美国国家公共电台 NPR 5 Decades Later, New Communities Land Trust Still Helps Black Farmers

 

NOEL KING, HOST:

In Albany, Ga., a pioneering community land trust is celebrating its 50th anniversary this week. New Communities' land trust was created as a safe haven¹ for black farmers during the civil rights movement. And today, it's helping² rural black landowners profit from farming.

NPR's Debbie Elliott has the story.

DEBBIE ELLIOTT, BYLINE³: Just outside Albany, New Communities co-founder Shirley Sherrod stands on a dock overlooking a tranquil⁴ pond, moss-draped cypress⁵ trees reflecting on the water.

SHIRLEY SHERROD: They're resilient. Whether you're in a drought or whether you in a flood, they last. And that's the way we feel we are - we will last.

ELLIOTT: They're part of a 1,600-acre plantation⁶ once owned by one of Georgia's largest slave holders⁷.

SHERROD: It went from a bad beginning, which was slavery, to descendants of slaves.

ELLIOTT: Sherrod's name might be familiar. She was Georgia state director for the USDA in the Obama administration but resigned in controversy⁸ when Breitbart News edited one of her speeches to misconstrue her remarks as racist⁹.

Out on the farm, Sherrod drives to a grove¹⁰ of satsumas, a type of mandarin¹¹.

SHERROD: The trees are full of oranges. They're green right now.

ELLIOTT: You don't find many African American farmers growing satsumas in southwest Georgia, Sherrod says. The land trust is trying to show that it is a profitable crop and find other ways to add value to local farms. On the other side of the farm, workers are vacuuming up the early pecan harvest.

SHERROD: So what machines do you have out here now?

ELLIOTT: The property includes cottages and a fully¹² restored antebellum home used for retreats.

SHERROD: We look at this as a place where we can also try to heal.

ELLIOTT: The plantation is the modern iteration of a cooperative farm the New Communities' land trust first established in the 1960s, when Shirley Sherrod and her husband, Charles, were organizing for the civil rights movement.

SHERROD: We would encounter people who were being asked to move off the land owned by white farmers if they participated in the movement or tried to exercise their rights in any way.

ELLIOTT: So a group of activists¹³ went to Israel to study a kibbutz as a model for providing jobs and homes for displaced families. The idea was shared stewardship¹⁴ of the land. The nonprofit trust borrowed money to purchase a nearly 6,000-acre tract¹⁵ where they grow peanuts, corn, soybeans and vegetable crops.

They also raised pigs and built a smokehouse to sell cured meats from a roadside stand to make money. About 10 families had long-term renewable leases for houses on the land, and dozens of others worked there.

BUMMI ANDERSON: It really gave me a sense of I can do anything.

ELLIOTT: Bummi Anderson and her twin sister, Femi, now 47, grew up as part of New Communities. Their parents ran the onsite print shop. Femi Anderson says they learned to be self-reliant using the farm and associated businesses to sustain one another.

FEMI ANDERSON: You had people who farmed the land. You had people who did, you know, administrative¹⁶ stuff, people who did different things. And I think that's what made it more of a community.

ELLIOTT: The sisters remain involved in the land trust. They say having a stake in the land stuck with them. Bummi Anderson.

B ANDERSON: You know, you're talking about land for African Americans - for anybody. Land is power.

F ANDERSON: Yeah.

B ANDERSON: Land is equity¹⁷. Land is...

F ANDERSON: It's wealth.

B ANDERSON: ...It's wealth.

ELLIOTT: In rural Doles¹⁸, Ga., Erma Young-Wilburn shows me a century-old wooden farmhouse¹⁹ that's starting to fall in.

ERMA YOUNG-WILBURN: This is the Battle house. This is the - originally the Battle farm.

ELLIOTT: The house once belonged to J.N. Battle (ph), a former slave known for amassing²⁰ a large amount of land after the Civil War.

YOUNG-WILBURN: And this is the last 70 acres of it. And we are holding on because we want it to continue to be the legacy²¹ of a black-owned land.

ELLIOTT: In 1910, black farmers owned more than 15 million acres of land. In 2017, that number was down to 4 million according to the agriculture census²². The Lawtons (ph) are produce farmers. They get technical assistance from the New Communities' land trust to improve their irrigation and build a cold storage facility. She was part of the original farm collective 50 years ago.

LAWTON: It was empowering. It was unifying²³.

ELLIOTT: A registered nurse by profession, Lawton says there's an independence in farming. And that's something she thinks New Communities can pass down to new generations.

