By Shy’Ana Thomas
On Tuesday, March 11, Grand Rapids Community College and the Woodrick Center for Inclusion and Multicultural Affairs hosted guest speaker Della Marie Levi. During her lecture, she shared her experience and knowledge on not only the history of Black farming, but also her experience with gardening and beekeeping.
Levi has 25 years of experience in social work. During that time she has served as a foster care case manager and a recipient’s rights adviser for emotionally impaired and teens who have disabilities, drug and alcohol problems and an educational program. Levi has also been a facilitator for middle school and high schools.
With music as a hobby, Levi shared that she DJs under the stage name “DJ Della Soul” and owns her own record store, Della Soul Records, locally in Grand Rapids. The store is located downtown off Kalamazoo Avenue and is open Thursday through Saturday.
What got Levi into gardening
During the presentation, Levi explained what made her want to start gardening.
“I fell in love with growing food after working in a program,” she said about the experience of gardening with her students and their parents. “And I used my community school coordinator and part of my responsibilities was to help launch a program full of growing with the parents at my school.”
Levi went into more detail about the feeling she got with her progress.
“I thought, ‘Well, I’ll just sit on the sidelines and watch everybody else grow and just be there just to say I’m there.’ And then as we started growing, I fell in love,” Levi said. “I had a small pot with jalapeno pepper, sage, basil, and some chives. And once that little jalapeno pepper started popping, I was hooked. I couldn’t believe that something that my hands touched grew from this seed, if I grew it into a flower and blossomed into this beautiful plant and also fruit.”
The next thing mentioned was how Levi turned her backyard, which she calls a “crime scene,” into a beautiful garden where she grows all her fruits and vegetables.
“In May of 2019, I decided to turn my backyard from a crime scene to an actual garden. When I bought my house, I decided to build a new fence. I started with, again, one little pot with a few herbs and some house peppers, and I manifested this,” she said. “So this was a lot of work. However, to be able to go into your backyard and get this beautiful fruit, these beautiful vegetables, and to make something. I lived on 20th Street in Eastern, so it’s a very urban, congested area. But I was bound to create something beautiful and in my garden.”
The history of Black farming
Switching to the history of Black farming, Levi went into detail about how farming is important in Black culture, how important it was during the Civil Rights Movement, 40 acres and mule and how Black farming declined in the 1980s.
During slavery, slaves weren’t allowed to plant anything, and Africans came to America with many seeds and crops for foods prevalent in Black culture, such as sugar cane, beans, watermelon, yams, collard greens and rice. The seeds for these crops were braided into the women’s hair.
During her lecture, Levi shared that seeds were braided into the hair for a reason.
“How did those seeds get planted that were braided in the hair of African American women? So, plantation owners did not allow enslaved Black people to have areas to plant their seeds,” Levi said. “What they did is they found hidden areas on the plantation and they created gardens. Now these plantation areas were very, very dark. The soil was bad and not a lot of success to water.”
Since the enslaved Black people couldn’t garden as they wanted, alternatives and more ideas started to come in on where they could grow things.
“They would grow seeds… in very undesirable areas on plantations. If they were allowed a spot (to) grow food or plantations, they were not allowed to grow food that they were growing for the families that they were in at the plantation,” Levi said. “They weren’t allowed to grow their food. Remember, these are some of them hit some of the growing places where hidden plots, and that’s the only way that many of us survived is because we had these hidden spaces where we were growing food.”
Levi then explained how Africans brought peanuts to America, which are named ‘The Carolina African Runner Peanuts.’ She also explained how peanuts are more than seeds when they are one of the things that shaped African Americans and their history.
“It’s more than food. There’s a lot of history in our foods,” Levi said. “And what’s here in America, we were shamed for eating watermelon, it was considered a very special, important, a very rich food. So whenever someone shares those pictures that show African Americans eating watermelon, it’s a very awesome fruit that we brought to the American.”
What exactly does the phrase “40 Acres and a Mule” mean?
Enslaved people did not have room or the proper rights to garden. Then in the 1800s, Black people were offered “Reparations” which was supposed to include 40 acres and a mule.
However, 40 acres and a mule was an unfulfilled promise that was supposed to be given to Black people. It was an important part of the field order on Jan. 16, 1865, during the American Civil War when the Union forces got control of the Confederate territory. The 40 acres were the maximum amount of land that the freed families could get, with the mule to help plow the soil.
Levi talked about what the 40 acres and mule meant for the families.
“We had to figure out how we were going to survive afterwards,” she said. “What we are excited to do, let me go back. So, if we received 40 acres and a mule, that will give us a level playing field,” she said. “And they did not want us to have a level (playing) field because that would generate wealth for us, right? And we would be able to do a lot more things if we had that opportunity. We would be more self-sufficient, and that was not what they wanted us to be. We would be able to build homes, businesses and also produce more food.”
How did farming help during the Civil War?
Farming was very important during the Civil War. Levi explained the importance of food grown by Black farmers during this time, as well as the community that the farms provided.
“One thing that is very amazing to me is that during the Civil Rights Movement of the ‘50s and ‘60s, Black farmers allowed marchers to protest on their land for rest. They also allowed their marchers to eat produce from the crops that they grew,” she said. “Why was this important? It was the 1950s and the 1960s, and unfortunately, Black people were not welcomed in hotels. They weren’t welcome in a lot of retail spaces and were not welcomed in restaurants. And so for us to have food as well as a place to rest, Black farmers were very instrumental in making sure that these marches occurred for freedom. Black farmers also provided a haven. They watched out for us. They made sure we were well fed.”
This happening during the Civil Rights Movement created community in these African American spaces, which helped to bring people together.
Why did Black farming decline in the 80s and so on?
The unfulfilled promise of 40 acres and a mule ultimately resulted in land being taken from Black farmers, causing an overall drop in farmers within the Black community. Today, there are 3.4 million farmers and only 45,000 of them are Black.
Levi explained how Black farming evolved culturally.
“Unfortunately, a lot of our land was stolen from us and so were laws, rules, norms, values and paperwork,” she said. “There were ways that they did it, they made it so that we weren’t able to have records of our farmland, or they say, ‘well, we need to take your land because it goes through a certain trail, and it’s historical land, and so it belongs to us’ and so we have no way of finding that. So that’s one of the reasons we lost our land. And we have limited access to capital as well, not a lot of generational wealth for Black families, and we couldn’t sustain because there was a lot of responsibility that we needed to go into to take care of a farm. When we were given freedom and began to buy land.”
Consequently, Levi explained the sharp decline in the amount of Black farmers in America.
“Between 1910 and 1997, Black people lost 98% of their farmland. Today, of the 3.4 million farmers in the United States, only 45,000 are Black. And this is according to the USDA, and it’s down from one million from a century ago.”
Following the main presentation, Levi took about 20 minutes to answer questions from the audience. People in attendance also asked her for tips about starting a garden and having the confidence to do it, and how she started beekeeping to help her garden.
To view the presentation, head over to the GRCCtv YouTube channel to watch The Legacy and History of Black Farming.
