By Fayemi Shakur Oct. 24, 2016
Credit: Michael M. Santiago
View Slide Show | 15 Photographs
Michael Santiago spent years working at dead-end retail and warehouse jobs before he decided to take a chance and pursue photography. Mr. Santiago, a New York native, went to study in California, where his biggest lesson came not in a classroom or studio, but on a pig farm run by James McGill, a third-generation African-American farmer who has struggled to keep his land amid looming threats of foreclosure.
Mr. Santiago could relate to Mr. McGill: His own appreciation for the land is rooted in his family history and childhood summers, when his parents sent him to live on a farm in the Dominican Republic. But Mr. McGill’s grit has influenced him in unexpected ways in his chosen profession, too.
“He’s doing something he loves and he’s not quitting,” Mr. Santiago, 36, said. “He only makes three or four thousand dollars every six months from the sale of his pigs. I decided to become a photographer four or five years ago after being out of school for 10 years. I wasn’t sure if I would make it this far. Mr. McGill inspires me to continue working in photography no matter what obstacles I reach.”
The two met by chance soon after Mr. Santiago had moved to Oakland to study photography. His search for fresh food took him to a local group that organized farmers’ markets. That led him to Farms to Grow, an organization of black farmers that piqued his interest when one of its founders, Gail Myers, took him on a tour of Mr. McGill’s farm.
“As she was giving us a tour, I started photographing him,” Mr. Santiago said. “Just hearing his story I knew he was the one to do the project on.”
While James McGill’s nephews all have farming experience and help out from time to time, they do not see themselves being full-time farmers. 2015. Credit: Michael M. Santiago
His resulting project, “Stolen Land, Stolen Future,” helped Mr. Santiago win the 2015 Alexia Foundation student grant for his work focusing on California’s black farmers. His portfolio also received an award of excellence at the 70th College Photographer of the Year awards and was a winner in the 2016 PDN Photo Annual’s student category.
“This story is important to me because people in America aren’t aware that black farmers are still around,” Mr. Santiago said. “People don’t know what their struggles are and that they are still being discriminated against. For the most part, whether they are black or white, the farmers get pushed down and end up having to sell their properties because they can’t get loans. Small farms are denied because they don’t usually have any collateral to get a loan. Through my research I’ve learned if you’re looking for stolen black land, all you have to do is follow the lynching trail. That’s how it started to happen. Black farmers were killed for their land.”
The McGill family has been farming for 90 years. After returning from Vietnam, Mr. McGill and a partner owned and managed a 320-acre farm, McGill Farms, from 1976 to 1987. They lost the property through foreclosure after being denied loans, Mr. Santiago said, and although Mr. McGill tried to enlist lawyers to regain the land or be compensated, he has been unsuccessful.
Now he farms on his father’s property in Bakersfield, Calif., a rural city 100 miles outside of Los Angeles. He started with 90 acres that have been whittled down to five because of foreclosure. Just last year, Mr. Santiago said, Mr. McGill had to borrow $14,000 from relatives to prevent losing what little land he had left.
“I have a recording of Mr. McGill telling the story about how he lost his land, and every time I hear it — the pain in his voice — it always gets to me,” Mr. Santiago said.
The history of black farming in this country has been long and, at times, painful, starting with sharecropping, which began to dominate agriculture in the South after the Civil War.
Black families rented small parcels, or shares, to work themselves, and in return they would give a portion of their crop to the landowner. Some saved enough money to buy the land outright, but many more went into debt or were forced by poverty or the threat of violence to sign unfair contracts that offered little chance of improving their economic situation.
African-American farmers, since the days of sharecropping, have relied on recycled materials to keep farms running. In keeping with that tradition, all of Mr. McGill’s enclosures are made from recycled materials from other farms. 2014. Credit: Michael M. Santiago
Still, by 1920 African-American farmers made up approximately 14 percent of all farmers in the United States, and they owned a combined 15 million acres of land, according to United States Department of Agriculture reports. African-Americans now account for less than 1 percent of the nation’s farmers.
For farmers like Mr. McGill, the struggle continues. Every day he rises early to feed his pigs while keeping track of items he could reuse to maintain his farm. Tires and plywood, for example, can be turned into fencing.
As he makes a humble living, foreclosure is a constant threat for farmers like Mr. McGill. Even though he received compensation from a lawsuit against the Department of Agriculture that alleged racial discrimination in lending, the amount he and other farmers received was not enough considering what had been lost over the years, he said.
“There are a few white farmers who have helped me, a few white friends loaned me tractors,” Mr. McGill said. “Racism isn’t really much different than it used to be. It’s about the same. The K.K.K. used to burn the farmers’ land and houses, but now they do it with paperwork.”
Still, Mr. McGill finds a certain dignity in his quest to continue farming.
“If I could, I’d find someone to help me invest and get back into farming; it’s a little late in life, but I still want to do it,” he said. “You just can’t stop. You have to keep going. It looks real bad sometimes for black folks. Sometimes it looks like we just give up on life, but the door is not closed yet.”
Fayemi Shakur is a writer based in Newark. Her work has been featured online and in print in Nueva Luz Photographic Journal, The International Review of African American Art, and Hycide magazine.
Follow @msantiagophotos, @7fayemi and @nytimesphoto on Twitter. Michael Santiago is also on Instagram. You can also find us on Facebook and Instagram.
