via Wikimedia
In 1967, civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer switched up her strategy to liberate her community from the poverty that kept them literally starving for more.
She petitioned for grant support from organizations like Measure for Measure out of Wisconsin to found the Freedom Farm Cooperative.
Hamer purchased over 40 acres of farmland and welcomed all who needed food to cooperatively grow, cultivate, and consume the crops and livestock it produced.
According to LifeAndThyme.com, “Between 1967 and 1976, the FFC provided housing, health care, employment, education, and access to healthy food. Members of the FFC were displaced land/farmworkers, dispossessed of access to land and brushed aside by mechanization.”
As beautiful an endeavor as the FFC was, it faced challenges.
The FFC struggled to financially sustain itself without grant monies or donations.
Meanwhile, some Black families - who had for generations been traumatically forced into farm work - understandably resisted the labor-intense field of agriculture in favor of more industrial city jobs.
Still, Hamer’s Freedom Farm continues to be an inspiring example of how poor Southern Black farmers gained control of their own food supply, liberating themselves while fighting the same racial terrorism as civil rights organizers in urban centers.