Dispossession: Discrimination against African American Farmers in the Age of Civil Rights

Abstract

Dispossession: Discrimination against African American Farmers in the Age of Civil Rights. By Pete Daniel. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013. Pp. xv, 332. Preface, illustrations, notes, ac- knowledgments, index. $34.95.)Pete Daniel makes his argument clear at the beginning of this book: "civil rights laws . . . only intensified the USDA's bureaucratic resolve to resist the concept of equal rights. . . . The staff perfected passive nullifica- tion, that is, pledging their support even as they purposefully undermined equal opportunity laws" (p. 1). The book covers more than the bureaucratic resolve of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), however, because USDA officials seem to play only a supporting role in the history that Daniel narrates. Instead, Dispossession shows how individuals at the local level harassed voters at county committee elections constituted to carry out USDA policy. Public employees of segregated extension offices, paid partially with federal appropriations funneled through state coffers but supplemented with local business and county-level public funding, worked at the county level to involve some farmers while ignoring oth- ers. Individuals dedicated to retaining white control worked the hardest in the parts of the South where black farmers constituted the majority of the population. Daniel recognizes their leverage, explaining that "power- ful farmers and pliant bureaucrats operated the machinery that disbursed federal funds and information" (p. 11). He acknowledges the influence of agribusiness interests as well. Thus. Dispossession indicates that these three-white capitalist farmers, agribusiness, and bureaucrats-rather than the USDA alone, conspired against black farmers.Dispossession shows how the New Deal heralded a new era in U.S. agricultural policy. It accelerated land consolidation by capitalist farmers, predominately white. This resulted, as Daniel explains, from a coopera- tive effort that involved farmers, agricultural processors, and other corpo- rate interests (agribusiness) along with diverse public entities (agrigov- emment). They united in their commitment "to replace labor-intensive with capital-intensive farming operations" (p. 12). Daniel indicates that "federal agricultural policy and laborsaving science and technology be- came weapons that ruthlessly eliminated sharecroppers, tenants, and small farmers" (p. 12). The narrative includes numerous examples of the diverse, direct, and often aggressive ways that many interests, rather than a monolithic bureaucracy, negated the power that once accompanied land- ownership. The triumvirate also ignored or stalled while responding to black farmer's requests. African Americans with ties to the land faced all these roadblocks as they pursued goals as American as purchasing tractor tires, securing a loan to put their crop in the ground, receiving a legal share of their crop, or casting a vote.Daniel does not focus on any one state or delve deeply into any one crop culture. Instead his narrative includes examples from across the South (as well as brief mention of non-southern states like Illinois and Kansas). …