A Difficult Harvest for America’s Black Farmers
Credit: Michael M. Santiago
View Slide Show | 15 Photographs
Michael Santiago spent years working at dead-end retail and warehouse jobs before he decided to take a chance and pursue photography. Mr. Santiago, a New York native, went to study in California, where his biggest lesson came not in a classroom or studio, but on a pig farm run by James McGill, a third-generation African-American farmer who has struggled to keep his land amid looming threats of foreclosure.
Mr. Santiago could relate to Mr. McGill: His own appreciation for the land is rooted in his family history and childhood summers, when his parents sent him to live on a farm in the Dominican Republic. But Mr. McGill’s grit has influenced him in unexpected ways in his chosen profession, too.
“He’s doing something he loves and he’s not quitting,” Mr. Santiago, 36, said. “He only makes three or four thousand dollars every six months from the sale of his pigs. I decided to become a photographer four or five years ago after being out of school for 10 years. I wasn’t sure if I would make it this far. Mr. McGill inspires me to continue working in photography no matter what obstacles I reach.”
The two met by chance soon after Mr. Santiago had moved to Oakland to study photography. His search for fresh food took him to a local group that organized farmers’ markets. That led him to Farms to Grow, an organization of black farmers that piqued his interest when one of its founders, Gail Myers, took him on a tour of Mr. McGill’s farm.
“As she was giving us a tour, I started photographing him,” Mr. Santiago said. “Just hearing his story I knew he was the one to do the project on.”
While James McGill’s nephews all have farming experience and help out from time to time, they do not see themselves being full-time farmers. 2015. Credit: Michael M. Santiago
His resulting project, “Stolen Land, Stolen Future,” helped Mr. Santiago win the 2015 Alexia Foundation student grant for his work focusing on California’s black farmers. His portfolio also received an award of excellence at the 70th College Photographer of the Year awards and was a winner in the 2016 PDN Photo Annual’s student category.
“This story is important to me because people in America aren’t aware that black farmers are still around,” Mr. Santiago said. “People don’t know what their struggles are and that they are still being discriminated against. For the most part, whether they are black or white, the farmers get pushed down and end up having to sell their properties because they can’t get loans. Small farms are denied because they don’t usually have any collateral to get a loan. Through my research I’ve learned if you’re looking for stolen black land, all you have to do is follow the lynching trail. That’s how it started to happen. Black farmers were killed for their land.”
The McGill family has been farming for 90 years. After returning from Vietnam, Mr. McGill and a partner owned and managed a 320-acre farm, McGill Farms, from 1976 to 1987. They lost the property through foreclosure after being denied loans, Mr. Santiago said, and although Mr. McGill tried to enlist lawyers to regain the land or be compensated, he has been unsuccessful.
Now he farms on his father’s property in Bakersfield, Calif., a rural city 100 miles outside of Los Angeles. He started with 90 acres that have been whittled down to five because of foreclosure. Just last year, Mr. Santiago said, Mr. McGill had to borrow $14,000 from relatives to prevent losing what little land he had left.
“I have a recording of Mr. McGill telling the story about how he lost his land, and every time I hear it — the pain in his voice — it always gets to me,” Mr. Santiago said.
The history of black farming in this country has been long and, at times, painful, starting with sharecropping, which began to dominate agriculture in the South after the Civil War.
Black families rented small parcels, or shares, to work themselves, and in return they would give a portion of their crop to the landowner. Some saved enough money to buy the land outright, but many more went into debt or were forced by poverty or the threat of violence to sign unfair contracts that offered little chance of improving their economic situation.
African-American farmers, since the days of sharecropping, have relied on recycled materials to keep farms running. In keeping with that tradition, all of Mr. McGill’s enclosures are made from recycled materials from other farms. 2014. Credit: Michael M. Santiago
Still, by 1920 African-American farmers made up approximately 14 percent of all farmers in the United States, and they owned a combined 15 million acres of land, according to United States Department of Agriculture reports. African-Americans now account for less than 1 percent of the nation’s farmers.
For farmers like Mr. McGill, the struggle continues. Every day he rises early to feed his pigs while keeping track of items he could reuse to maintain his farm. Tires and plywood, for example, can be turned into fencing.
As he makes a humble living, foreclosure is a constant threat for farmers like Mr. McGill. Even though he received compensation from a lawsuit against the Department of Agriculture that alleged racial discrimination in lending, the amount he and other farmers received was not enough considering what had been lost over the years, he said.
“There are a few white farmers who have helped me, a few white friends loaned me tractors,” Mr. McGill said. “Racism isn’t really much different than it used to be. It’s about the same. The K.K.K. used to burn the farmers’ land and houses, but now they do it with paperwork.”
Still, Mr. McGill finds a certain dignity in his quest to continue farming.
“If I could, I’d find someone to help me invest and get back into farming; it’s a little late in life, but I still want to do it,” he said. “You just can’t stop. You have to keep going. It looks real bad sometimes for black folks. Sometimes it looks like we just give up on life, but the door is not closed yet.”
Fayemi Shakur is a writer based in Newark. Her work has been featured online and in print in Nueva Luz Photographic Journal, The International Review of African American Art, and Hycide magazine.
Follow @msantiagophotos, @7fayemi and @nytimesphoto on Twitter. Michael Santiago is also on Instagram. You can also find us on Facebook and Instagram.
A Difficult Harvest for America’s Black Farmers
