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Freedom farmers : agricultural resistance and the black freedom movement / Monica M. White

Author
White, Monica M. (Monica Marie), 1967-
Published
Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, [2018]
Copyright Date
©2018
Physical Description
1 online resource (xviii, 189 pages) : illustrations
Additional Creators
Redmond, LaDonna
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Series
Contents
Land, food, and freedom: black farmers, agriculture, and resistance -- Intellectual traditions in black agriculture: Booker T. Washington, George Washington Carver, and W. E. B. Du Bois -- Collective agency and community resilience in action -- A pig and a garden: Fannie Lou Hamer's Freedom Farms Cooperative -- North Bolivar County Farmers Cooperative -- The Federation of Southern Cooperatives -- The Detroit Black Community Food Security Network -- Black farmers and black land matter.
Summary
"Expands the historical narrative of the black freedom struggle to embrace the work, roles, and contributions of southern black farmers and the organizations they formed. Whereas existing scholarship generally views agriculture as a site of oppression and exploitation of black people, this book reveals agriculture as a site of resistance and provides a historical foundation that adds meaning and context to current conversations around the resurgence of food justice/sovereignty movements in urban spaces like Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee, New York City, and New Orleans"--
In May 1967, internationally renowned activist Fannie Lou Hamer purchased forty acres of land in the Mississippi Delta, launching the Freedom Farms Cooperative (FFC). A community-based rural and economic development project, FFC would grow to over 600 acres, offering a means for local sharecroppers, tenant farmers, and domestic workers to pursue community wellness, self-reliance, and political resistance. Life on the cooperative farm presented an alternative to the second wave of northern migration by African Americans--an opportunity to stay in the South, live off the land, and create a healthy community based upon building an alternative food system as a cooperative and collective effort. Freedom Farmers expands the historical narrative of the black freedom struggle to embrace the work, roles, and contributions of southern black farmers and the organizations they formed. Whereas existing scholarship generally views agriculture as a site of oppression and exploitation of black people, this book reveals agriculture as a site of resistance and provides a historical foundation that adds meaning and context to current conversations around the resurgence of food justice/sovereignty movements in urban spaces like Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee, New York City, and New Orleans.
Subject(s)
Genre(s)
ISBN
9781469643700 (electronic bk.)
1469643707 (electronic bk.)
9781469643717 electronic book
1469643715 electronic book
9781469643694
1469643693
Note
A previous version of chapter 2 was published in a different form as " 'A Pig and a Garden': Fannie Lou Hamer and the Freedom Farms Cooperative," Food and Foodways: Explorations in the History and Culture of Human Nourishment 25, no. 1 (2017): 20-39.
Bibliography Note
Includes bibliographical references and index.
View MARC record | catkey: 42868814