How a Black Commons Could Help Build Communal Wealth

A long history of racism has prevented many Black folks from owning land or homes鈥攎aking it harder to accrue wealth and pass it on to future generations.

Underlying the recent unrest sweeping U.S. cities over police brutality is a in wealth, land, and power that has circumscribed Black lives since the end of slavery in the U.S.

The 鈥溾€� promised to formerly enslaved Africans never came to pass. There was no redistribution of land, no reparations for the wealth extracted from stolen land by stolen labor.

June 19 is celebrated by Black Americans as , marking the date in 1865 that former slaves were informed of their freedom, albeit two years after the . Coming this year at a time of protest over the continued police killing of Black people, it provides an opportunity to look back at how Black Americans were deprived of land ownership and the economic power that it brings. An expanded concept of the 鈥淏lack commons鈥濃€攂ased on shared economic, cultural and digital resources as well as land鈥攃ould act as one means of redress. As professors in and , our research suggests that such a concept could be a part of undoing the racist legacy of chattel slavery by encouraging economic development and creating communal wealth.

Land grab

The proportion of the United States under Black ownership has actually shrunk over .

At their peak in 1910, made up around 14% of all U.S. farmers, owning . By 2012, Black Americans represented just 1.6% of the farming community, owning 3.6 million acres of land. Another study shows a in Black farmers between 1920, and 1997. This contrasts sharply with an over the same period.

In , the U.S. Department of Agriculture ascribed this decline to a long and 鈥渨ell-documented鈥� history of discrimination against Black farmers, ranging from New Deal and USDA dating from the 1930s to 1950s-era exclusion from legal, title and loan resources.

The lack of ownership is crucial to understanding the crippling economic disparity that has hollowed out the Black middle class.

Discriminatory practices have also affected who owns property as well as land. In 2017, the racial homeownership gap was , with 79.1% of White Americans owning a home compared to 41.8% of Black Americans. This gap is even larger than it was when , which denied Black residents mortgages to buy, or loans to renovate, property were legal.

The lack of ownership is crucial to understanding the crippling economic disparity that has and continues to plague Black America鈥攎aking it harder to accrue wealth and pass it on to future generations.

A 2017 found that the median net worth for non-immigrant Black American households in the greater Boston region was just US$8, but for whites it was $247,500. This was because of 鈥済eneral housing and lending discrimination through restrictive covenants, redlining and other lending practices.鈥�

Nationally, between 1983 and 2013, median by 75% to $1,700 while median white household wealth increased 14% to $116,800.

Freedom farms

Land ownership today could look very different. The idea of collective ownership has a long history in the United States. Even during slavery, a piece of ground was granted by slave masters for enslaved African subsistence farming. The called this land 鈥渢he plot.鈥�

The principles of collective land ownership evolved in post-slavery Black America.

how that these parcels of land were transformed into communal areas where slaves could establish their own social order, sustain traditional African folklore and foodways鈥攇rowing yams, cassava and sweet potatoes. Plots were often called 鈥�,鈥� so important was this staple food.

The connection between food, land, power and cultural survival was subversive in its nature. By appropriating physical space to support collective growing practices within the brutal constraints of slavery, Black people also demonstrated the need for common, shared mental space to enable their survival and resistance. Herbalism, medicine and midwifery, and other African American were seen as acts of resistance that were 鈥渋ntimately tied to religion and community,鈥� according to historian Sharla M. Fett.

With the end of slavery, these plots disappeared.

Fannie Lou Hamer, civil rights organizer, in 1964. Photo by GHI Vintage/Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group/Getty Images.

The principles of collective land ownership evolved in post-slavery Black America. It was central to civil rights organizer Fannie Lou Hamer鈥檚 , a designed to deliver economic justice to the poorest Black farmers in the American South.

In Hamer鈥檚 view, the fight for justice in the face of oppression required a measure of independence that could be achieved through owning land and providing resources for the community.

This idea of a Black commons as a means of economic empowerment formed a focus of W.E.B. DuBois鈥� 1907 鈥�.鈥� DuBois believed that the extreme segregation of the Jim Crow era made it necessary to ground economic empowerment in the cultural bonds between Black people and that this could be achieved through cooperative ownership.

Credit unions and co-ops

The accumulation of wealth was not the only desired consequence of a Black commons.

In 1967, argued for a 鈥溾€� that would create a 鈥渘ew dynamic synthesis of politics, economics, and culture.鈥� In his view, economic ventures needed to be grounded in the greater aspirations of Black communities 鈥� politically, culturally and economically. This could be achieved through a Black commons.

As the political economist in reference to Black , 鈥淎frican Americans, as well as other people of color and low-income people, have benefited greatly from cooperative ownership and democratic economic participation throughout the nation鈥檚 history.鈥�

The long history of racism in the United States has held back Black Americans for generations.

The nonprofit is working to rejuvenate the idea of Black commons. In a 2018 statement, the 鈥渢o serve as a national vehicle to amass purchased and gifted lands in a Black commons with the specific purpose of facilitating low-cost access for Black Americans hitherto without such access.鈥�

Meanwhile, shared equity housing schemes and , helping Black families own property, and mitigate displacement resulting from gentrification.

Digital commons

The disproportionate effects of the and unrest over have highlighted deeply embedded structural racism. Organizations such as Black Lives Matter and the are demonstrating a renewed vigor around collective action and a blueprint for how this can be achieved in a digital age. At the same time, Black Americans are also forging a cultural commons through events such as DJ D-Nice鈥檚鈥攁 online dance party. Club Quarantine鈥檚 success indicates the potential for using online platforms to facilitate community building, pointing toward future economic cooperation.

That鈥檚 what organizations such as are trying to do. The nonprofit group uses crowdsourced funding to build community spaces in inner city areas of Indianapolis and encourage collective economic development that echoes the Black commons of years past.

The long history of racism in the United States has held back Black Americans for generations. But the current soul-searching over this legacy is also an unrivaled opportunity to look again at the idea of collective Black action and ownership, using it to create a community and economy that goes beyond just ownership of land for wealth鈥檚 sake.

This article was originally published by It has been published here with permission.

	Kofi Boone is a professor of Landscape Architecture at the College of Design at聽North Carolina State University. Professor Boone focuses on the changing nature of communities and developing tools for enhanced community engagement and design.
	Julian Agyeman is a professor of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning at聽Tufts University.