Black ownership of farmland has dwindled to alarmingly low numbers due to many factors including usage of an obscure law | dG1fQTE1TXp6M3Z5Mkk
Category
🎥
Short filmTranscript
00:00 (dramatic music)
00:02 - When we look at 1920, there were 16 million acres of land
00:12 and present day, you look at there's only two million acres
00:15 of black owned land in the country.
00:16 That's 14 million acres of land that has just disappeared
00:20 from the black agricultural community.
00:25 - Black farmland lost in that 75 year period or so
00:30 was worth $326 billion.
00:34 - Think about all of the wealth that has been extracted
00:38 from these families.
00:39 - Land was something that freed us and offered opportunity
00:47 for us and our children to have something of our very own,
00:50 to enjoy something that would last for generations.
00:55 - Black people need space.
00:56 They understand the legacy.
00:58 - We got here, we didn't have nothing.
01:00 Every time we gained something,
01:01 there's been a reaction to it.
01:03 - Where do you go when you lose your land?
01:10 This is something you put everything you had
01:12 and in spite of everything you did, it's gone.
01:16 I would hear people talking about going back to their land.
01:23 I thought, how can we engage in a way
01:25 that actually makes a difference?
01:27 So let's engage the Thurgood Marshall College Fund
01:29 to engage black law schools, to get interns,
01:33 to then go work for the Federation of Southern Cooperatives
01:36 helping black folks keep title to the land that they have
01:39 or get good title.
01:40 - I've heard the stories throughout the years,
01:42 the things that my family had overcome, how we lost land.
01:45 I wanna invest the same time that I did
01:47 in getting my education and passing it on to my kids one day.
01:50 - We need to shift this idea about what it means
01:53 even to have our hands in the soil.
01:55 - This represents history.
01:57 This is a part of family reunions.
01:59 This land represents all that's good about our family.
02:02 - Land represents generational wealth.
02:05 You can have that land and pass it on to your children.
02:07 You're creating a reciprocating type of monetary payment
02:12 to that family.
02:13 But if you don't have that land structured right,
02:15 you will not benefit from it.
02:17 (upbeat music)
02:20 (upbeat music)
02:24 (whooshing)
02:26 (whooshing)
02:28 [BLANK_AUDIO]