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Researching African American Land and Farm Owners A Bibliographic Essay Debra A. Reid Color-conscious record keeping generated historical data that can make it easy to identify an individual by race, but other data systematically deemphasized African American achievements, particularly land ownership, thus veritably obliterating black landowning farmers from the historical record. For example, the manuscript returns generated by the federal population and agricultural censuses , specifically those of 1870 and 1880, provide significant data. Researchers can cross reference names of individuals and their race with names of farmers, their property and production, and then can corroborate the findings with other local public records such as mortgages, deeds, plat maps, and tax assessments. Researchers can use data that they generate through this time-consuming process to compare farmers across race, ethnicity, age, family size, and economic status . Census compendia, however, did not consistently report farm tenure based on race. Prior to 1900 the national compendium did not include black farmers by tenure at all, and between 1930 and 1970, the period coincident with significant land loss by black farmers, neither state nor national compendia provided detailed information about black landowners as the compilations did for white owners. This made less obvious the rapid loss of land that black farmers experienced , it makes statistical comparison impossible, and it leaves researchers little choice but to conduct original research in local records and census manuscripts. Despite the inadequacies of mid-twentieth century data compiled on black landowners, the U.S. government issued reports on African American farmers during the height of black land ownership in the early twentieth century, some with substantive analysis. An early example is W. E. Burghardt Du Bois, “The Negro Farmer,” in Negroes in the United States, Bureau of the Census, Bulletin 298 · Debra A. Reid 8 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1904), 69–98; reissued in Special Reports: Supplementary Analysis and Derivative Tales. Twelfth Census of the United States, 1900 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1906), 511–79; reprinted in Herbert Aptheker, compiler and editor, Contributions by W.E.B. Du Bois in Government Publications and Proceedings (Millwood, N.Y.: Kraus-Thomson, 1980): 229–346. Negro Population in the United States, 1790– 1915 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1918; repr., New York: Arno Press and New York Times, 1968). Further reports include Charles E. Hall, Negro Farmer in the United States, Census of Agriculture, Fifteenth Census of the United States: 1930 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1933); U.S. Bureau of the Census, U.S. Census of Agriculture: 1959, Vol. 2: General Report, Statistics by Subjects (Washington , D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1962), Chapter 10: Color, Race, and Tenure of Farm Operator, 1004–5; and U.S. Bureau of the Census, U.S. Census of Agriculture: 1969, Vol. 2: General Report (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1973), Chap. 1: General Information, Procedures for Collection, Processing, Classification, Table 34: Farms Operated by Negro and Races Other than White: 1900 to 1969, 96–97. Calvin L. Beale compiled data during the mid1960s that appeared in reference works: “The Negro in American Agriculture,” in The American Negro Reference Book, edited by John P. Davis (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1966), 161–204; revised as “The Black American in Agriculture ,” in The Black American Reference Book, edited by Mabel M. Smythe (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1976), 284–315. Social scientists active during the heyday of black land ownership in the early twentieth century conducted field work to generate data. One of the most prolific, W. E. Burghardt Du Bois, published three major reports in addition to the first analysis of black farmers as reported in the U.S. census returns: The Negroes of Farmville, Virginia: A Social Study, U.S. Department of Labor Bulletin 3, no. 14 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, January 1898), 1–38; The Negro Landowner in Georgia, U.S. Department of Labor, Bulletin 6, no. 25 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, July 1901), 647–777; and Souls of Black Folk (Chicago: A. C. McClurg and Company, 1903; unabridged edition, New York: Dover Publications, 1994). Robert Preston Brooks analyzed the ways that geography , demographics, labor availability, and crop and stock values affected the rate of black farm ownership in The Agrarian Revolution in Georgia, 1865–1912 (Madison: University of Wisconsin, 1914, repr., Westport, Conn.: Negro Universities Press, 1970). Samuel T. Bitting documented African American land ownership at its peak in Rural Landownership among the...

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