These collective resources were essential because even when Black farmers freed themselves from the debt peonage of tenant farming, the US Department of Agriculture made the reality of being a Black farmer extremely difficult.

In 1997, however, a group of Black farmers of which John Boyd Jr. was included took the federal government to court for its decades of racist policies and actions, and two years later won the most money of any civil rights case in the country’s history.

In 1998 the USDA released a report admitting that decades of discrimination led to the decline in Black-owned farms, and some $1 billion was payed out to roughly 20,000 Black farmers.

But as farmer James McGill notes, this is way too little too late.

"We got $50,000 a piece and that was an insult because when you needed three or four hundred thousand dollars and they gave you 50 how could you survive on $50,000 to recover what you lost."

Black farmers in the United States have carved out spaces for themselves via resistance and struggle, but at each and every stage the white supremicist institutions of this country have sought to reverse any piece of liberation that they've achieved.

The United States has stolen the land it now settles on twice.

Once from those already living, farming, and stewarding the land before settlers planted their European heels into its mud, and twice when it stole land from under the hoe of Black growers.

But today Black farmers still continue to farm, reclaiming the stolen and standing up in defiance against the a white supremicist capitalist agricultural system.

We see this in places like the Earthseed Land Collective, a community a Black creatives and visionaries who came together to buy and then build a working farm rooted in justice, food sovereignty, and community relationships.

We see this also in Soul Fire Farm, which draws on afro-indigenous roots to grow food for marginalized communities in the greater Albany area while educating and sharing wisdom on anti-colonial, anti-capitalist, and anti-racist farming practices.

Each carve out their pieces of land, and integrate into the larger tapestry of Black farmers and farmers of color spread across the U.S. that are showing us the importance of land not only as a vessel for liberation, but also for healing relations between the earth and people.

Revolution is based on land; land is the basis of all independence. Land is the basis of freedom, justice and equality.

There have been a number of solutions proposed by members of congress on how to repair the damage and trauma stacked on Black farmers.

Senator Corey Booker proposed legislation that "would devote $8 billion annually to buying farmland and granting it to Black farmers."

But cattle farmer Chris Newman argues that the "bill is so loaded with oversights, anti-solidarity, and implied acceptance of settler-?colonial agricultural ethics that it can't even be viewed as incremental progress or a step in the right direction."

So what then might just reparations look like?

How might white folks repair the harm our ancestors and us, today, have caused?

What does a future that prioritizes Black farmers look like?

And how might the United States repair the violent damage caused by twice stolen land?

Leah Penniman of Soul Fire Farm writes that reparations should incorporate three principles: "Dispossessed people get to define what reparations look like… we must have transfers of land and resources without oversight or conditionality… and we must give the land, money, and jobs away, even and especially when it entails personal and organizational sacrifice."

Land, in this white supremacist, settler-colonial, and capitalist country is and has always been a battleground of oppression.

So changing our relationship to that land is essential to creating change.