That leaves cooperatives, with their democratic
control of value-added businesses, as the major institu-
tional mechanism for sustaining independent farmers.
However, as applied in predominantly white farming
regions of the U.S., members’ operating independence
is assumed and the primary objective of cooperatives
is to maximize member earnings. By itself, indepen-
dent farming traditionally has been regarded as only
an implicit objective in these cooperatives.
3
For many white farmers, independent farming
has been an economically challenging vocation, but
unlike black farmers, they have not experienced social
and institutional barriers to owning and operating
farms. For many black farmers, there is a special incen-
tive to operate independently: to avoid both farming
under the controlling systems that many white
planters applied in the past, and the trade credit prac-
tices that led to foreclosure on land they owned
(Litwack, 137).
Since the civil rights movement, cooperatives
have played an important part in helping black farm-
ers to sustain or develop as independent operators. As
a public issue, the objectives have been civil rights and
fighting poverty, and not independent farming. In fact,
during President Lyndon Johnson’s "war on poverty,"
many of today’s black farmer cooperatives got their
start with financial assistance from the Federal
Government. But to black farmers and community
leaders, building and sustaining operating indepen-
dence is a concomitant objective and cooperatives have
a major role in achieving that end.
4
The experience of black farmers is directly con-
nected with major events in Afro-American and gener-
al U.S. history. For a quick reference on pertinent his-
torical developments, see a chronology of periods and
events for 1865-1965 in Appendix Table 1. The first sec-
tion of this report discusses farm-operating arrange-
ments that developed during Reconstruction and the
subsequent decades of progress for some, but worsen-
ing conditions for most black farmers with the rise of
the Jim Crow era in the 1890s. The second section
examines development of three strategies during the
period of 1880 to 1932 for establishing independent
farmers: cooperatives, farm settlement projects, and
farming self-sufficiency. The third section describes the
impact and legacy of the New Deal period, 1933-41, on
the prospects for black farmers. The fourth section
examines the influence of the civil rights movement on
the rise of black farmer cooperatives during the 1950-
60s and the role of the Federation of Southern
Cooperatives/Land Assistance Fund (FSC/LAF). The
last section discusses some of the challenges in using
cooperatives to sustain independent black farmers,
and how they are being met in rural black communi-
ties to accomplish value-added initiatives.
Black Farmers in the South, 1865-1932
Abolitionists worked to end slavery for several
decades before the Civil War, but most were uncon-
cerned about how former slaves would transition to
freedom in a capitalist society (Pease, 19 and 162).
When victory by the North was imminent, this issue
was immediately in the forefront. Its resolution
required answering a basic question: to what extent
should government provide for a transition to "free"
labor rather than support the desire of many freedmen
to be independent farmers?
There were isolated opportunities for former
slaves to acquire land. As early as 1862, Union gener-
als subdivided some plantations of Confederate lead-
ers for small farm settlements by former slaves. The
government sold confiscated land on St. Helena Island
and Port Royal, SC, in 1863 to a philanthropist-entre-
preneur who produced cotton by hiring freedmen and
arranged mortgage payment plans for those farmers to
gradually purchase the land (Pease, 139-41).
The first Freedmen’s Bureau Act in 1865 included
plans for 40-acre tracts to be sold on easy terms from
either abandoned plantations or to be developed on
unsettled lands. But by late 1865, President Andrew
Johnson terminated further initiatives by the Union
Army for small farm settlements. In 1866, a second
2
3
Joseph Knapp’s two-volume history of American agricultural
cooperatives, the most comprehensive to-date, describes how
farmers formed associations to improve their income. He attached
a different meaning to the term "independent farming" from the
way it is defined in this report. He viewed the late 19th century
commercialization of agriculture as eliminating farmer
independence. In his view, the decline of independent farming
created the need for cooperatives (Knapp 1969, 46). The stated
purposes of most cooperatives are synonymous with sustaining
the independence of farmers, but in following Knapp’s conception,
they are rarely ever described in such terms.
4
Even black political and government leaders emphasize economic
development and not operating independence. This emphasis,
which misses the desire of many black farmers, is described by
Jerry Pennick in the Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land
Assistance Fund 25th Anniversary Report of 1992: "Of all the black
leaders, both locally and nationally, how many have provided us
with a real and viable plan for economic independence? Invariably
they say that in order for us to achieve economic independence,
we must have jobs. By jobs, they mean working for the established
employment producing industries, which are over 95 percent
white owned and controlled."