Black Culture Keepers
2018 Career Ladder Profiles 1
Rising Professionals in the Agricultural Field of North Carolina
2018 Career Ladder Profiles 2
Rising Professionals in the Agricultural Field of North Carolina
A Gullah Geechee native is fighting to keep her culture alive
When Jackie Mikel (pronounced as “Michael”, a.k.a. Geechee Gal), stands in front of one of the slave houses at Boone Hall plantation, she must be standing where her great-great-grandmothers once stood. They must give Jackie enough strength, inspiration and conviction to tell a compelling story of the Gullah People. Like her great-great-grandmothers, who were brought from west Africa as slaves to the Gullah Geechee Corridor of North and South Carolina and Georgia.
A Tribute to Mr. Marshall Harvey 12/8/45 - 2/13/22
This tribute to Mr. Marshall Harvey -(12/8/45 - 2/13/22), was written by Mrs. Bettie Murchison.
We thank Mrs. Murchison for allowing us to add her tribute to Mr. Harvey's life to our collection of Black Culture Keepers.
Agricultural Migrant
July 1940. “Florida agricultural migrant with a group who had their own tent which they pitched outside the grading station at Belcross, North Carolina.”
Alice Eley Jones
Historian Alice Eley Jones and I recently got into her Jeep and went in search of herring -- or at least the history of herring fishing. We were in Murfreesboro, her hometown. Herring have been an important part of life in that northeast corner of the state for centuries. As early as the 1740s, large commercial herring fisheries flourished there. They often employed mile-long nets, sometimes caught half a million fish in a single haul, and exported tons of salted herring up the Eastern Seaboard and to the West Indies.
Beaches of the South
The government funded beach construction for private developers, which displaced Black farmers from their coastal lands.
Black Farm Ownership 1920
Percentage of Black farm ownership by County in North Carolina in 1920.
(shared via Stan Best)
Black Farmer
Image: Prize-winning colt and mares raised by colored farm owner who cooperated with colored farm agent in planning program. Caswell County, North Carolina, 1940 Oct.
Black Farmers & Agriculturalists Association
Black farmers from Georgia, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Mississippi and other southern states, and the national president of Black Farmers & Agriculturalists Association (BFAA), Gary R. Grant, participated. The first of five protests took place at the Farm Services Agency (FSA) offices in Brownsville and Bolivar, Tennessee. It was in support of Black farmers who had been denied or delayed operating loans.
Black Farmers in Stem
Negro farmers in Stem, North Carolina, May 1940.
Photographer: Jack Delano
Source: LOC
Black Farmers sleeping in White camp room
Image: Black farmers sleeping in White camp room in warehouse. They often must remain overnight or several days before their tobacco is auctioned. Durham, North Carolina, November 1930.
Black Farmers' Land Loss
Photograph: The Scott family are among the handful of black farmers who have been able to keep or get back some of their agricultural land. (Zora J. Murff)
Black landowners in the South have lost 12 million acres of farmland over the past century—mostly from the 1950s onward.
Caroline Atwater
Photograph: Caroline Atwater standing in the kitchen door of her double one and a half story log house.
Orange County, North Carolina, July 1939.
By Dorothea Lange
Source: LOC
Derrick and Paige Jackson Grass Grazed Farm
Home on the Homestead: Meet A North Durham Farming Family of Seven
September 14, 2021/Marie Muir/Eat & Drink/Durham Magazine
The Jacksons started Grass Grazed farm in 2019 to introduce others to the benefits of regenerative agriculture.
Federal Writers' Project: Slave Narrative Project, Vol. 11, North Carolina, Part 1, Adams-Hunter
North Carolina Slave Narrative Project
Feggen Jones and family
Arthur Rothstein made a photo-study of the Jones family—an example of a successful farm loan recipient.
He noted that, “Mr. and Mrs. Feggen Jones live with their 14 children on an 86-acre farm purchased with assistance from the Farm Security Administration. The farm’s electricity is supplied by the Rural Electrification Administration.”
Finding Personality In The Past
Jerome Bias conducts a cooking demonstration last spring at the Lakeport Plantation near Lake Village.
Impeached of His Efforts To Fight The KKK during Reconstruction
Eddie Davis, a former teacher and politician from Durham who is now the town historian
Jesse Lytle
The Lytle Family were members of Randolph County’s,(NC) African American aristocracy. His grandfather, Frank Lytle (c, 1774-1869) was freed in 1795 after the death of his master and father, Thomas Lytle of the Caraway community.
Kendrick Ransome
Kendrick Ransome is a Black Farmer and Owner of Golden Organic Farms LLC that is responsible for the Black Farmer Incubator, in Edgecombe County, NC.