LAWTON: Knowing that, as black people, we - the way we survived coming out of slavery was our attachment²⁴ to the land and knowing how to make that land work for us and produce and protect us, you know, from starvation and stuff.

ELLIOTT: New Communities' land trust was almost a failed experiment. They were hit by drought but could not get an emergency loan from the Farmers Home Administration until it was too late to avoid foreclosure. They lost the farm in 1985. But the story didn't end there because decades later, the trust won a $12 million settlement in the federal government's deal to compensate²⁵ black farmers for discrimination by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

New Communities used the money to buy the plantation it operates today. Back at the farm, Decton Hylton tends to the honeybees. He lights some pine straw in a smoker²⁶ to keep them calm.

DECTON HYLTON: This is a new comb that they have just built. And they're going to be storing honey inside of these cells.

ELLIOTT: Hilton is an agronomist²⁷ and serves as a technical advisor²⁸ to New Communities. He's encouraging farmers in southwest Georgia to take up beekeeping and look for other ways to increase the moneymaking potential of their property. He's also trying to stem land loss by encouraging younger generations to keep their family farms.

HYLTON: Because it's been - they have been learning from a long time that agriculture is in relation to slavery. And I'm showing them, no, we were doing farming long before slavery.

ELLIOTT: Hylton says New Communities' land trust can play a part in making farming an economic engine for rural development. Debbie Elliott, NPR News, Albany, Ga.

(SOUNDBITE OF TRACE BUNDY'S "ACOUSTIC NINJA")

1 haven   

n.安全的地方，避难所，庇护所

参考例句：

• It's a real haven at the end of a busy working day.忙碌了一整天后，这真是一个安乐窝。
• The school library is a little haven of peace and quiet.学校的图书馆是一个和平且安静的小避风港。

2 helping   

n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的，辅助的

参考例句：

• The poor children regularly pony up for a second helping of my hamburger. 那些可怜的孩子们总是要求我把我的汉堡包再给他们一份。
• By doing this, they may at times be helping to restore competition. 这样一来, 他在某些时候,有助于竞争的加强。

3 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

4 tranquil   

adj. 安静的, 宁静的, 稳定的, 不变的

参考例句：

• The boy disturbed the tranquil surface of the pond with a stick. 那男孩用棍子打破了平静的池面。
• The tranquil beauty of the village scenery is unique. 这乡村景色的宁静是绝无仅有的。

5 cypress   

n.柏树

参考例句：

• The towering pine and cypress trees defy frost and snow.松柏参天傲霜雪。
• The pine and the cypress remain green all the year round.苍松翠柏，常绿不凋。

6 plantation   

n.种植园，大农场

参考例句：

• His father-in-law is a plantation manager.他岳父是个种植园经营者。
• The plantation owner has possessed himself of a vast piece of land.这个种植园主把大片土地占为己有。

7 holders   

支持物( holder的名词复数 )； 持有者； （支票等）持有人； 支托（或握持）…之物

参考例句：

• Slaves were mercilessly ground down by slave holders. 奴隶受奴隶主的残酷压迫。
• It is recognition of compassion's part that leads the up-holders of capital punishment to accuse the abolitionists of sentimentality in being more sorry for the murderer than for his victim. 正是对怜悯的作用有了认识，才使得死刑的提倡者指控主张废除死刑的人感情用事，同情谋杀犯胜过同情受害者。

8 controversy   

n.争论，辩论，争吵

参考例句：

• That is a fact beyond controversy.那是一个无可争论的事实。
• We ran the risk of becoming the butt of every controversy.我们要冒使自己在所有的纷争中都成为众矢之的的风险。

9 racist   

n.种族主义者，种族主义分子

参考例句：

• a series of racist attacks 一连串的种族袭击行为
• His speech presented racist ideas under the guise of nationalism. 他的讲话以民族主义为幌子宣扬种族主义思想。

10 grove   

n.林子，小树林，园林

参考例句：

• On top of the hill was a grove of tall trees.山顶上一片高大的树林。
• The scent of lemons filled the grove.柠檬香味充满了小树林。

11 Mandarin   

n.中国官话，国语，满清官吏；adj.华丽辞藻的

参考例句：

• Just over one billion people speak Mandarin as their native tongue.大约有十亿以上的人口以华语为母语。
• Mandarin will be the new official language of the European Union.普通话会变成欧盟新的官方语言。

