represents both a set of values and a store of wealth. In this article, we ask how land matters in the lives of rural, southern, Black farmland owners. Drawing on 34 interviews, we argue that, since the end of slavery, land has continued to operate as a site of racialized exclusion. Local white elites limit Black farmers’ access to landownership through discriminatory lending practices. At the same time, Black farmland owners articulate an ethos in which land is a source of freedom, pride, and belonging. This we term “Black agrarianism.” They cultivate resistance to the legacies of slavery and sharecropping and contemporary practices of social closure. These Black farmland owners, then, view land as protection from white domination. Thus, we demonstrate how landownership is a site for the re‐creation of racial hierarchy in the contemporary period while also offering the potential for resistance and emancipation.
ISSN:0036-0112
1549-0831
DOI:10.1111/ruso.12208