Why Soil Work Is Black Soul Work

White enslavers did terrible things to Black and Indigenous people, and to the land.

As cotton dominated Southern crops, enslavers purchased toxic chemicals and fertilizers to ensure cotton remained king. These chemicals leached nutrients from Southern soil, causing erosion and land poisoning. 

Anti-Black Southern farming and mining systems had a deadly impact on entire communities and regions, damaging streams, forests, and entire ecosystems. 

While land poisoning was the demand of white enslavers, it was our enslaved ancestors who were physically forced to do it. The poison seeped into the soil and remained in the cotton seeds and roots, even finding its way into the mush the enslaved were forced to eat, causing disease and malnutrition.

Land poisoning has caused our people generations of psychological, physical, and spiritual health deficits. During Reconstruction, freedmen were pushed off the land altogether and forced to settle in overpopulated communities. 

Today, Black and Indigenous communities are still most impacted by the effects of climate change and lack of access to clean food and water. 

Healing our relationship with the land is ancestral, spiritual work. Healing the land can look like land stewarding, returning to plant medicine, community farm shares, organizing landback initiatives, and understanding the anti-Black history of climate change. 

Let’s make time to spend with the land. Nature is where the Spirit resides.

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