Week 24: Sunday Service Announcements

There is a strong spiritual connection to Black people and the Earth. We are the keepers of the land, we flow in harmony with nature reminding us of our power.

The mission is for Blackstack to be the hub for Black writers to not only amplify their voice but to preserve it and keep it safe for the generations to come. While the magazine is the foundation of our preservation, Substack has served as a sharecrop for us to nurture our seeds until they grow. Our words are the watering element and the soil is our community establishing deep roots for solid ground.

Many of us share the same stories of our great grandparents being sharecroppers, and memories of being in the garden at our grandparent’s home as kids. I’m grateful to have stories to hold on to of my father’s bloodline of sharecroppers and my childhood memories of pulling weeds from my great-grandma’s gardens and worms for fishing on Saturday mornings.

This was living, now it’s been rebranded as simply living or homesteading but back then it was the way of life. Everything today is marketed for your convenience, enabled into depending on a government to feed, cloth, and shelter us. That’s not the way of the land, that’s not the way of our ancestors.

---

This land is our land.

Qubilah Huddleston

“What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” This question, which is the title of the famous speech. Frederick Douglass gave in his hometown of Rochester, New York on the 76th Anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, was one of my first thoughts as I sat down to pen this essay about my journey back to being a steward of the land. If you’re not familiar with the speech, Douglass aimed to call out the hypocrisy of the professed American ideals of liberty and justice being the foundation of this nation’s creation while enslaving Black people and denying them of such freedom and fairness.

That hypocrisy has been the fuel to my fire in my journey to reclaim my relationship with the land as a gardener/farmer/homesteader. The current to the river that carries me downstream to a forgotten, but familiar place. That hypocrisy is why I have dedicated these last few years to learning how to grow food from seed. Why I have learned to know what healthy, living soil is and isn’t. Why I have learned how to harness the healing power of medicinal plants. Why I’ve been working overtime to collect stories from my granny and grandma about my great-grands’ green thumbs.

I know that my ancestors’ forced and stolen labor (and the genocide of Indigenous peoples and theft of their land!!!) made America the country and economy it is today. And I know that for many of us Black folks, the thought of “slaving away” on an open area of land, with our backs bent over to sow seeds, remove weeds, or harvest ready-to-be-picked crops evokes the aches and pains our ancestors felt deep in their bones and amplifies the wails they cried out from the soul-breaking labor demanded of them.

But you see, in addition to all the perverse reasons white enslavers and landowners forced enslaved Black people and sharecroppers to work their land, they were heavily dependent upon and admired our mastery of the land—though they would never admit it. Without us, they would’ve starved. They would’ve had no money—no cotton or tobacco to trade.

So, in this current and ongoing era of reclamation, I have chosen to reclaim my agricultural roots. My great-grandfather Hosea Stephens had a mean green thumb. Through several conversations with my granny I learned that he used gardening as a way to cope with his troubles. But more importantly, gardening was his primary means of feeding his family, ensuring their survival. This was true of most Black people back then. Gardening or farming wasn’t some trend or the privilege it’s become today. Black folks HAD to grow and hunt their own food. There were no grocery stores nearby and even if there happened to be one, it was giving “WHITES ONLY.”

This reclamation is spiritual and political. Today, Black people own less than 1% of rural farmland, 12 million acres stolen from us throughout the 20th century through physical, psychological, financial, intimidation, and violence.

While I don’t yet own any land and desire to one day have a farm or homestead of my own, I’ve managed to find different ways to gain experience working and communing with the land. These opportunities have been life-affirming and have been integral to keeping me sane. There’s something deeply healing about the early morning dew, early bird songs, and witnessing flower buds come to life as the sun rises.

The way I see it, my life’s mission is to emphasize the importance of Black people’s connection and communion with the land. We’ve been robbed of that and have been bamboozled and hoodwinked into disparaging manual labor and agricultural work and believing that such work is too reminiscent of slavery. But the land is what feeds us, and without us having access to land and not knowing how to work with it to grow food and medicine, our survival is too dependent upon deeply inequitable food and healthcare systems.

