Fannie Lou Hamer's Freedom Farms and Black Agrarian Geographies

Abstract

This paper examines Fannie Lou Hamer's Freedom Farms, a 1969 farming cooperative in Sunflower County, Mississippi. Specifically, this paper interrogates how Hamer's identity as a Black southern woman influences her formulation and daily activities at Freedom Farms. Theoretically, this paper situates Hamer as an expert agrarian labourer and knowledge producer who exists within a history of Black women who have always been utilised for their agrarian knowledge, but given little credit. Hamer's knowledge is a part of her body. This paper argues that Freedom Farms is a Black radical geography operating at three scales: the body, the farm and the southern agrarian landscape. This paper utilises Hamer's speeches, interviews and other archival documents to understand Hamer's efforts. Hamer's agrarian landscape is wrought with pain, but also the insistence in the economic opportunity that exists for Black people in agrarian spaces.

The Ground on Which We Stand: Making Abolition

“…Hamer created Freedom Farms: a Black farming cooperative in Sunflower County, Mississippi. Her work in creating a Black agrarian space was directly linked to her desire to keep herself and her Black woman counterparts safe from malnutrition, physical abuse, and sexual violence often experienced in similar agrarian landscapes (McCutcheon 2019, 214). These spaces were not utopian, but instead, centered squarely on violent plantation land (216).…”

“…In the spring semester, I experienced the power and difficulty of working within a “love ethic” (McCutcheon 2019, 217). My classmates and I attempted to transform the classroom into an abolitionist space; keyword here being attempted .…”

Pathways to reparations: land and healing through food justice

“…Others find joy in working on the land and view it as a way to reconnect with ancestors and cultural traditions and to heal from historical trauma (Penniman, 2018). However, ongoing systems of oppression and agrarian structural racism too frequently prevent Black folks from determining their relationship with the land (Heynen, 2019;McCutcheon, 2019). Land ownership, and thus wealth generation and self-determination, has been historically denied to Black populations (Coates, 2014;Wood and Gilbert, 2000).…”

Black Geographies of Respite: Relief, Recuperation, and Resonance at Florida A&M University

“…Marcus Garvey employed this strategy in the Back to Africa movement, as did the Provisional Government of the Republic of New Afrika through their “nation within a nation” concept. McCutcheon (2019) shows how Black women created places of self‐determination and self‐sustainability in opposition to a white supremacist society with her study of Fannie Lou Hamer’s Freedom Farm. These Black geographies challenge the dehumanising projects of white supremacy by “assert[ing] that Black lives do, indeed, matter” (Bledsoe 2017:32).…”