Lizzie Piggot
Image: Left photo: Lizzie Piggot sits in her kitchen reading a book in the 1950s
Right photo: Lizzie and Henry. Credit: NPS
Lizzie Pigott was born to Leah Abbott (who later took on the name Pigott) August 28, 1889 on Portsmouth.
Mr. John William Mitchell
John William Mitchell (1885 – 1955) was a 1909 graduate of the Agricultural and Mechanical College for The Colored Race (now North Carolina A&T) who became a pioneering leader in the North Carolina Cooperative Extension Service, and later for the United States Department of Agriculture.
Negro group meeting of the county land use planning committee in the schoolhouse in Yanceyville, Caswell County, North Carolina.
J.E. Brown, leading farmer, elected chairman and also Negro member of Caswell County planning commission. October 1940.
New Bern's African American Heritage Trail
New Bern's new African American Heritage Trail has no equal in Eastern North Carolina and adapts visual arts needed for a modern audience. That's an assessment by David Dennard, retired East Carolina history professor and founder of ECU's African American Studies program.
Nonprofit, Local Churches Partner to Support Farmers of Color
To combat inequality in the food system, a new pilot program created by the Rural Advancement Foundation International-USA this spring is partnering Wake County churches with N.C. farmers of color.
Our Founder and Culture Keeper
From The G.C. and France Hawley's founder, a short article for Black History Month 2019.
Black History Month to many African Americans is a time to remember and honor the lives of our enslaved ancestors who lived and died in bondage, to celebrate our freedom from chattel slavery, to uplift our advancements in spite of America's White supremacist foundations, and to encourage our youth to continue to strive to be the best they can be.
Our Founder and Culture Keeper (cont.)
We would like to share with you an opportunity that was provided to our founder, Lynda D. Edwards. In her work in being a culture keeper, to gather, protect, decolonize and make available in one space the History and Culture of the African Americans of NC, she found that one of her stories was in need to speak out and be heard..
People Are Underrepresented
People are “underrepresented” because that’s a consequence of being "historically excluded" which is the cause.
Preserving Legacies
Meet the woman helping preserve the legacy of Black cowboys and cowgirls.
Rendering fat after hog-killing
(Two Black women and a Black man) Rendering fat after hog-killing. Near Maxton, North Carolina. Dec.(?) 1938.
Photographer: Marion Post Wolcott, 1910-1990.
Source: LOC - Farm Security Administration Collection
SOUL CITY FARM
Latonya Andrews standing in a newly cleared field Friday, March 12, 2021, in Norlina, NC, that will be returned to farming.
Samantha Foxx
Meet the Inspiring Woman Behind North Carolina's Buzziest Farm Samantha Foxx, a master beekeeper, started Mother’s Finest Urban Farms three years ago in an effort to serve the local community, educate, and inspire people to look after the earth.
Son of Farmsteader at Roanoke Farms
Son of farmsteader at Roanoke Farms-Halifax County--Enfield. North Carolina - 1938 Apr.
The Black Church Food Security Network
Fourtee Acres is a 45-acre family owned forestry, farming, natural gardening and rental property operation established in 1994 that is engaged in sustainability for the future. Fourtee Acres is part of the 195 acre century old Williams Family Farm (established 1916).
The Brown Family Farm
The Brown Family Farm was established in 1865 by first generation farmer Byron Brown. Byron was the first generation farmer who grew timber and raised live stock until his death in 1931. His son Grover Brown began farming as a second generation farmer establishing a peach orchard on the land, cultivating grain and raising live stock until the late 1970’s.
The Culture Keepers
National Black Storytelling Festival, in Wake this week, highlights Moral Monday movement
The Green Heffa Farms
"There are bigger farms.
Richer farms. Inherited farms.
Better-resourced farms. More knowledgeable and tech savvy farms. More popular farms. But there is only one Green Heffa Farms. And that’s what we focus on."
The Moore's Family Farm
Meet Kelton Moore, owner and operator of The Moore's Family Farm in Blounts Creek North Carolina, and founding member of Down East Fresh Cooperative. BCFSN's Black Church Supported Agriculture program is a proud partner of Moore's Family Farm.
The Origins of Black History Month
As we draw closer to Black History Month 2019, we would like to provide background about Mr Carter G. Woodson, the fire behind the push in Black committees to become culture keepers which would preserve, celebrate and remember our history, culture and our stories. Let us continue to speak the name Carter G. Woodson.
Wes Chris
1939 - Feeding the sorghum cane into the mill to make syrup on property of Wes Chris, a tobacco farmer of about 165 acres in a prosperous Negro settlement near Carr, Orange County, North Carolina.
Wes Cris
Photograph title: given by photographer:
Skimming the boiling cane juice to make sorghum syrup at cane mill near Carr, Orange County, North Carolina, September 1939.
