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After President Donald Trump announced a fresh wave of tariffs on April 2, the U.S. stock market experienced its worst crash since the COVID-19 pandemic. When the stock market closed on Friday, April 4, the S&P 500 lost 6% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 5.5%. Since February, however, the S&P is down 12% and Nasdaq is down 18%. As bad as this may seem, analysts aren’t sure if we’ve reached the bottom; there could be more pain.
For many people, it’s not just the stock market that keeps them up at night; it’s wondering what comes next. The plunging markets follow tens of thousands of job cuts in federal government agencies. Each day, it seems we are hearing about another agency that has been ordered by the administration to shutter its doors. Whether one lives in rural or urban America, many people are frightened.
If you are trying to process this moment or wondering where to go from here, it is imperative you recall lessons of old. Remember the example of your grandparents and the guidance of your elders. How did they navigate hard times? What specific steps would they take if they were alive right now?
One of the most revolutionary things many of our ancestors did was to control their food system. Most Black people in the South had gardens and many were farmers. Many canned food after harvest to ensure they had enough to eat in the fall and winter months. They weren’t as reliant on traditional grocery stores. They grew what they and their community needed.
There was an eco-system of self-reliance on display for children and young people alike. For instance, I believe that I am among one of the last generations of Black youth that grew up in an urban environment, but visited rural relatives “down the country” when school was out for the summer. I was born in Baltimore City, but went down South to my maternal great-grandmother’s (Geraldine Castor) house for the summer. The memories are still fresh.
Mama Geraldine had a garden just outside her kitchen window. She grew what she and her large family needed. In addition to fresh vegetables from her garden, Mama Geraldine’s kitchen was lined with seemingly decades’ old mason jars filled with food.
While her refrigerator sometimes looked sparse, the appearance betrayed reality. The mason jars boasted more food than what we could consume. I recall blanched greens, smoked hogs, and so much more. Although there wasn’t a Wal-Mart, CVS or Walgreens in sight, I never felt we were missing out or going without. In fact, I didn’t know we were “poor” until other people assigned that label to us. It certainly didn’t feel like it to me. I felt like we had all that we needed.
Equally important, Mama Geraldine was part of a fabric of a close-knit community which supplemented what she and others could not provide for themselves. She also had the Black church. The Black church was a place for worship, a place for gathering and a place for sharing resources. Times were incredibly hard and yet Mama Geraldine and others in the community stuck together.
I didn’t appreciate it at the time, but my trips to the South were preparation for the moment in which we now live. Mama Geraldine (and her daughter, Solone, who is my grandmother) was teaching me even though I didn’t realize I was in class.
One of the things I learned was that our commitment to growing our own food did not fluctuate based on who was in office. Growing food was a customary part of Black life. Yet in my own work with the Black Church Food Security Network, I find that some people’s interest in food sovereignty wanes depending on who is in the White House. For instance, during times of decreased confidence in political leadership, there is heightened interest in food security. You see high numbers of people wanting to start gardens, connect with Black farmers and volunteer with Black food justice organizations.
However, when there is high confidence in political leadership – who is in the White House, for example – the interest in communal self-reliance dips or dissipates. This is a missed opportunity because food insecurity has a disproportionate impact on Black families no matter which political party is in power. According to the USDA, “over 9 million Black people could not access enough food to lead a healthy, active life.”
Feeding America found that “27% of Black children, or 1 in 4 Black children, lived in food insecure households” in 2023. Black families are also more likely to live in poverty, with a poverty rate of 17.9%. Regardless of who is in state or federal offices, we should be committed to food sovereignty. We do this by growing our own food together, supporting Black farmers, and directing our collective institutional dollars (churches, fraternities, sororities, HBCUs, civic organizations) toward obtaining larger scale agricultural equipment and infrastructure.
As it stands, the number of Black producers and farmers is declining. Black producers are older, more likely to have served in the military and more likely to work smaller family farms. While we can’t control other communities, we can control how we support producers and invest in locally-controlled food systems in our own community.
I know it is customary for some young people to sometimes say, in response to racism, “we aren’t our grandparents.” But our grandparents have a lot to teach us. We should be honoring their memory and keeping their spirit alive. We should be channeling their resilience, quiet and not so quiet strength and modeling the best examples of their collective self-determination. Most of all, we should remember that in the same way they faced trials and survived, we will too.
Rev. Dr. Heber Brown, III is an author, pastor and founder of The Black Church Food Security Network.
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