African American Museum of Iowa unveils new exhibit on agriculture’s role in Black culture, activism

CEDAR RAPIDS — For most Iowans, the picture of a typical farmer conjures characteristics of one specific demographic. Since Iowa’s earliest days as a state, agriculture industry ads have put it in black and white.

“You typically see a white, middle-aged man,” said Felicite Wolfe, museum curator at the African American Museum of Iowa.

But while it’s true Black farmers remain a small percentage of the overall farming population, the value of their contributions across the state have added up to a impact bigger than the sum of their parts. More than crops, Black farmers have played a role in activism, preserving culture and ushering marginalized communities to greater economic independence.

In a mostly white state known first and foremost for its agriculture, “Rooted: Labor, Land and Legacy,” a new exhibit at the museum, reframes the significance of farming’s role for Black farmers and Iowans — from past to present.

“It’s the power of the community to take farming and use it to better themselves and their community,” said Wolfe. “They are survivors. They used it as a means to survive, to keep their community together and to better everyone’s lives.”

A living legacy

The new exhibit, installed in October, examines a timeline from Black farming’s past to Black farmers’ contribution to the agricultural landscape of Iowa today.

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The exhibit’s idea was sparked by a conference of the Iowa Farmers of Color last year, where museum curator Felicite Wolfe listened to stories, workshops and talks.

“I realized how rooted farming and agriculture is to Africans and the Black community, and how much it’s tied through history with empowerment. It was their ability to survive,” she said. “They used it during the Civil Rights Movement, for social justice, for uplifting their communities. There’s a whole host of things that they base food around — almost as a gateway.”

But more than a list of Black historical figures, the exhibit illustrates agriculture by the depth of its roots and the fruit it has produced.

The tie that binds

When enslaved Africans were brought to the United States, they brought a wealth of knowledge in farming from generations of doing it across Africa.

Many women embedded seeds in their hair braids, bringing crops like okra, yams and rice that launched new ventures in agriculture and shaped southern soul food to this day.

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Later, the Great Migration of the 20th century that brought Black southerners to work in industries spanning northern cities like Chicago, Detroit and Pittsburgh would bring Black farmers north, too.

“It was during the same time period when you had Jim Crow laws and the (Ku Klux) Klan coming and chasing people off their lands,” Wolfe said. “It just happened that some of them were farmers. They were farmers in the south, so they chose to farm when they moved.”

Black farmers in northern states like Iowa remain underrepresented even in literature that studies their fields. With a bigger population of Black farmers, southern states tend to receive more attention.

Nonetheless, Black farmers in Iowa have found great success using methods passed down over generations on smaller-scale farms.

The power of small potatoes

While Iowa’s row crop agriculture over the last few decades has been characterized by larger and larger yields over thousands of acres, Black farming is often making a difference in different ways with less acreage.

The exhibit’s displays introduce visitors to agriculture’s African roots and a tradition of oneness with the land before narrating how farming and advocacy brings us to modern day farmers in rural and urban areas.

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With influence from Booker T. Washington, the Tuskegee Institute and Iowa State University alumnus George Washington Carver, traditions that helped formerly enslaved Americans sustain communities and build wealth continue today with a sense of camaraderie, cooperation and mutual empowerment.

Despite systemic exclusion from institutions that helped white farmers, like the U.S. Department of Agriculture, many found success through building co-ops to share knowledge, feed communities and spark development in downtrodden areas.

While self-reliance is a common part of the farming mentality, it takes on a different light for Black farmers whose application of it can be a lesson to anyone.

“You can put it in your hands to make a change in the way you and your community feed yourselves and take care of yourselves,” Wolfe said. “This idea that the government will save you … it’s shown that that cannot be relied on.”

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, The Black Panthers used agricultural products and partnerships — through food — to feed children breakfast at Des Moines churches while teaching them about cultural history that schools often don’t detail in their curriculum. This knowledge, as they knew it, was critical education to build better citizens.

“They saw that a lot of their community can’t be empowered and motivated to make a difference in their government and communities because they’re too busy starving,” Wolfe said. “You can’t learn when you go to school and you haven’t had breakfast.”

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Some of the systemic racism continues to affect how institutions help Black farmers today — a legacy most white Americans remain unaware of.

“With overall African American history, we learned about slaves, the Civil War and Martin Luther King Jr., then it was done,” Wolfe said. “And a lot of white people say ‘gee, I thought the Civil Rights Movement saved everything.’”

Today, Black agriculture isn’t necessarily characterized by the science of what’s happening in the soil as much as how the power of farming is being returned to the people. Community gardens in urban food deserts, for example, have made farming partnerships between city dwellers and new generations of African immigrants who collaborate to grow cultural foods.

Many farmers of color are doing their best to improve not only growth of these crops, but access to them at farmers markets and food banks. Nonprofits have pitched in with funding and programming to help newcomers get their start

“I like how it’s a cyclical topic,” Wolfe said. “Their reasons for doing it are getting back to the land, getting back to their ancestors, using their type of techniques, seeing a need in the Black community for traditional produce.”

Comments: Features reporter Elijah Decious can be reached at (319) 398-8340 or elijah.decious@thegazette.com.