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Daughters of the Soil: Black Women as Keepers of Ancestral Land Wisdom
- Zakiya Hakizimana
- 34 minutes ago
- 4 min read
Introduction
Throughout U.S. history, Black women have been central to agricultural knowledge, ecological labor, seed saving, and land stewardship. This role persisted even in the face of systemic exclusion from formal land ownership and forced dispossession. By tracing the historical and cultural roots of agricultural practice and examining its resurgence today, we can better understand how ecological wisdom has been preserved and transformed across generations.
I was inspired to write this article as I am currently reading Happy Land by Dolen Perkins-Valde. Happy Land is a story that illustrates this legacy through narrative and symbolism, depicting land as a site of identity, resilience, and contested inheritance. I will incorporate the historical fiction storytelling of this novel and the real roles that black women played in land stewardship, and how that wisdom still serves the black community today.
Historical Context: Agricultural Knowledge and Black Women
Black women contributed substantially to the agricultural economies of North America both during and after enslavement. In enslaved communities, women cultivated food crops, tended gardens, and preserved seeds. These were skills passed down through oral and embodied traditions. Although exact documentation of Black women’s farming practices is often absent from mainstream texts, researchers emphasize that Black communities collectively developed ecological expertise rooted in African agrarian knowledge. When Black families gained land in the post-Emancipation era, cultivation and stewardship became acts of autonomy and resistance.
By 1910, Black farmers owned an estimated 16–19 million acres of U.S. farmland, constituting about 14% of all American farmers. Yet, by the late twentieth century, that figure had plummeted due to systemic discrimination, legal vulnerability, and loss of agricultural inheritance.
Land Ownership, Dispossession, and Black Stewards of the Soil
Systemic barriers against Black land ownership contributed to dramatic losses. Legal mechanisms such as heirs’ property, where land passes without wills and becomes vulnerable to forced sale, disproportionately affected Black families. Advocacy organizations report that unclear title systems and discriminatory estate practices led to involuntary land loss with long-term economic and cultural consequences. The cumulative land loss among Black farmers, often exceeding 90% throughout the twentieth century, cannot be separated from broader ecological and cultural losses tied to farming knowledge, generational wisdom, and community land tables.
Despite this historical erasure, Black women continued to cultivate land where possible, practice ecological stewardship, and pass on agricultural skill sets. Their embodied knowledge of soil, plant cycles, seed saving, and seasonality kept ecological traditions alive, even in the absence of legal land ownership.
Land as Legacy and Symbol in Happy Land
In Happy Land by Dolen Perkins-Valdez, land functions both as a physical inheritance and a symbolic anchor for identity and memory. The novel’s dual timeline centers on Mother Rita and her granddaughter Nikki, who uncover their family’s roots in the Kingdom of the Happy Land, a community founded by formerly enslaved people seeking autonomy and sustainability. The narrative reveals how land connects ancestry, belonging, and resilience. At the center of the story is the struggle to retain ancestral land in the face of heirs’ property legal pressures, mirroring the real-world loss of Black-owned land.
Perkins-Valdez uses these narrative elements to spotlight how the politics of land ownership have historically undermined Black families’ claims to soil that once sustained them physically and culturally.
The characters’ experiences, especially those of women like Mother Rita and Luella, underscore Black women’s roles as preservers of heritage, storytellers of connection to the earth, and guardians of both physical land and emotional memory.
Contemporary Resurgence of Ancestral Practices
Today, Black women are visible leaders in contemporary food sovereignty, ecological advocacy, urban farming, and seed preservation. These movements are not mere nostalgia; they represent a conscious recovery of ecological knowledge once threatened by displacement. Revitalized community gardens, cooperative farming networks, and culturally rooted agricultural curricula reflect a reclaiming of ancestral wisdom. Together, they place ecological labor at the center of community health and autonomy.
For many Black women farmers and healers, land stewardship, seed saving, and agricultural practice are integral to combating food deserts, ecological degradation, and health disparities. In this context, ancestral agricultural knowledge meets modern ecological science in generative, community-centered ways.
Conclusion
Black women’s agricultural wisdom persists as both a historical inheritance and a living practice. Despite centuries of exclusion from legal ownership and targeted dispossession, Black women preserved ecological knowledge through land-based labor and cultural transmission. Happy Land brings these dynamics to life through narrative, framing land as a site of identity and contested legacy. As contemporary movements for ecological justice gain momentum, Black women continue to animate ancestral land wisdom through practice, teaching, and stewardship, making the soil itself a space of resilience and reclamation.
Reference Links:
Historical Context: Agricultural Knowledge and Black Women:
Land Ownership, Dispossession, and Black Stewards of the Soil:
About Kiyaza
Kiyaza the Poet is a multifaceted author and creative whose work bridges poetry, design, and self-discovery. In her book Lost Between the Sheets, she invites readers into her intimate journey through relationships, friendships, and the layered experiences of life as a Black woman. Beyond her literary voice, Kiyaza channels her artistry into Water Lily Studios, a design platform of journals and planners, where she encourages creativity, organization, and self-sufficiency in everyday life.
Her latest creation, Poetry in Bloom, is a collection of handmade, framed poems adorned with pressed flowers, celebrating beauty, resilience, and the art of storytelling.
Kiyaza’s writing focuses on the raw and reflective journey of self-discovery while exploring love, loss, healing, and growth through the lens of a Black woman’s experience.
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