As this country transitioned from the end of the Civil War in 1865 to the Reconstruction period (1865-1877) Radical Republicans such as Thaddeus Stevens championed the notion of giving Freedmen (the name coined for the former enslaved population in the US South) 40 acres of land and a mule thus the name of Spike Lee's first production company 40 Acres and a Mule. However the political will to see this radical aspiration which called for redistributing wealth in the South as well as the long term protection of African-American civil rights existed among very throughout the nation. After Americans in the South who obtained land did so through hard work and frugality. However the passage of Jim Crow laws after 1877 resulted in the disenfranchisement of African Americans politically as well as economically. Unscrupulous land speculators used southern courts and violence to defraud large numbers of Afro-American farm owners of their land. Today African-American farmers can best be described as an endangered species. The same could be said in some respect to small farmers in general of all phenotypes and ethnicities. The podcasts I share today are collection that focus on the theme of farming.
