We’ll get back to this theme about migration as a relationship to land in just a minute. But first, I have a story I want to tell you. It’s a story about my own black relationship to land.
“Group of Florida Migrants.” Photo by Jack Delano, provided by Library of Congress.
s the founder and director of The Back/Land Project, people often assume that I come from, or am passionate about, agricultural land and rural spaces. When I say that I am not, folks get confused. Some people have asked me indignantly “Well then, what IS your black land story?”
I don’t know my entire story yet, but there are two or three things I know for sure. And one of them is about how I feel about Country. That story is generational. It’s personal. It is very, very black. And I finally got it down on paper, just the way I mean to say it.
You can find my short essay about “Country” here, in the journal The Common Online: A Modern Sense of Place.
So, holla if you hear me. (Please holla in the Comments section, below.)
And if you have your own black/land story to tell, send it to The Black/Land Project’s MyStory Campaign. Because I’m waiting to hear your story, too.