Will Biden Finally Deliver Justice to Black Farmers?
Black land ownership has fallen 90% in the past century because of discriminatory lending and USDA policies.
The overwhelming majority of Black farmers lost their land over the last century
Photographer: Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images
Malcom X called land ownership the basis of all freedom. At the time he spoke in 1963, freed slaves and their descendants had already lost millions of acres of farmland in the South, seized through unfair foreclosures and forced sales.
Despite the progress made during the civil rights movement, the crisis of Black land loss only deepened. From a peak of one million Black farmers in 1910, there are fewer than 45,000 today. In a century, the overwhelming majority of Black farmers have been dispossessed of their land.