Land access won’t happen overnight, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have options. And we don’t need to own land to strengthen our relationship with it. Here are a few suggestions for how you can connect with the land:

Get Outside: If it’s safe for you to do so, just go outside. Walk, run, skip, jog. Whatever floats your boat. Observe the colors of the trees. Notice the sounds you hear. Be present. Contemplate what nature may be trying to teach you in those moments outdoors.

Join a Community Garden: I am lucky that where I live, community gardens abound. These are spaces where local residents can grow food in personal or communal plots of land. One of the challenges with community gardens however, is limited space and fees. That said, they can be a great place to start if you want to get your hands in the dirt but don’t have land access.

Garden in Containers: Contrary to belief, you do not need acres and acres to grow fruit and vegetables. You can absolutely grow almost anything in pots and other suitable containers. I’ve grown tomatoes and have seen other fellow gardeners grow herbs, watermelons, potatoes, etc.

Visit a Farm: I love me a good visit to a farm. It’s a good way to unplug and get away from the hustle and bustle of the city. Many farms operate pick-your-own days where you can pay a fee to pick your own produce. I’ve been apple picking, strawberry picking, and sunflower picking. I highly recommend planning a friends or family trip to one. Please do your research to find one that’s reputable and doesn’t have bad reviews for being racist or problematic toward Black visitors.

Visit a Farmers Market: I love going to the farmers market not only to purchase locally grown food but to chat it up with farmers. I make it a point to seek out Black farmers, which again, I’m lucky to have access to where I live. My love of the farmers market has led to me building a good relationship with a local Black farmer for a few years whose farm I finally had the privilege of visiting in Summer 2024. I helped him plant cabbage seedlings and he gave me some sweet potato leaves and okra as a token of gratitude. Truly an unforgettable experience!

---

I am the preservation of my ancestors.

Jacquie Verbal

The first time my Daddy ever got upset with me was when I moved on a farm last year for six months. I’d never forget him saying with so much anger in his voice, “What did you do, join a cult? I don’t understand why you would move on a farm when your grandfather worked his ass off to get us off the farm.”

I realized maybe the older generations that grew up on farms are the ones that disconnected us from that lifestyle. It might have been viewed as poor growing up for them, but the peace of it is luxury in our eyes. The freedom of having fresh foods available to you for free, is high class living in 2024.

My experience of the farm is what paved the path for my journey across the country, I was liberated by that opportunity. I’ve always had a green thumb, remember I grew up in the flower garden in the front and the food garden in the back of my great grandma’s house. Now giving my daughter the experience of planting a seed, watering it everyday until it’s time to transplant into the soil, caring for it until you harvest it so it can care for you.

What we don’t talk about enough is how healing the act of gardening is for the soul. The way it nourishes us and replenishes us from within. From the moment the sun touches our skin to that fit step in the grass barefoot, we are healed.

My great grandmother used to can the foods she grew in the backyard. She called strawberry jelly, strawberry preserves. I understand now it’s because she didn’t buy that glass mason jar from the store she preserved the strawberries from her last harvest. When I make spaghetti I prefer to make my own tomato sauce, but when it’s from a seed you grew it taste ten times better.

I dream for Blackstack is to have a building we call home for our community, a place we can reside when we have creative projects that need to be completed. Somewhere we can escape on the rooftop to put our hands in the soil and tend to our community garden, a place you can get the ingredients for dinner when you could use some help. Home for our words and the preservation of the ones to come.

---

Prayer Hotline

I pray you reconnect with the land.

I pray you feel rooted when your feet touch the grass.

I pray you find the desire to get your hand dirty from the soil.

I pray you feel liberated when you witness the power of watering your seed.

I pray you witness your dreams grow like wildflowers.

I pray when you are least expecting it you bear the fruits of your labour.

I pray your harvest is greater than you’ve ever imaged.

I pray you honor the seasons of your life.

I pray you feel worthy of your harvest.

I pray you believe in your power to heal and grow.

I pray you absorb the sunlight and shine through your storm.

I pray your dreams multiply and your enemies face God.

I pray you reclaim your agriculture roots.

I pray you decide to be intentional with how the foods you eat are grown.

I pray you make yourself worthy enough of good health.

I pray you know your health is your wealth.

Amen.

Asé.