Freedom Farmers

Monica M. White is assistant professor of environmental justice at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
For more information about Monica M. White, visit the Author Page.

LaDonna Redmond is founder of the Campaign for Food Justice Now.
For more information about LaDonna Redmond, visit the Author Page.

"Writing consciously with an eye on the uses of the past for understanding the present and influencing the future, White recovers the lost stories of black activists who worked to ensure access to adequate and nutritious food for low-income communities, promoted alternatives to capitalist economic exploitation, and demanded a voice in the decisions affecting their lives. Scholars of African American history, agricultural history, and urban history will find much value in this book."—Journal of Southern History

"Freedom Farmers: Agricultural Resistance and the Black Freedom Movement stands literally as a landmark, ushering in a new era of community-based scholarship with and for agrarian justice. From here on out, scholars, activists, practitioners have a lodestar from which to research, practice, and advocate for food, farm, and racial justice: Dr. White's framework of 'collective agency and community resilience' (CACR)."—Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development

"This book will fill the gaps in your knowledge of Black US agricultural history, with a mix of narrative and evaluation. . . . Freedom Farmers provides an uplifting perspective, showing agriculture was not only a site of oppression and exploitation of Black people, but also one of proactive political resistance and cooperative effort."—Virginia Association for Biological Farming

"Freedom Farmers is an excellent model of using the past to inform the present."—H-Environment

"White brings forward the activity and thinking of women organizers. . . . Freedom Farmers traces a through-line of Black self-determination through economic empowerment—not through a narrowly meritocratic or exclusivist notion of progress and advancement but through democratic access to, and control over, land and life, and the central role of women therein."—Agrarian South: Journal of Political Economy

“A timely work that convincingly demonstrates the power of agricultural resistance for African American communities.”—Journal of African American History

Listen

• White talks with students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Center for Culture, History, and Environment in this podcast episode of their digital magazine, Edge Effects. (7/16/2019, running time 37:29)