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A Black man wearing overalls leans against the handle of a plough, a mule and another man in the background.
Black landowner and farmer in Georgia, 1941. Library of Congress.

Peak of Black community land ownership and farming.

1919

The Story of Rural Health
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Black landowner and farmer in Georgia, 1941. Library of Congress.

In 1919, Black families own 16-19 million acres of land within the United States (14% of all agricultural land). There are 218,000 Black farmer-owners or partial owners of that land, most of them in the South. This acreage will decline every subsequent year due to white supremacist terror campaigns, United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) loan discrimination, and many other forms of systemic racism.