Civil Rights Activism and Agriculture: A Family That Kept the Land

The scholarship on the Great Migration concentrates on those who left the south, yet millions of African American farmer families stayed. Their voices have been overlooked. One family that chose to stay in the south and live on the land as farmers is the Paris family. George H., the first Black USDA loan officer and civil rights activist taught his sons, George M. and Wendell, the power of combining agriculture and activism. They offer us a lens to understand social movement activism across the lifespan, intergenerational activism and how agriculture was used as a strategy of resistance and resilience.