Black Land Loss in the United States

In 1910, Black farmers owned as many as 16 million acres of farmland in the United States. While that comprised only 1.8 percent of U.S. farmland at the time, Black farmers own even less today: as of 2017, just 2.9 million acres, or 0.32 percent. ¹²

Racist violence, anti-Black legislation, discrimination at federal agencies and other systemic injustices all contributed to that decline over the course of the 20th century. While the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s exposed some of the racism directed toward Black farmers and prompted calls for change, discrimination is an ongoing problem in the U.S. Department of Agriculture and other agencies that administer farm policy. In a farm economy where loans, credit programs and subsidies are necessary for survival, that exclusion put many Black farmers far behind their white counterparts financially, often forcing farms to close. Today, many Black farmers who have managed to hold on have limited resources to challenge discrimination or take other steps to protect their property for themselves and future generations, a problem made worse by developers who exploit legal loopholes in inheritance law to scoop up Black-owned farmland at low rates.

Black land loss represents a systemic blockage of Black Americans’ opportunity to build generational wealth: One estimate suggests that the total active farmland lost since 1920 has meant more than $326 billion in lost wealth for Black farmers and their families. ³ As farmland around the country continues to pass into a smaller number of hands, a trend of consolidation that began in the early 20th century, it’s unlikely that these losses can be reversed. But with policy changes and targeted outreach, the drivers of further land loss can be halted. Meanwhile, corrective measures for historic discrimination, while politically difficult, present an opportunity to keep Black-owned farms afloat and provide some compensation to families whose land was taken from them.

The fight for Black land ownership in the U.S.

Black people have shaped agriculture since the earliest years of European settlement in North America, with Spanish colonists bringing enslaved Africans to present-day Florida as early as 1565. ⁴ The first enslaved people in the 13 colonies arrived in Jamestown, Virginia, in 1619, where they were forced to work in tobacco fields. ⁵

Between the American Revolution and the Civil War, the labor of enslaved people became central to U.S. agriculture — especially in the South, where enslaved people made up the majority of the labor force for cash crops like cotton. After Emancipation, recognizing both the skill that Black farmers already possessed and the importance of land ownership for building wealth, many Black leaders and abolitionists proposed land redistribution programs for newly freed Black people. While some early efforts — notably the Union Army’s promise to give each  Black family 40 acres (and later mules) — were implemented to various extents, they were quickly reversed by President Andrew Johnson as part of his more limited plans for Reconstruction. ⁶

In the absence of government-administered land redistribution, many Black farmers entered into often-imbalanced agreements with white landowners as sharecroppers or tenant farmers. Sharecroppers were loaned a small portion of land and given tools, seeds and other supplies, which they then paid back with a portion of the crop, keeping the rest. Tenant farmers, who generally paid cash to rent land and purchased seeds and tools themselves, were slightly better off, with a little more control over their farms and finances.

But in both scenarios, the tenancy agreements were exploitative: Though chattel slavery had been abolished, white landowners still had a reliable flow of Black farm labor, and they could still make arbitrary rules about how their tenants were allowed to live. These arrangements also kept many farmers in debt, as rent for a piece of land was often higher than a realistic profit for the crops grown on it, leaving many sharecroppers in debt and unable to escape. In an effort to make as much money as possible, most relied on cash crops like cotton, which provided some financial returns but also depleted the soil over time, making each successive harvest less productive. This entrapment is the reason many historians refer to tenant farming and sharecropping as “slavery under another name.” ⁷

Even with the postwar promise of mass land redistribution unfulfilled and most Black farmers stuck in exploitative tenancy agreements toward the end of the 19th century, some did manage to purchase their own land in the South, thanks in large part to help from the Black community. Black thought leaders like Booker T. Washington were pivotal in helping to establish agricultural colleges and extension services specifically for Black farmers. With better training, farmers learned how to grow more diverse crops and maximize their returns, helping them escape the push and pull of the cotton market. Eventually, some were able to purchase property. ⁸ Other efforts, like cooperatives organized through Black churches, helped pool resources for farmers to purchase land — though the growth of these organizations was hampered by “Black codes” that limited Black people’s ability to form their own financial organizations. ⁹

A few other factors in the late 19th century helped propel more Black farmers to financial independence, especially a rise in global cotton prices that meant more farmers could afford their own land than before. ¹⁰ Meanwhile, the westward expansion of the U.S. and the theft of Native American land dramatically lowered the prices of farmland in the East; because white farmers could claim new, free land in the West under the Homestead Act, many rushed to sell their Eastern farms at low prices. While Black farmers were generally prevented from claiming the free land offered to white settlers, they were able to purchase land in the East from departing white farmers. ¹¹

Black land ownership rose slowly but steadily between 1875, when Black farmers owned about 3 million acres of farmland, and 1910, when Black farmers owned at least 12.8 million, per the U.S. Census of Agriculture. ¹² Other estimates place the historic total at 16 million acres, a discrepancy that can be explained by different definitions of ownership, gaps in records and changes to the methods of the Census and other surveys. ¹⁴

Even at this peak of Black land ownership in the U.S., farmers who owned their own land were in the minority; most Black farmers (more than 600,000 by 1920) were still sharecroppers or tenant farmers. But as agriculture became more mechanized, landowners found that farming land themselves was more profitable than hosting tenant farmers, eventually pushing many Black families out of agriculture entirely and toward cities that had industrial jobs as part of the Great Migration northward.

The drivers of Black land loss