On YouTube, Steven Crowder and his co-hosts go on a wildly racist tirade against Black farmers.
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Black Farmers' Land Stolen Over Decades in the South
So Much of Our National History Is Lost to Guilty Amnesia
The land theft perpetrated against African Americans in the South is just one terrible example.
By Charles P. Pierce
Aug 14, 2019
Most times, the word "magisterial" gets tossed around as a loose synonym for, "that book I've been meaning to read but, at the moment, I'm using it to flatten out that old Moby Grape album." But Vann R. Newkirk's opus in The Atlantic about the decades of fraud and deceit perpetrated on African-American farmers in Mississippi is a job of work that more than qualifies.
Unlike their counterparts even two or three generations ago, black people living and working in the Delta today have been almost completely uprooted from the soil—as property owners, if not as laborers. In Washington County, Mississippi, where last February TIAA reportedly bought 50,000 acres for more than $200 million, black people make up 72 percent of the population but own only 11 percent of the farmland, in part or in full. In Tunica County, where TIAA has acquired plantations from some of the oldest farm-owning white families in the state, black people make up 77 percent of the population but own only 6 percent of the farmland. In Holmes County, the third-blackest county in the nation, black people make up about 80 percent of the population but own only 19 percent of the farmland. TIAA owns plantations there, too. In just a few years, a single company has accumulated a portfolio in the Delta almost equal to the remaining holdings of the African Americans who have lived on and shaped this land for centuries.This is not a story about TIAA—at least not primarily. The company’s newfound dominance in the region is merely the topsoil covering a history of loss and legally sanctioned theft in which TIAA played no part.
The historical statistics are staggering, and appalling.
Owners of small farms everywhere, black and white alike, have long been buffeted by larger economic forces. But what happened to black landowners in the South, and particularly in the Delta, is distinct, and was propelled not only by economic change but also by white racism and local white power. A war waged by deed of title has dispossessed 98 percent of black agricultural landowners in America. They have lost 12 million acres over the past century. But even that statement falsely consigns the losses to long-ago history. In fact, the losses mostly occurred within living memory, from the 1950s onward. Today, except for a handful of farmers like the Scotts who have been able to keep or get back some land, black people in this most productive corner of the Deep South own almost nothing of the bounty under their feet.
Emmanuel Freeman had orchards decades ago on this land in Nathalie, VA. Freeman, a black farmer, purchased a 1,000-acre plot of land after the Civil War. Now, the land is in litigation.
KATHERINE FREYGETTY IMAGES
And, while the legacy of slavery played a role in this intergenerational theft, and while Jim Crow and institutional racism were as destructive to these lives as they were to so many others, as Newkirk writes, the major heist happened more recently—and, with a painful irony, during the height of the civil rights movement.
As the historian Pete Daniel recounts, half a million black-owned farms across the country failed in the 25 years after 1950. Joe Brooks, the former president of the Emergency Land Fund, a group founded in 1972 to fight the problem of dispossession, has estimated that something on the order of 6 million acres was lost by black farmers from 1950 to 1969. That’s an average of 820 acres a day—an area the size of New York’s Central Park erased with each sunset. Black-owned cotton farms in the South almost completely disappeared, diminishing from 87,000 to just over 3,000 in the 1960s alone. According to the Census of Agriculture, the racial disparity in farm acreage increased in Mississippi from 1950 to 1964, when black farmers lost almost 800,000 acres of land. An analysis for The Atlantic by a research team that included Dania Francis, at the University of Massachusetts, and Darrick Hamilton, at Ohio State, translates this land loss into a financial loss—including both property and income—of $3.7 billion to $6.6 billion in today’s dollars.
There are so many parts of our national history that are lost to guilty amnesia because we don't ever want to reckon with them. I happened on Newkirk's piece while scouring around for details on the "Red Summer" of 1919, which is an unjustly obscure event all on its own. But I knew nothing of the events described in this story. Eugene O'Neill was right—there is no present or future, only the past, over and over again.
So Much of Our National History Is Lost to Guilty Amnesia
The land theft perpetrated against African Americans in the South is just one terrible example.
By Charles P. Pierce
Aug 14, 2019
Most times, the word "magisterial" gets tossed around as a loose synonym for, "that book I've been meaning to read but, at the moment, I'm using it to flatten out that old Moby Grape album." But Vann R. Newkirk's opus in The Atlantic about the decades of fraud and deceit perpetrated on African-American farmers in Mississippi is a job of work that more than qualifies.
Unlike their counterparts even two or three generations ago, black people living and working in the Delta today have been almost completely uprooted from the soil—as property owners, if not as laborers. In Washington County, Mississippi, where last February TIAA reportedly bought 50,000 acres for more than $200 million, black people make up 72 percent of the population but own only 11 percent of the farmland, in part or in full. In Tunica County, where TIAA has acquired plantations from some of the oldest farm-owning white families in the state, black people make up 77 percent of the population but own only 6 percent of the farmland. In Holmes County, the third-blackest county in the nation, black people make up about 80 percent of the population but own only 19 percent of the farmland. TIAA owns plantations there, too. In just a few years, a single company has accumulated a portfolio in the Delta almost equal to the remaining holdings of the African Americans who have lived on and shaped this land for centuries.This is not a story about TIAA—at least not primarily. The company’s newfound dominance in the region is merely the topsoil covering a history of loss and legally sanctioned theft in which TIAA played no part.
