We can't.

They live.

The way in the song.

I see it. The Lord is with the with the Pick a turn turn! This is hell as today's

hell.

Manufacturing descent since 1996

this is hell as today's guest reminds us in 1920 black farmers in the US owned about

15 million acres of land by 2017 they owned around 4.6 million acres. The black farmer has

been disappearing from the American landscape but there was still a place not

far from Chicago that remained again as our guest points out today.

One of the few places black landowners could gain a foothold in Illinois in part because this land

was passed over by white settlers who presumed its sandy soils were worthless.

Through trial and error they found what could survive the sandy soil growing specialty crops like okra, collards, peas, and watermelons.

Pembroke, Illinois was founded by a former slave during the Civil War.

He sold off parcels of land to other former slaves and used that money

to fund the Underground Railroad helping even more to become free.

It became a haven for those who after the war would flee the Jim Crow South.

While the farmers were able to eek out a living selling produce to markets throughout Kankakee County

and in Chicago, things were always tough for black farmers who faced discrimination

when it came to access to capital and loans.

They toughed it out with secondhand farming equipment but a single year's drought could mean losing their land, and many did.

Still, on thousands of acres, they would freely pick wild fruit, run small subsistence farms,

...