Black Youth, Literacy, And Land: A Historical and Textual Reckoning

Black Youth, Literacy, And Land:A Historical and Textual Reckoning Alfred W. Tatum (bio) The relationship between land and literacy among Black people in the United States is layered and complex, and does not receive adequate attention that captures significant historical and contemporary movements, policies, and economic practices. Black people were often required to navigate across industries and disciplines—often without formal education and excluded from institutions, resources, and clandestine activities—to acquire land following the Civil War and during the Reconstruction period. Exclusion and extraordinary navigation still occur today. However, there is a dearth of nonfiction and fiction texts in the history and social studies curriculum that focus on the collective demand for and combined use of land and literacy among Black people throughout history. Black men, women, and children's relationships with land and literacy are glossed over in literature and nonfiction texts. Contributing to the unlikely nature of a greater curricular focus, some states have recently legislated measures to make it more difficult to teach history or other disciplinary texts with racist overtones required to understand and unravel the complexities of the United States' racial past. Georgia HB 1080, as an example, prohibits (1) the discussion of divisive concepts, as part of a larger course of instruction in an objective manner and without endorsement, and (2) the use of curricula that address the topics of slavery, racial oppression, racial segregation, or racial discrimination, including topics relating to the enactment and enforcement of laws resulting in racial oppression, segregation, and discrimination, in an objective manner and without endorsement. Two years ago, more than seven hundred books were collectively banned in Florida and Texas. Thirty percent of banned books in the United States have themes of race and racism.1 Racial Land and Literacy Choreography There are instances, however, when land ownership and literacy are clearly allied in historical texts. The prize-winning author David Fischer wrote the following in African Founders: How Enslaved People Expanded American Ideals: Robert Lemmons began to be well paid. He saved his profits, invested in land, built a holding of 1,200 acres, became a successful rancher, rented some of his land, added another business, and became a local End Page 30 moneylender. He also taught himself how to read and write, and settled down in the town of Carizzo Springs, near the family who had owned him.2 Lemmons, like other Black men who moved to the western frontier, leaving the southern states in their rearview mirror, found dignity and respect in racially hostile spaces because of his skills and ability to "commune with animals."3 As another example, George McJunkin navigated racial terrains and saved his money to become one of the first Black ranch foremen and ranch owners in Texas during the first decade of the 1900s. Acquiring land was often fraught with fear and anxiety because white landowners and institutions often reneged on fair agreements or made deceptive contracts that were signed by those who could not read. Deviously, "white farmers preferred to deal with black farmers who could not read legal documents or calculate profits at settling-up time."4 However, being literate was no safeguard to avoid "the orgy of theft"5 that resulted in denial or loss of land, as captured in a conversation between a literate Black sharecropper and white landowner in Natchitoches, Louisiana, in the early 1920s: "Mr. Richmond," Harold began, polite but firm, "I was wonderin' when you gonna give me papers for my land. I done paid you all the money I owe you, suh." Richmond's laugh held no humor. He looked Harold right in the eye and brought his face close. "Now, Harold, You know a nigger can't own land, don't' you?" ... He held up his papers. "But, suh, I paid you—"6 The Farm Security Administration (FSA) was created in 1937 to approve and administer farm loans that supported applicants, primarily rural and destitute, in buying land, farm equipment, and other needed resources. Seventy-two years removed from the end of the Civil War, Black people should have disproportionately benefited from the FSA, because it was created when eight out of ten Black Americans lived in the...