Roundup: February 22, 2022
In honor of Black History month, we’ve tried to select for this special roundup a few highlights of recent research, news, commentary, and conversations that specifically honor the many important contributions of Black Americans to rural America. With this roundup, we also acknowledge the legacies of violence and harm that have shaped many of these landscapes and current rural relations, and we welcome your further suggestions of relevant work that we can consider, share, and amplify in this space.
Recent Publications
The Smithsonian and National Museum of African American History & Culture has produced this collection of resources, Celebrate Black History Month: Through the Lens of Black Health & Wellness.
Bryan Mann (Educational Leadership and Policy Studies, University of Kansas) and Annah Roger (Political Science, University of Alabama) investigate racial and economic isolation in schools in rural Alabama in Segregation Now, Segregation Tomorrow, Segregation Forever?.
Amy Swain (Education, East Carolina University) and Timberly L. Baker (Education, Arkansas State) recently published Whiteness Owns it, Blackness Defines it, which explores how rural education scholarship in the Southern Black Belt may better address racial equity and racist histories.
Willie J. Wright (Geography, Florida State) argues for a broader view of racial justice as part of the definition of environmental justice in As Above, So Below: Anti-Black Violence as Environmental Racism.
Thomas W. Mitchell’s (Texas A&M Law) piece on heir property and The Uniform Partition of Heirs Property Act is a classic that describes the unique challenges of protecting Black landowners’ property. Additional information about Professor Mitchell’s work, including his MacArthur “genius” grant, can be found in this piece.
News & Commentary
NPR recently did a piece on Black entrepreneurship in rural Mississippi.
Civil Eats recently featured a piece entitled Black Farmers Are Rebuilding Agriculture in Coal Country.
Chris Clayton recently highlighted the efforts of 19 Black families to build wealth and create a sense of place by developing a farm and community in this piece.
This blog post offers an overview of how housing policies have contributed to racial disparities in housing. Richard Rothstein’s 2017 book The Color of Law also provides a more in-depth, but non-rural-specific introduction into how federal housing policies in the 1940s and 1950s undermined the ability of Black families to own homes and accumulate wealth.
This article discusses Tracy McCurty’s work addressing historic wrongs for Black farmers. This piece provides an overview of an attempt to correct some of these wrongs through debt relief for Black farmers.
Events & Recordings
We Are Not Strangers Here: African American Histories in Rural California examines how African Americans have shaped California’s food and farming culture.
Journalist Aallyah Wright talked to Whitney Kimball Coe about the importance of amplifying rural stories and advancing equity, particularly in her home state of Mississippi, in this podcast episode for Rural Assembly.
