When nature calls

Valerie D. Braxton

Rue Mapp, Nature Swagger: Stories and Visions of Black Joy in the Outdoors, Chronicle Books, 2022

In Nature Swagger, Rue Mapp presents intimate stories showing the deep bond African Americans have with the natural world.

Horseback riders, beekeepers, surfers, mountain climbers, herbalists, sustenance farmers, snow skiers and those who swim with dolphins all draw you into their vividly told stories complemented with so many gorgeous color photographs that perusing the book is a great vicarious outing in itself.

Mapp’s own account of growing up in Lake County California details how she “fell deeply in love with nature” and acquired her swagger exploring the woodlands she describes as an oasis of discovery.  She is the founder of Outdoor Afro, a non-profit group dedicated to promoting Black people’s connection with nature in various ways.

Swagger speaks to my soul and causes me to reminisce about my gratifying interactions with nature and give reverence to God’s amazing creation.

However, Mapp shares a realm of possibilities that many African Americans may not have considered experiencing. Most of the book’s contributors are highly successful middle and upper middle class African Americans recounting experiences that are unfamiliar to, and financially unattainable, for the average Black person. Swagger lacks inclusivity of “everyday people” sharing their stories of retreating to nature as an emotional and spiritual respite from daily struggles and necessary to their very survival.

I remember my Uncle Spence going down to the creek near sundown in Kenbridge, Virginia with a broom straw in his teeth fishing with his pet goat in proximity. Of course, he had his “medicine for the stomach” (usually gin) in a brown paper bag. Nature was a place of refuge for him, away from the prejudices of some townsfolk.

Missing is the grandmother who has only worked as a domestic, still cooking Sunday dinner for her extended family and delighting in her small garden. She tends it as if it is sacred because it is, and because it belongs to her. Sometimes she shares her secret of adding a little sugar to water the plants.

The proudest fathers don’t have a lot of money to spend but can take their family on a nice outing in Three Lakes Park in Henrico County, Virginia where they can walk nature trails, fish, or hunt for insects. They get their swagger on when they see their children’s smiling faces and get kisses and hugs laced with “Thank you, Daddy. This is fun. We love you.”

My grandmother and mother used to say “Mother Nature has a cure for everything, even what ails your soul. No need for store bought medicine.” I recall them gathering plants, berries, and herbs and creating concoctions to cure everything from colds and headaches to diarrhea. As American descendants of the African diaspora, they intuitively held a respect for and understanding of the value of communing with nature.

They would instruct us to go outside and sit in the sun if we felt “sickly” or to walk and breathe deep on cool evenings to “let all the bad air out.”

As a little girl, I remember thinking when the warm sun hit my face that God was sending me a kiss.

As Mapp states, “Black people experience healing, peace, and resilience in the restorative elements of nature” and thus can find sanctuary if only for a little while.

As much as Nature Swagger engaged me, I hope Mapp will consider writing a sequel to this book that would be even more appealing to a broader readership. The outreach mission of her Outdoor Afro organization could easily make my wish  come true!

Valerie D. Braxton, a career public servant taught in underserved communities, served as chief of staff to a state senator, and was appointed to the administration of two successive Virginia Governors prior to her recent retirement. A sports enthusiast, jazz aficionado, and avid reader, she cherishes time with her family, friends, and faith community.

Harvest song from our hearts

Margaret Gray Bayne

We Are Each Other's Harvest: Celebrating African American Farmers, Land and Legacy  (Natalie Baszile, Amistad, 2021)

LC-USF34-009267-E. Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA/OW! Collection. Photo by Dorothea Lang

This eclectic collection of essays, articles, interviews, memoir excerpts, poems, quotes, photographs of black farmers includes Baszile’s own essay about her ten-year struggle to write her novel, Queen Sugar.  Together these pieces reveal the mostly hidden world of black Americans in agriculture. “I tried to gather stories from a range of people …who encourage us to remember our roots and reclaim our heritage,” says Bazile.

Those roots spread down to not just King Cotton, Queen Sugar ( Louisiana sugarcane), but also to tobacco and produce.

 We get the big picture here:  how young black people are breaking into agriculture, how they’re developing training grounds (e.g., Sankofa and Soulfire farms), and how we’re retaining black southern traditions such as respect for the land.

