Piney Woods serves as the counterfactual to modern Black land ownership in this country; it exemplifies what Black wealth and connection to land could have been in the United States had Black landowners been allowed to thrive. This type of multi-generational land retention is rare, and the pervasiveness of Black land loss in the United States is well documented. At the peak of Black land ownership in 1910, Black farmers made up approximately 14.5% of all U.S. farmers. According to a recent agricultural census, Black farmers account for a little over one percent of all American farmers. The subsequent decline can be attributed to many things: inequitable New Deal policies, corporate agricultural monopolization, and concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs). One study of US Census of Agriculture data found a 98% decline in Black farm ownership from 1900 to 1997, a drop that was partly caused by a deliberate effort to deny loans to Black farmers.
The narrative surrounding Black-owned land loss often points to discriminatory lending practices and familial property disputes. Combined, these two influences led to Black people being stripped of their wealth. In North Carolina, however, both industry land grabbing and farm consolidation play equal parts in the land loss story.
Barber III attributes his community’s ability to retain its land to its relative seclusion and its inherent racial diversity. “The reality is that Piney Woods Free Union was a bastion of prosperous existence and resistance to some of the white supremacy that was pervasive throughout the region because it was out of the way. It was a hidden gem,” Barber III said.
In addition to its cultural and agricultural standing, the Piney Woods community has historically served as the “mother church” for a conclave of Black Christians spread across the tidewater region of the state. They sought religious freedom as much as they did bodily liberty, autonomy, and land ownership. The faith leadership of Piney Woods would go on to head grand battles for Civil Rights through the decades.
Barber Sr. helped integrate the local school systems around Piney Woods to ensure that Black children in Martin and Washington Counties received a proper education. Bishop William Barber II is a faith and civil rights leader as co-chair of the National Poor People’s Campaign and pastor at the Greenleaf Christian Church, a Disciples of Christ Church in Goldsboro, North Carolina. Each new Barber generation has been called upon to incite change and serve a greater purpose as warriors at the helm of a battle for equity and human rights.