The historical statistics are staggering, and appalling.
Owners of small farms everywhere, black and white alike, have long been buffeted by larger economic forces. But what happened to black landowners in the South, and particularly in the Delta, is distinct, and was propelled not only by economic change but also by white racism and local white power. A war waged by deed of title has dispossessed 98 percent of black agricultural landowners in America. They have lost 12 million acres over the past century. But even that statement falsely consigns the losses to long-ago history. In fact, the losses mostly occurred within living memory, from the 1950s onward. Today, except for a handful of farmers like the Scotts who have been able to keep or get back some land, black people in this most productive corner of the Deep South own almost nothing of the bounty under their feet.
Emmanuel Freeman had orchards decades ago on this land in Nathalie, VA. Freeman, a black farmer, purchased a 1,000-acre plot of land after the Civil War. Now, the land is in litigation.
KATHERINE FREYGETTY IMAGES
And, while the legacy of slavery played a role in this intergenerational theft, and while Jim Crow and institutional racism were as destructive to these lives as they were to so many others, as Newkirk writes, the major heist happened more recently—and, with a painful irony, during the height of the civil rights movement.
As the historian Pete Daniel recounts, half a million black-owned farms across the country failed in the 25 years after 1950. Joe Brooks, the former president of the Emergency Land Fund, a group founded in 1972 to fight the problem of dispossession, has estimated that something on the order of 6 million acres was lost by black farmers from 1950 to 1969. That’s an average of 820 acres a day—an area the size of New York’s Central Park erased with each sunset. Black-owned cotton farms in the South almost completely disappeared, diminishing from 87,000 to just over 3,000 in the 1960s alone. According to the Census of Agriculture, the racial disparity in farm acreage increased in Mississippi from 1950 to 1964, when black farmers lost almost 800,000 acres of land. An analysis for The Atlantic by a research team that included Dania Francis, at the University of Massachusetts, and Darrick Hamilton, at Ohio State, translates this land loss into a financial loss—including both property and income—of $3.7 billion to $6.6 billion in today’s dollars.
There are so many parts of our national history that are lost to guilty amnesia because we don't ever want to reckon with them. I happened on Newkirk's piece while scouring around for details on the "Red Summer" of 1919, which is an unjustly obscure event all on its own. But I knew nothing of the events described in this story. Eugene O'Neill was right—there is no present or future, only the past, over and over again.
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ThatTruth777
Superstar
Calm down guys, its all just a joke!
The p*ssy way of talking shyt without wanting to take accountability for it.
The p*ssy way of talking shyt without wanting to take accountability for it.
get these nets
Veteran
Lack of Black media is why the actual reporting of facts isn't widespread.
Many who have platforms don't use them to inform their audiences.
Black owned business have received funding.
Black business groups have pushed the current administration to alter regulations to get more assistance to Black owned businesses.
And there have been private donors, institutions, and govt. funded initiatives earmarked directly for Black men.
Cac: I never knew we had black farmers?
10 seconds later
Cac: Not true they were never discriminated against.
You see how the devil works.
10 seconds later
Cac: Not true they were never discriminated against.
You see how the devil works.
it is supposed to affect anyone psychologically who clicks on this thread to then say, "hey, jim crow joe biden is helping black people and is the antithesis of these racists who are shytting on biden's bad faith rising tides will lift all boats policies"
criticize biden? then you are in agreement with these overtly racist ofays. they do/did the same with mein fuehrer trump
RARI_Godwind
St. BAWGustine - DarkSkxxxn
Deport the cac 
Stop being so emotional. Look it up. They frame it in universal terms to help get it across the line but an overwhelming majority if not functionally all of it is going to black farmers.
get these nets
Veteran
What the inbred guys in that video are saying is just slightly different than what Republican elected officials have said publicly.
https://www.thecoli.com/threads/lin...ion-to-black-farmers-as-“reperations”.836779/
The difference between the tone,rhetoric, and VOTING between the Democrats and Republicans in all three branches of government in 2021 are clear and visible.
Biden is the sitting president and should be criticized and challenged, but this "both sides" stuff goes against the facts.
Bruce LeRoy
All Star
Anyone notice how the worst ones pushing this alt right white supremacist bullshyt are Canadian?
Mike the Executioner
What went on up there? Poppers and weird sex!
Why does this idiot's name have to be associated with one of the greatest cartoons ever made? 
fact: there has not been one piece of policy and legislation from the democrats specifically for black people & this is no different. more rising tides will lift all boats policies and having the nerve to frame it as reparations is incredibly bad faith. just like democrats such as bill maher calling obamacare reparations. whoa. ok fine so let's break it down shall we?
5 billion for farmers "of color" and black farmers make up 1/4 of those farmers. 1/4 of 5 billion dollars = 1.25 billion dollars which comes nowhere close to the money lost in the black farming kleptocracy let alone can serve as some sort of reparations
this is insulting b, shame on you & the rest of your black democratic cohorts. you keep saying the tone is different, of course it is my brother. the republicans don't need our 87% of the vote to get in the white house so the democrats keep pretending they fukk with us. they are slightly more polite dixiecrats who are just as racist, we have to see the game for what it is
Take It In Blood
Banned
i chuckled at the Hennessey tree part
Isn't this cac Canadian too? I didn't listen to none of that bullshyt someone needs to punch him in the face.