Framing and contextualizing these pieces are selections by scholars, historians, and journalists. The book also includes photographs and poems by luminaries like Robert Hayden, Lucille Clifton, Ross Gay, Leonard Moore, Robin Coste Lewis, Tim Seibles, and Elizabeth Alexander, an interview with the novelists Lalita Tademy and Margaret Wilkerson Sexton, two Louisiana natives, whose writings focus on the South.

But as much as Harvest is a celebration of African American agrarian life, it is also about the struggles of black farmers. In many respects, the book illuminates issues Baszile raised in Queen Sugar, a story about Charley Bordelon, a young black widow who  inherits an 800 acre sugar cane plantation.  Charley moves from Los Angeles to the fictional town of St. Josephine, Louisiana, where white competitors are attempting to take over her property.  It’s also hard for her to get business loans.

Throughout  the collection, farmers’ personal stories attest to land loss and theft and ongoing battles with the USDA representatives and real estate developers.  The book cites examples of how African Americans have lost land through violence, scare tactics and sometimes legal maneuvers.

One farmer lost 53 acres when the Farm Services Administration (FSA) would not allow him to restructure his debt. In her interview with Stanley Hughes,  Baszile explains that  Hughes prevailed in the end when his wife was able to repurchase land once owned by his family.

The Reels family of Carteret County, North Carolina, was not as fortunate. Brothers Melvin and Licurtis Reels spent eight years in jail for refusing to vacate 65 acres of beachfront property the family had owned for over a century.  In recounting their story, Lizzie Presser describes their refusal as a form of protest.  Prior to the brothers’ imprisonment, the family had spent years trying to reverse a partition sale, a legal process that can force the sale of jointly owned property.  Unknown to the Reels family, a cousin, one of the many heirs, sold his portion of the sixty-five acres.  The buyer filed a law suit that forced the sale of the remaining property, evicting the family off the land.

Heirs’ property also imposes additional limitations on owners.  For example, owners may be ineligible for USDA loans for livestock or seeds,  cannot use the land as collateral for loans, and are often ineligible for disaster relief.

The Rules’ experience was not unique. Thousands of acres, formerly owned by black families, have been lost along the South Carolina coast because owners lacked proper deeds and titles or because properties were auctioned for delinquent taxes.

Presser’s detailed essay along with those by Pete Daniel, “The Last Plantation: The USDA’s Racist Operating System,” and Clyde Ford, “America at the Crossroads: A History of Enslavement and Land” are critical to understanding the dramatic decrease in black farmers from nearly one million in 1920 to eighteen thousand in 1997.

Ford believes that the black southern land loss has been so devastating and unjust that “(o)nly the federal government can remedy centuries of discrimination, disenfranchisement and dispossession …  through legislative, judicial and executive actions.”  Meaning: more than 40 acres and mules!

This all sounds grim but some black farmers prevailed by working off-farm jobs, cooperating with neighbors, outsmarting USDA officials, or simply refusing to do business with local USDA agencies.

Kamal Bell, who studied farm production and livestock, persevered when FSA officials denied and delayed his loan applications.  Today he is the owner of Sankofa Farms, a twelve acre farm he uses to raise vegetables and to train troubled youths.

Young black people are carrying on family farming traditions and making new ones from the Carolinas to Alaska. Dexter Faison, the Nelson and Bluefort sons, farmer Leah Penniman, who graces the book's cover with her sister, and Brenae Royal, are “taking up the mantle."  And like their forebears, they remind us, as Lizzie Presser wrote, land ownership is an “ideological priority.”

Still, some observers do not believe small farmers will survive.  They point to USDA  programs and policies fundamentally favor “big ag,” large scale industrialized farms over 1000 acres. They also point out how the competition for land most often favors developers, not aspiring farmers.

Over the last seven years, Natalie Baszile has become a recognizable voice and advocate for African American farmers.  Before the publication of We Are Each Other's Harvest, she established the Black Harvest Fund to support nonprofits that aid black farmers and farmers of color.

Books in brief

The Intersectional Environmentalist: How to Dismantle Systems of Oppression to Protect People + Planet (Leah Thomas, Voracious, March 8, 2022)

Examining the inextricable link between environmentalism, racism, and privilege,  Leah Thomas explains her conviction that we cannot save the planet without uplifting the voices of its people, especially those most often unheard. Thomas shows how black, indigenous and people of color are unequally and unfairly impacted by environmental injustices and argues that the fight for the planet is in tandem to the fight for civil rights.

Periodicals/videos

Two young black marijuana farmers from Brooklyn who moved upstate to start a regular produce farm, incorporated cannabis, and business is booming.

