Black Earth: A Family’s Journey from Enslavement to Reclamation

Photo caption: Fourth-generation farmer Patrick Brown sits on the steps of the Oakley Grove plantation, where his great-grandfather Byron was enslaved. […] Photo credit: Cornell Watson. Article by Christina Cooke. Civil Eats – December 10, 2024. This story was originally published by The Bitter Southerner magazine, in print and online.

In the months before Patrick Brown was born in November 1982, his father, Arthur, lay down on a road near the family’s farm to prevent a caravan of yellow dump trucks from depositing toxic soil in his community. The governor of North Carolina had authorized the dumping of the soil, contaminated with polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, which had been linked to […]

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