The Land Didn’t Disappear Overnight

Black By God is reporting on how Black farmers in West Virginia are rebuilding agricultural systems despite barriers to land, policy, and capital—highlighting what’s working, who’s leading, and how communities are adapting.

In this excerpted passage from our article Black Farmers in West Virginia Nearly Disappeared (August 24, 2026) we talk about the land, the landowners and solutions for repairing land loss. This is the final installment of a five-part series.

The foundation Black West Virginians built over nearly two centuries didn’t disappear all at once. It eroded one generation at a time.

World War II reshaped the ground beneath Appalachian agriculture. Coal mechanized and shed jobs even as it continued drawing families into southern West Virginia. Yet farming never fully disappeared—it simply moved closer to home. Families planted gardens on whatever land the coal companies allowed. Some camps held garden contests. People raised hogs, chickens and goats, kept bees for honey and rotated seasonal crops much as their grandparents had. It was a quieter version of the mountain farming tradition that still defines places like T&T Organic Farms today. Jason Tartt’s father, Nathaniel Tartt, grew up in the Berwind coal camp during the 1940s, when that culture of self-sufficiency still existed alongside company work. Looking back, he believes another turning point followed.

“All kinds of professionals were here to run those things, and so when integration happened, a wave of unemployment swept across not only West Virginia, but this country, for Black people. And that’s when [the decline] started.”

McDowell County reached nearly 100,000 residents in 1950. Today, fewer than 20,000 remain. The Great Migration accelerated those changes. West Virginia was often a stop along the rail lines carrying Black families toward Cleveland, Chicago and Pittsburgh rather than the final destination. As Isabel Wilkerson documents in The Warmth of Other Suns, millions of Black Americans left the South between 1915 and 1970. West Virginia rarely appears at the center of that story, but it was part of the journey. The state also produced leaders who challenged the inequalities migrants left behind. Memphis Tennessee Garrison, born to formerly enslaved parents and raised in McDowell County, founded one of West Virginia’s earliest NAACP branches before becoming a national NAACP vice president. Decades later, Black Appalachian scholars William H. Turner and Edward J. Cabbell documented what popular history often ignored: Appalachia was never the all-white region many imagined. Black families had always been part of its communities, economy and agricultural traditions.

“When integration happened, a wave of unemployment swept across not only West Virginia, but this country, for Black people.

The numbers reveal how dramatically that history changed. The 1920 U.S. Census counted 504 Black farmers operating 503 Black-owned farms across West Virginia. Today, only 31 Black-owned farms remain. Organizations like the Black Appalachian Coalition argue that decline resulted from decades of discriminatory lending, heirs’ property complications, racially biased taxation, exclusion from USDA programs and outright fraud—not from a lack of Black farmers themselves. The question today is no longer simply why Black farmland disappeared. It is whether it can be rebuilt.

Growing Something Back

Against those odds, a new generation of Black West Virginians is choosing to stay. T&T Organic Farms and the EDGE Demonstration Farm sit on the same McDowell County ground where Jason Tartt’s great-grandfather once farmed. The stone fence his grandfather built still winds through the mountains, marking property lines that remain part of the family’s story today. Coming back, Tartt says, wasn’t about acquiring land. It was about staying on it.

Two people anchor Black By God’s reporting on what rebuilding looks like from different perspectives. Author and organizer Brea Baker, whose book Rooted examines Black land theft across America, frames the issue as one of justice, reparations and generational wealth. Rebuilding Black agriculture also requires practical support. While Baker frames the issue historically and nationally, Adam Hodges, Program Leader for Community Vitality and Economic Development and Interim Program Leader for Agriculture and Natural Resources at West Virginia State University Extension Service, focuses on helping today’s farmers navigate practical opportunities.

