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Black Agrarianism: The Significance of African American Landownership in the Rural South

dc.contributor.authorQuisumbing King, Katrina
dc.contributor.authorWood, Spencer D.
dc.contributor.authorGilbert, Jess
dc.contributor.authorSinkewicz, Marilyn
dc.date.accessioned2018-11-20T15:33:07Z
dc.date.available2019-11-01T15:10:32Zen
dc.date.issued2018-09
dc.identifier.citationQuisumbing King, Katrina; Wood, Spencer D.; Gilbert, Jess; Sinkewicz, Marilyn (2018). "Black Agrarianism: The Significance of African American Landownership in the Rural South." Rural Sociology 83(3): 677-699.
dc.identifier.issn0036-0112
dc.identifier.issn1549-0831
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/2027.42/146353
dc.description.abstractAgrarianism is important in the American mythos. Land represents both a set of values and a store of wealth. In this article, we ask how land matters in the lives of rural, southern, Black farmland owners. Drawing on 34 interviews, we argue that, since the end of slavery, land has continued to operate as a site of racialized exclusion. Local white elites limit Black farmers’ access to landownership through discriminatory lending practices. At the same time, Black farmland owners articulate an ethos in which land is a source of freedom, pride, and belonging. This we term “Black agrarianism.” They cultivate resistance to the legacies of slavery and sharecropping and contemporary practices of social closure. These Black farmland owners, then, view land as protection from white domination. Thus, we demonstrate how landownership is a site for the re‐creation of racial hierarchy in the contemporary period while also offering the potential for resistance and emancipation.
dc.publisherWiley Periodicals, Inc.
dc.publisherUniversity Press of Mississippi
dc.titleBlack Agrarianism: The Significance of African American Landownership in the Rural South
dc.typeArticleen_US
dc.rights.robotsIndexNoFollow
dc.subject.hlbsecondlevelSociology
dc.subject.hlbtoplevelSocial Sciences
dc.description.peerreviewedPeer Reviewed
dc.description.bitstreamurlhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/146353/1/ruso12208_am.pdf
dc.description.bitstreamurlhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/146353/2/ruso12208.pdf
dc.identifier.doi10.1111/ruso.12208
dc.identifier.sourceRural Sociology
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dc.owningcollnameInterdisciplinary and Peer-Reviewed


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