ABSTRACT
Rural land is a vital resource, even in an urban, industrial society. Private and public owners of land influence the prices we pay for food; they control the amount and kind of open space for private recreational use; and they control timber supplies. On a county-by-county basis, Robert C. Fellmeth found that the top twenty landowners in rural counties, constituting a fraction of 1 percent of the population, generally own 25 to 50 percent of the land. The history of black farmland loss is the history of rural neglect and injustice at the hands of agribusiness and state and federal governments. By 1909, 3 million blacks were engaged in farming, and by 1910 black landownership peaked at 15 million acres, and black farmers accounted for almost 70 percent of the total black population and 30 percent of the total southern rural population in 1910.
