Farming for Justice: The Struggles of Black Farmers

Today on “The Daily,” we present Episode 5, Part 2 of “1619,” a New York Times audio series hosted by Nikole Hannah-Jones. You can find more information about it at nytimes.com/1619podcast.

The Provosts, a family of sugar-cane farmers in Louisiana, had worked the same land for generations. When it became harder and harder to keep hold of that land, June Provost and his wife, Angie, didn’t know why — and then a phone call changed their understanding of everything. In the finale of “1619,” we hear the rest of June and Angie’s story, and its echoes in a past case that led to the largest civil rights settlement in American history.

Guests: June and Angie Provost; Adizah Eghan and Annie Brown, producers for “1619”; and Khalil Gibran Muhammad, a professor of history, race and public policy at Harvard University and the author of “The Condemnation of Blackness.”

Background reading:

• “The number of black sugar-cane farmers in Louisiana is most likely in the single digits,” Khalil Gibran Muhammad writes in his essay on the history of the American sugar industry. “They are the exceedingly rare exceptions to a system designed to codify black loss.”
• The “1619” audio series is part of The 1619 Project, a major initiative from The Times observing the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery. Read more from the project here.

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