HIS 351/AAS 400 - Black Environmental Freedom Struggles in U.S. History: Land and Place

The Sallie Price family papers is comprised of 174 photographs (circa 1860-1950) and manuscript materials relating to the Sallie Price family, an African American family who lived in Kentucky during the 19th and 20th centuries. The manuscript materials include correspondence between Sallie Price, Jennie Lee Armstrong, and William Green. A letter of recommendation on behalf of Sallie Price, certificates for stock shares, an electrical contract, war ration books, church programs and other church related literature, various newspaper clippings, and miscellaneous printed materials are also present.

The Collection on African Americans in Kentucky are photographs that have been brought together in an artificial collection based on subject matter and due to the small nature of the individual collections. The photographs are primarily portraits but also include materials pertaining to the clergy, churches, the YMCA, and family life.

The Daniels family is an African-American family who were based primarily in the Louisville, Kentucky area from the mid-1800s to the 1960s. Hattie M Daniels (b. 1888), her brother William Everett Daniels (b. 1890), and his two children, John Everett Daniels III (b. 1918) and Betty Elizabeth Daniels (b. 1920) are the focus of the collection.

The Couch family of Sebree, Kentucky included parents William Couch (1859-1931), Bessie Finch (1882-1967), and their children: James (1911-2002), Margaret (1913-1996), William (1915-1925), Houston (1917-1939), and Agnes (1922-2000). Both William and Bessie came from farming families, and so they owned and operated their own farm just outside Sebree, Kentucky.

The Pettit, Duncan, Gibson family papers (dated 1730-2008, undated; 124.23 cubic feet; 323 boxes) contain the personal papers of members of the Gibson, Duncan, Foster, Pettit families, as well as several of the branch families, from the mid-nineteenth century through the twentieth century. The majority of the collection is comprised of correspondence: letters exchanged among family members, friends and acquaintances, or business associates. There are materials related to slavery, plantations, and business related farming expenses.

This project contains interviews concerning the experiences of African American farmers and their families in Kentucky. Topics include sharecropping, tobacco, cattle, women's roles on the farm, farm techniques, dairy farming, tenant farming, education, segregation.

In this project, African Americans in Paris, Kentucky and surrounding areas in Bourbon County share their memories, life experiences, and the local history of African Americans. Their stories include the retelling of oral histories that have been handed down from previous generations. They touch on a variety of subjects including church and religion, race relations, civil rights, employment, school segregation, integration, northern migration, and the legacy they hope to leave behind. Interviewees include those who were born in Bourbon County, as well as those who moved to Bourbon later in life.

The Chronicle of African Americans in the Horse Industry is an online, interactive archive of photos, documents, artifacts, and oral histories of African Americans who have worked, and continue to work in equine industries. The International Museum of the Horse partnered with the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History to archive and preserve the oral history component of the Chronicle.

Why are African Americans so underrepresented when it comes to interest in nature, outdoor recreation, and environmentalism? In this thought-provoking study, Carolyn Finney looks beyond the discourse of the environmental justice movement to examine how the natural environment has been understood, commodified, and represented by both white and black Americans. Bridging the fields of environmental history, cultural studies, critical race studies, and geography, Finney argues that the legacies of slavery, Jim Crow, and racial violence have shaped cultural understandings of the "great outdoors" and determined who should and can have access to natural spaces.

After the Civil War, Congress allotted 45 million acres of land to former slaves, but protest from white supremacists meant that little of it was ever actually distributed. Despite formidable obstacles, some one million African-Americans managed to purchase more than 15,000,000 acres of arable land by 1910. This program explores the history of those black-owned farms, from Reconstruction to the agricultural crises of the early 20th century and on to the era of federal loans and subsidies on which most farmers, black and white both, now depend. Director Charlene Gilbert weaves this history together with a portrait of her own farming family, who obtained their land in the 1930s only after the Farm Security Administration was forced to lend to African Americans.

Over 300 interviews with black farm owners and their descendants. The collection covers a range of topics related to farming, landownership and post Civil War U.S. history, including Reconstruction, the Great Depression, the world wars, the Civil Rights Movement, and the contemporary black farmers’ activism. The goal of “Breaking New Ground” is to explore how rural black families “made a way out of no way” and became farm owners against considerable odds, how land ownership affected their experience of the Jim Crow era, and how their privileged positions shaped the destinies of their descendants.

Article by Mark Schultz, project director for the "Breaking New Ground" project.

A small, 15-interview oral history project from Delta State University related to Black farmers.

What does it mean to call a place home? Who is allowed to become a member of a community? When can we say that we truly belong? These are some of the questions of place and belonging that renowned cultural critic bell hooks examines in her new book, Belonging: A Culture of Place. Traversing past and present, Belonging charts a cyclical journey in which hooks moves from place to place, from country to city and back again, only to end where she began--her old Kentucky home.