John Francis Ficara’s book “Black farmers in America” : capture of a twilight

Posté par admin
vendredi 24 février 2006 [n° 1089]

photo : John Francis Ficara

A new book of photographs captures a portrait of America’s black farmers as their numbers dwindle

Photojournalist John Francis Ficara’s “Black Farmers in America” project, winner of the 2001 NPPA-Nikon Sabbatical Grant, has been published as a book.

“Black Americans made up 14 percent of all farmers in 1920 and worked 16 million acres of land, but that today black farmers are less than 1 percent of the nation’s farmers and are working on less than 3 million acres. Changing technology, globalization, an aging workforce, racist lending policies, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture itself each contributed, in some way, to the demise of the black farmer in America”

John Francis Ficara’s “Black Farmers In America” Now A Museum Exhibit, Book

“Twilight for Black Farms” Talk of the Nation, February 23, 2006

“Today, so few black farmers remain that they are a rarity, specks of gold in a mine stripped bare long ago. The solitary, hard-pressed farmer still defiantly working his land has wrinkles not only from worry over money but from age: the young people have left. By 1994, 94 percent of the black farmers remaining were over thirty-five years old, and 35 percent were over sixty-five. The people now remaining on the land demonstrate a fierce attachment to farming as a way of black life. One half of those with their hands still covered in the good earth a decade ago said farming was their principle occupation despite the low wages.”

‘Black Farmers in America’ NPR.org

by John Francis Ficara and Juan Williams

Copyright (c) 2006 by The University Press of Kentucky. All rights reserved.

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Forty Acres and a Mule

photo : John Francis Picara 1

“General Sherman, with the approval of the War Department, issued Special Field Order No. 15 on January 16, 1865. The order stated that “the islands of Charleston south, the abandoned rice fields along the rivers for thirty miles back from the sea, and the country bordering St. Johns River, Florida are reserved and set apart for the settlement of Negroes now made free by the acts of war and the proclamation of the President of the United States.” Furthermore, Sherman’s order specified freedmen would be offered assistance “to enable them to establish a peaceable agricultural settlement.”

The land was divided into 40-acre tracts and Sherman distributed land titles to the head of each family of freedmen. He also ordered animals that were no longer useful to the military (mules and horses) to be distributed to each of the households. This is the origin of the phrase forty acres and a mule, which was promised to each freedman’s family. By the summer of 1865, 40,000 freedmen had received 400,000 acres of abandoned Confederate land.”

Forty Acres and a Mule


  1. Jerry Singleton, 81 years old and last generation farmer, returns “Tat” to a grazing pasture after some light plowing. Singleton continues to farm 12 acres of produce, but uses an old tractor for heavier plowing. [back]
Books, Photographie, United States

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