 “There is a wealth of opportunities available in agriculture, no matter one’s age, interest or skill level,” Hodges said, pointing prospective farmers toward USDA programs, the West Virginia Department of Agriculture, Farm Credit of the Virginias, local Extension offices, free workshops through WVSU and WVU Extension, and scholarship opportunities including WVSU’s NextGen Scholarship and the 1890 Scholars Program.

Baker’s work also helped lead BBG to one of West Virginia’s overlooked stories—the Walker family’s Black-owned land in the Eastern Panhandle, where stone quarried from their property helped build Route 9. In her book Rooted, Baker argues that West Virginia’s experience reflects a much larger national story. Black land ownership reached its peak before the Great Migration, when Black Americans owned roughly 14 percent of the nation’s farmland. Today, that figure has fallen to less than 1 percent. For Baker, rebuilding Black land ownership is about more than farming. She sees agriculture, horticulture, forestry and other land-based industries as part of a broader environmental justice strategy that reconnects people with the land while creating economic opportunity. 

As Baker told BBG, “We have to decide what freedom looks like for us in the 21st century,” a question she connects to addressing economic inequity and rebuilding opportunities for future generations. 

Another response is emerging through the Central Appalachian Faith Collaborative, a partnership including the Mennonite Central Committee, Together for Hope in Appalachia and the West Virginia Faith Collective. Drawing on the Biblical tradition of Jubilee, the coalition is encouraging some of McDowell County’s largest landowners to consider returning land to local communities while addressing food insecurity in a county where roughly one in three residents lacks reliable access to food. The evidence remains early and local rather than sweeping, but it is tangible. 

T&T Organic Farms and EDGE demonstrate that land access remains possible even in one of West Virginia’s most economically distressed counties. Hodges points to organizations such as WV Hive helping beginning farmers with business development, nonprofit farms training new producers, and WVSU Extension’s free marketing and brand-development classes that help farmers reach customers. The university is also developing a financial literacy program to help producers better understand the financial health of their operations. WVSU’s land-grant mission, rooted in land once preserved by Mary Barnes and her family, continues through agricultural education, while Camp Washington-Carver helped carry those traditions to another generation. Just as importantly, historians, universities, journalists and community organizations are documenting stories that went untold for generations, restoring Black farmers to West Virginia’s public memory alongside efforts to rebuild agriculture itself.

What the Solutions Can’t Yet Solve

The limitations are equally clear. One successful farm cannot reverse a decline from 504 Black-owned farms to 31. Federal funding cuts have already disrupted projects intended to expand land access and agricultural opportunity, including a $1.1 million grant that would have helped launch new coalfield businesses. New pressures continue to emerge as large-scale land purchases compete for rural property. Hodges believes additional investment is still needed, beginning with agriculture education in elementary, middle and high schools, along with community food hubs, shared-use facilities and innovative growing methods such as grow bags and hydroponics that reduce barriers for people without access to farmland. Solutions journalism asks not whether a problem has been solved, but whether credible responses exist. In West Virginia, they do. Whether those responses can grow quickly enough to shape the next generation of Black land ownership remains an open question.

Every institution in this story stands on land that someone fought to keep. Mary Barnes spent years securing ownership for her family. Charles James built a business that became one of America’s longest-running Black family enterprises. West Virginia State University grew from land preserved through that same determination. Jason Tartt farms behind the stone fence his great-grandfather built, on ground that was never entirely lost in the first place. What erased 473 of West Virginia’s Black-owned farms wasn’t one dramatic event. It was a century of smaller losses. The work underway today cannot erase that history overnight. But every acre preserved, every beginning farmer supported and every family that chooses to remain on the land suggests something equally important: the story of Black farming in West Virginia is still being written. 

Thanks to the people rebuilding this legacy, Black farmers are reclaiming their place in the story it represents.

There’s a farmer on the West Virginia state flag.

This story is the final installment of BBG’s Solutions Journalism Project, five enterprise stories centered around Black agricultural life in West Virginia. Follow Black By God: The West Virginian for more agricultural content.