12 fully   

adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地

参考例句：

• The doctor asked me to breathe in,then to breathe out fully.医生让我先吸气，然后全部呼出。
• They soon became fully integrated into the local community.他们很快就完全融入了当地人的圈子。

13 activists   

n.（政治活动的）积极分子，活动家( activist的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• His research work was attacked by animal rights activists . 他的研究受到了动物权益维护者的抨击。
• Party activists with lower middle class pedigrees are numerous. 党的激进分子中有很多出身于中产阶级下层。 来自《简明英汉词典》

14 stewardship   

n. n. 管理工作；管事人的职位及职责

参考例句：

• The organization certainly prospered under his stewardship. 不可否认，这个组织在他的管理下兴旺了起来。
• Last, but certainly not least, are the issues of stewardship and ethics. 最后，但当然不是微不足道的，是工作和道德规范的问题。

15 tract   

n.传单，小册子，大片(土地或森林)

参考例句：

• He owns a large tract of forest.他拥有一大片森林。
• He wrote a tract on this subject.他曾对此写了一篇短文。

16 administrative   

adj.行政的，管理的

参考例句：

• The administrative burden must be lifted from local government.必须解除地方政府的行政负担。
• He regarded all these administrative details as beneath his notice.他认为行政管理上的这些琐事都不值一顾。

17 equity   

n.公正，公平，（无固定利息的）股票

参考例句：

• They shared the work of the house with equity.他们公平地分担家务。
• To capture his equity,Murphy must either sell or refinance.要获得资产净值，墨菲必须出售或者重新融资。

18 doles   

救济物( dole的名词复数 )； 失业救济金

参考例句：

• They have accepted doles. 他们已经接受了救济物品。
• Some people able and willing to work were forced to accept doles. 一些有能力也愿意工作的人被迫接受赈济品。

19 farmhouse   

n.农场住宅（尤指主要住房）

参考例句：

• We fell for the farmhouse as soon as we saw it.我们对那所农舍一见倾心。
• We put up for the night at a farmhouse.我们在一间农舍投宿了一夜。

20 amassing   

v.积累，积聚( amass的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• The study of taxonomy must necessarily involve the amassing of an encyclopaedic knowledge of plants. 分类学研究一定要积累广博的植物知识。 来自辞典例句
• Build your trophy room while amassing awards and accolades. 建立您的奖杯积累奖项和荣誉。 来自互联网

21 legacy   

n.遗产，遗赠；先人(或过去)留下的东西

参考例句：

• They are the most precious cultural legacy our forefathers left.它们是我们祖先留下来的最宝贵的文化遗产。
• He thinks the legacy is a gift from the Gods.他认为这笔遗产是天赐之物。

22 census   

n.(官方的)人口调查，人口普查

参考例句：

• A census of population is taken every ten years.人口普查每10年进行一次。
• The census is taken one time every four years in our country.我国每四年一次人口普查。

23 unifying   

使联合( unify的现在分词 )； 使相同； 使一致； 统一

参考例句：

• In addition, there were certain religious bonds of a unifying kind. 此外，他们还有某种具有一种统一性质的宗教上的结合。
• There is a unifying theme, and that is the theme of information flow within biological systems. 我们可以用一个总的命题，把生物学系统内的信息流来作为这一研究主题。

24 attachment   

n.附属物，附件；依恋；依附

参考例句：

• She has a great attachment to her sister.她十分依恋她的姐姐。
• She's on attachment to the Ministry of Defense.她现在隶属于国防部。

25 compensate   

vt.补偿，赔偿；酬报 vi.弥补；补偿；抵消

参考例句：

• She used her good looks to compensate her lack of intelligence. 她利用她漂亮的外表来弥补智力的不足。
• Nothing can compensate for the loss of one's health. 一个人失去了键康是不可弥补的。

26 smoker   

n.吸烟者，吸烟车厢，吸烟室

参考例句：

• His wife dislikes him to be a smoker.他妻子不喜欢他当烟民。
• He is a moderate smoker.他是一个有节制的烟民。

27 agronomist   

n.农学家

参考例句：

• The agronomist suggested growing rice on the dried river bed.那位农学家建议在干涸的河床上种水稻。
• She has elected to become an agronomist.她决心做一个农学家。

28 advisor   

n.顾问，指导老师，劝告者

参考例句：

• They employed me as an advisor.他们聘请我当顾问。
• The professor is engaged as a technical advisor.这位教授被聘请为技术顾问。