They are very health-conscious and envision a wellness center on the farm. Great!  But the other side of the situation is that dependence on psychogenic substances to ease the pains of impoverishment has devastated black communities. Can these situations be reconciled? One way would be to learn about how West African and indigenous American communities handled the use of entheogens. Reconnecting with indigenous wisdom and the natural world will be key to healing and re-balancing the lives of the urban poor.

Fossil fuel company uses black leaders in Virginia to support pipeline and deceive communities, a continuation of  long-standing exploitative practices by oil and gas companies. Nina Lakhani, The Guardian, October 10, 2022

Megadrought in the American south-west: a climate disaster unseen in 1,200 years The Guardian, September 12, 2022

Relating the climate change discussion to the traditional cultures of Africa and the Americas is an integral part of the ECOllective's coverage.

About halfway down:

". . . .evidence from his archaeological research that shows not every prolonged drought led to the demise of a Puebloan society. He says it was only the socially polarized communities that appeared to collapse during a climate crisis. . . ."

And later:

"Cultural memories of extreme climate events live on in the stories of North America’s Indigenous people, who see human survival as dependent on maintaining harmony with all living things. It is a lesson that the Lakota spiritual leader Arvol Looking Horse says descendants of European colonizers have yet to learn."

Why some Black women are trying to defy the odds of farm ownership

Maya Eaglin, NBCBLK,  July 23, 2022

Climate change is washing away traces of Harriet Tubman

Martha S. Jones, New York Times. June 21, 2022

Harriet Tubman was a naturalist who knew knew herbal medicine and other forms of botany, geography and astronomy

Liza Weisstuch, Smithsonian Magazine, March 10, 2022

All My Environmental Heroes Are Black Women

Leah Thomas, Vogue, April 22, 2022

“Black innovators who reshaped American gardening, farming”

Jessica Damiano, AP News, February 22, 2022

You Can Thank Black Horticulturalist Booker T. Whatley for Your CSA

Shelby Vittek, Smithsonian magazine,  May 20, 2021

Pluperfect (older) publications

Books

Nature left to itself will end in a tangle

bent on succession;

the giving way of a meadow to trees

after a score of seasons.

This outdated sure thing

had no parallel life

before it got this hot.  Yes it's hot —

azaleas lurch in ugly error;

robins hop across a February stage,

then shiver into March ... .

    From Ground (Toni Wynn,  Friends of Shakespeare Press Museum, 2007)

**(Toni: do you want to insert a link for this book here?)**

“My years at the Virginia Aquarium (then the VA Marine Science Museum) connected my adult self with the natural world. What a gift! Then nature’s gifts extended to my raised bed plots behind my Hampton home.  I'm so glad a collection of poems reflects that awakening time.”   — Toni Wynn reflecting on a personal awakening, when informed that we’d like to present Ground here.

In the Shadow of Slavery: Africa’s Botanical Legacy in the Atlantic World (University of California Press, 2011) “Botanical gardens of the dispossessed” is the co-authors’ lyrical term for sites arising from devastations. The transatlantic slave trade forced millions of Africans into bondage. Until the early 19th century, enslaved Africans came to the Americas in greater numbers than Europeans. The co-authors draw from archaeological records, oral histories, and the accounts of slave ship captains to show how slaves' food plots―“botanical gardens of the dispossessed”―became the incubators of African survival in the Americas and Africanized the foodways of plantation societies.

Black Faces, White Spaces: Reimagining the Relationship of African Americans to the Great Outdoors (Carol Finney, University of North Carolina Press, June 1, 2014)

Why are African Americans so underrepresented when it comes to interest in nature, outdoor recreation, and environmentalism? Carolyn Finney examines how the natural environment has been understood, commodified and represented by white and black Americans.

Carol Finney’s question about black underrepresentation in the natural world finds some responses in the NYT July 9, 2022 article “Swimming wasn’t meant for us.”

Periodicals/videos

The Great Land Robbery: The Shameful Story of How 1 Million Black Families Have Been Ripped from their Farms

Vann Newkirk, The Atlantic, Sept. 2019

Reflections on the Plantationocene

Donna Haraway & Anna Tsing w/ Gregg Mitmann, Edge Effects, June 18, 2019

Maps, Stones & Plants: Agents of Empire and the Ecology of the Atlantic Trade April 5, 2019.

Preview video How Black Americans Were Robbed of Their Land