Book Review: Freedom Farmers: Agricultural Resistance and the Black Freedom Movement

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December 18, 2020
Book Review –
Freedom Farmers: Agricultural Resistance and the Black Freedom Movement
The issue of servitude, racism, and social inequality is one of the most common issues that millions of people ever since the start of civilization. However, contrary to the common notion that these issues were only felt during the era dominated by manual labor, history would show that rather than dissipating, these issues have merely shifted towards a different angle during the industrialization period. Accordingly, this review would focus on how these issues were manifested in Monica White’s 2018 book entitled Freedom Farmers: Agricultural Resistance and the Black Freedom Movement. Specifically, the author would like to show how the collective actions of the ‘freedom farmers’ have led to a significant albeit ‘subtle’ manifestation of how collective agency could help address the issues of racism and social inequality.
Summary of the Book
White’s book focuses on telling the story of how the black farmers from Detroit and the other southern states have fought together to face the issues of racism and social inequality in a growing industrial age. To retell the collective experience of these farmers in a ‘non-white narrative’, she had to collect the narratives from the Civil Rights movement together with historical interviews to piece together a story that reflects the Black farmer’s experience, compared to what is generally provided in history textbooks.
Accordingly, the main issue that White wanted to show her audience was that it was how the people and the societal circumstances have contributed together to the creation of a radical movement that would shape the civil rights narrative. A narrative that is not couched on the usual civil liberty movements like rallies, demonstrations, and lobbying, but one that is based on the collective agency to provide sustenance for oneself.
For example, White focused on the experiences of the members of the Mississippi’s North Bolivar County Farm Collective (NBCFC) who were fired after a labor strike. The members of the NBCFC were mostly composed of black farmers who have served in a White-owned plantation as truck drivers. Due to the low wages and the lack of benefits for the laborers during those times, the strike that the NBCFC members conducted led to their termination from their jobs and their subsequent eviction...