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Photos: To Worship and Solidify
Churches like the Calvary Baptist Church, a historically black church in Madison, Ga., play a key role in the lives African Americans, including farmers. Such churches were places of worship, of course, but they also solidified a sense of community in an otherwise oppressive world, served as effective communications channels, and provided leadership and other guidance for African Americans on issues of the day.
A member of the Calvary Baptist Church, in Madison, Ga., speaks during a sermon on Sunday, March 26, 2017. Calvary's congregation has been worshipping for well over 150 years.
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To Worship and Solidify
The congregation watches the sermon at Calvary Baptist Church on Sunday, March 26, 2017. Calvary became an all-black church in 1865, after previously sharing a building with white Baptists.
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To Worship and Solidify
A churchgoer prays at the Calvary Baptist Church on Sunday, March 26, 2017.
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To Worship and Solidify
The stained-glass window inside Calvary Baptist Church on Sunday, March, 26, 2017. Renovations have occurred throughout the building's storied history, making it hard to pinpoint when these windows were installed.
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To Worship and Solidify
Greg Stripling plays the organ during a service for Calvary Baptist Church on Sunday, March 26, 2017. Stripling went to Fort Valley State University and soon after graduating started playing for churches, eventually finding Calvary. Stripling was ordained a Minister of Music in 2009.
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To Worship and Solidify
Clergy of the Calvary Baptist Church lead the congregation in song during worship on Sunday, March 26, 2017. At the far right in the white coat is the Rev. Dr. Hoke L. Smith, Pastor since 1988. Song, hymns and chants filled the room with joyous sound.
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Farming Through the Generations
Dee Dotson has had farming in his blood for nearly a century. His nephew, Frank Taylor, sees a brighter future for rural America if small farmers do a better job of purchasing and selling in bulk and connecting with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and other agencies and groups. Dotson was co-founder of the Winston County Self Help Cooperative, based in Louisville, Miss., and Taylor is now president.
Dee Dotson, left, and Frank Taylor rest on a pile of firewood while discussing their family history on March 31, 2017. Both men are farmers.
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Farming Through the Generations
Dee Dotson, 93, stands in one of his gardens on March 31, 2017. Dotson's family wonders what type of farmer he could have become had he been the beneficiary of loans and other government subsidies that white farmers received.
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Farming Through the Generations
An overgrown shack on Dee Dotson's property on March 31, 2017. Dotson is no longer the young man he once was, but he still manages to care for several plots of crops and some livestock.
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Farming Through the Generations
Frank Taylor, 59, leans on his pickup truck on March 31, 2017. Taylor’s farmland was handed down to him after hard-fought battles through the generations to keep it in the family. To honor his ancestors and the struggles they experienced, he says he will never sell land.
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Farming Through the Generations
Dee Dotson plucks greens from one of his gardens on March 31, 2017. Dotson was born in 1923 and has farmed on the same piece of land for 51 years. He has become well known in the community for providing accessible, fresh produce.
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Farming Through the Generations
Horses on Dee Dotson's property cautiously approach on March 31, 2017. A few cattle roamed the farm, too.
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Seeds of Hope in the Shadow of Racism
Despite a history marked by chattel slavery, Jim Crow laws, terrorism by lynching, unequal education, economic discrimination, institutional racism and more, African American farmers maintain a love of the land as deep as any citizen. Their determination to continue farming and earn sustainable livelihoods drives them to maintain their land for future generations and find new ways to compete in a changing agricultural system that hasn’t always been fair. They are acutely aware of that history, yet seem undaunted.
A redwing blackbird lands in a cotton field in the Mississippi River Delta on April 1, 2017. Cotton was once the king of agriculture in the Deep South, but soybeans and other commodity crops have made inroads in the Delta.
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Seeds of Hope in the Shadow of Racism
Jars full of dirt from lynching sites across Alabama line a wall at the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Ala., on March 29, 2017. Each jar is marked with the name of the murder victim and the date and location of the crime. The jars were collected as part of EJI’s Community Remembrance Project. In 2015, EJI released a report documenting 4,075 lynchings of black Americans in 12 Southern states between 1877 and 1950. Many of them were military veterans.
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Seeds of Hope in the Shadow of Racism
A tour guide at Tuskegee University explains to visiting high school students the meaning of the “Lifting the Veil” statue on March 28, 2017. The statue, a National Monument, shows Booker T. Washington removing a “veil of ignorance” from a slave, giving him light to read. Slaves generally were not allowed to read. The statue’s inscription reads: "He lifted the veil of ignorance from his people and pointed the way to progress through education and industry." Washington was Tuskegee’s first president.
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Seeds of Hope in the Shadow of Racism
Sandra Hall Cummings looks at the deed to her property on March 25, 2017. Cummings runs a small timber and cattle operation on the land. Her ancestor, a woman who was born a slave on the land when it was part of a large plantation, was given the land by the plantation owner. It has been handed down through several generations, and Cummings and other family members have struggled to keep it.
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Seeds of Hope in the Shadow of Racism
Pines on Sandra Cummings' farm on March 25, 2016, a few days after a controlled burn to manage understory growth. A century or more ago, much of this land was used for cotton and tobacco production. Like many other African-American landowners today in the South, Cummings mixes timber production with small cattle farming and other agricultural operations.
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Seeds of Hope in the Shadow of Racism
Dorothy Grady-Scarbrough holds okra seeds on April 1, 2017, at her vegetable garden in Shelby, Miss. Scarborough directs Mississippians Engaged in Greener Agriculture, or MEGA, which seeks to help people with limited access to healthy foods, including fresh fruits and vegetables. She also co-leads the National Farm to School Network for the state.
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