Remove Acre Remove Mechanics Remove Sharecropping
article thumbnail

A Brief History of Discrimination against Black Farmers—Including by the USDA

The Equation

Such promises included “ 40 acres and a mule ,” the first unsuccessful systematic attempt at providing reparations. The Southern Homestead Act was enacted to redistribute 46 million acres of land to formerly enslaved people. The failure of this act likely played a role in paving the way for sharecropping and tenant farming.

article thumbnail

Transforming the Delta

Food Environment and Reporting Network

flatland of small, half-abandoned towns surrounded by large, mechanized farms. If we took 5 percent of the acres and diverted them into almost anything that wasnt a commodity, its literally an additional $2.5 As mechanization was driving Black sharecroppers to leave the Delta, Black farmers who owned land were losing it.

Acre 89