African American Family Farms Essay

Throughout my research I have learned many interesting things about family farms. Although many Americans valued family farms, they faced many challenges and African American farm owners suffered extremely. My first article was a letter to the editor, which shows how important the family farms really are. The writer believes that “the preservation of the family owned and operated farm should be the top priority in our nation’s agricultural policy.” Another article was describing how hard African Americans had to fight to get equal treatment. African Americans didn’t get treated well at all. When they needed money for the farm, they went to the bank and had a hard time getting money. When they did receive money, it was in a joint bank account so the bank could see what they were

In a study that was published earlier this year states “The Civil Rights Commission predicts that if the current rate of decline continues at 57.3% in the past decade, or 2.5 times the rate for white-operated farms-there will be virtually no blacks operating farms by the year 2000.” In class, we talked about African Americans gaining freedom at the end of the Civil War, but with this freedom came many new laws. They made black codes, which was only for African Americans. This allowed African Americans to be arrested, but some arrests were for little things, and things that they didn’t even do. Even after African Americans gained freedom, they had many other obstacles they had to face. One of my articles is about women fighting for their families and farms. Women helped keep the family farms up and running. Women worked on the farm in many different ways. Women worked in the fields, meadows, and stock pens, but they also took care of the financial part of the farm and they helped make decisions concerning the farm. “Women wanted to assure the survival of the family farm as a way of life, which they consider threatened by hard times,