Beyond Forty Acres and a Mule - by Debra a Reid & Evan P Bennett (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

"Provides a potent counter-narrative to the story of African Americans only as sharecroppers. These richly documented essays add depth and complexity to the little-known story of African American landowners."--Journal of American History

"Serves the discipline well in redirecting attention back to the land when examining African American life and culture. It also highlights the often-neglected landowners of color as individuals worthy of close attention, despite their minority status within American culture."--American Historical Review

"Presents the scope and complexity of landownership among black farmers following emancipation."--Missouri Historical Review

"Ground-breaking. The essays offer a counterpoint to the standard story that all African Americans in the rural South found themselves mired in poverty and dependency."--Melissa Walker, author of Southern Farmers and Their Stories

"Remarkable. The authors in this collection have retrieved African American farm owners from the margins of history, making clear that life on the land for African Americans not only transcended sharecropping but also shaped the contours of the struggle for freedom and justice."--Hasan Kwame Jeffries, author of Bloody Lowndes

Review Quotes

"Leaves the reader with a complicated and multilayered picture of black rural landowners in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries."--Agricultural History

"Presents the scope and complexity of landownership among black farmers following emancipation."--Missouri Historical Review

"Provides a potent counter-narrative to the story of African Americans only as sharecroppers. These richly documented essays add depth and complexity to the little-known story of African American landowners."--Journal of American History

"Serves the discipline well in redirecting attention back to the land when examining African American life and culture. It also highlights the often-neglected landowners of color as individuals worthy of close attention, despite their minority status within American culture. The essays are solidly researched and written, and are of uniformly high quality. A very satisfying collection on every front."-- American Historical Review

"Targets a startlingly understudied subject in both agriculture and African American history, proving how landownership and farming fostered empowerment, innovation, and pride among many black people, rather than representing agricultural life as another form of slavery, confinement, and oppression."--Journal of Southern History

About the Author

Debra A. Reid, professor of history at Eastern Illinois University, is author of Reaping a Greater Harvest: African Americans, the Extension Service and Rural Reform in Jim Crow Texas. Evan P. Bennett is assistant professor of history at Florida Atlantic University.