Chapter 2

 

This week’s chapter covers more of the hardships people of color faced when it came to owning their own land or just being part of society. When I explain, you’ll see there have been a lot of ups and downs regarding our land ownership. The author starts by telling us about a family in Carolina who was about to sell their land, then shifts to the history about their region’s farmland on how it was either divided among black farmers or taken form them. A lot of information was included about the hardships people faced with their land before shifting back to Watkins and her land.

 I don’t understand how things can never just run smoothly with black folk having their own land, whether its blatantly unfair laws or regulations or even just straight violence or hate, we can’t catch a break. Like I’ve stated earlier there was a lot of ups and downs, it was stated that almost a million black farmers owned the land they cultivated by 1920 which sounds phenomenal until you learn what started happening to undo that milestone. I think the author did a great job including the Watkins story and how she went about taking care of the family land. It was nice hearing all the practices she used from regenerative agriculture and how she admires the ecological synergies within it. Its also great the author included a lot of great information about mycelium and its impact in agricultural systems because I know our classmate Ava is very knowledgeable with the concepts and may have more interesting facts for our discussion.