Black/Land gathers and analyzes stories about the relationship between black people, land and place.

We identify and amplify conversations happening inside Black communities (including African-Americans, Caribbean-Americans and African immigrants) about the relationship between Black people, land, and place in order to share their powerful traditions of resourcefulness, resilience and regeneration.

Black/Land creates fertile soil in which the seeds of self-determination and social change can germinate, take root, and grow. When Black Americans of all ethnicities share their stories about relationship to land and place, they will:

♦ Acknowledge and transcend the effects of historical trauma on their relationships to land, place, and community;

♦ Engage, on their own terms, in local and national conversations about land use, environmental justice, sustainable economic prosperity, democratic civic engagement, and relationship to place;

♦ Offer to all people genuine cultural models for regeneration of land; reinvestment in place; and cultivating resilience as a form of resistance to oppression.

What is the Black/Land Project?

The purpose of the project is to identify and amplify the current critical dialogues surrounding the relationship between Black people and land. The relationship to land may be a fifth generation family farm in the Alabama Black Belt or a neighborhood in Detroit. A public park, a church filled with local history, or an immigrant community’s journey from one place to another are all stories about black relationship to land and place. The Black/Land Project gathers these stories in order to share the powerful traditions of resourcefulness, resilience and regeneration they contain. You can download a description of our program offerings here.

Let this video introduce you to how Black/Land came to inspire and convene local and national dialogues about the relationship between Black people, land and place. We invite you to learn more about our mission, and our vision for this work as a foundation for social change. Our presentations and workshops continue to celebrate, ignite action to change, and create spaces to heal the many relationships that are Black/Land.