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Read more about the American Black Farmers Project on John Ficara's website

John Francis Ficara spent four years photographing black farmers across America, witnessing firsthand the difficulties faced by families who simply want to continue living and working on their land. Black Farmers in America reproduces in duotone over a hundred of Ficara's exquisite photographs that capture the labor and joy of daily life on the family farm. In these poignant images of financial hardship, survival, and the people's bond to the soil, Black Farmers in America documents for posterity the struggle of black farmers in America at the end of the twentieth century to preserve their heritage.

In 1920 black Americans made up 14 percent of all the farmers in the nation and worked 16 million acres of land. Today, battling the onslaught of globalization, changing technology, an aging workforce, racist lending policies, and even the U.S. Department of Agriculture, black farmers account for less than 1 percent of the nation's farmers and cultivate fewer than 3 million acres of farmland. Inside these statistics is a staggering story of human loss: when each farm closed, those farmers, their spouses, children, grandchildren, and the people they hired, all had to leave a way of life that had existed in their families for generations.

John Francis Ficara is an international award-winning photojournalist and documentary photographer who has worked for Newsweek and several other national and international magazines. Currently a freelance photographer, he lives near Washington, D.C.

Juan Williams is senior correspondent for NPR's Morning Edition and author of the bestselling book, Eyes on the Prize, and the widely acclaimed biography, Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary. He has won an Emmy award for TV documentary writing.

Reviews:

"This eloquent book paints a picture of what is happening today to small, independent, black farmers . . . . I hope this is a documentary for black farmers of future generations, and not one about the fading of a way of life.

Armchair Interviews says: Highly recommended."-- Peg Brantly, Armchair Interviews

"This eloquent book paints a picture. I hope this is a documentary for black farmers of future generations." --Armchair

"Ficara's photos show people fighting for, and all too often losing, what they know and love."--Los Angeles Times

"Just as John Ficara captures poignant images of Black farmers, Juan Williams . . . complements these stunning images with enlightened, descriptive, and thoughtful narrative."--(Lexington, KY) Key Newsjournal

"This book is not a nostalgic look at days gone by; it is a portrait of prideful black Americans whose hearts brim with determination, hope, strength, and a promise they aim to fulfill--on their own terms."--Black Issues Book Review

"Sometimes haunting, sometimes joyous."--Richmond Times-Dispatch

"His photos show people fighting for, and all too often losing, what they know and love."--Los Angles Times

The story of the black American farmer is told with tenderness and raw truth."--Multicultural Review

"A powerful collection of images documenting the struggles of black farmers."--Birmingham News

"Elegaic. . . . Makes it clear that something is being lost, that some tether to our agrarian roots will soon be severed."--Atlanta Journal-Constitution

"Ficara's photographs, well over 100, are solemn, restrained, dour. He has a story to tell, and he does it graphically."--RALPH

"Ficara's approach . . . is honest and frank. He puts a face to those he sees as being under attack by the forces of history. His efforts, like the steadfast work of his subjects, hopefully are not doomed."--Photo-Eye

"A carefully crafted and meticulously researched book. . . . Without question this volume adds much to our understanding of African American life in the United States from the enslavement period to today."--Northern Kentucky Heritage

"Ficara's extraordinary photography captures what could easily be the last breath of a dying culture. . . . A magnificent celebration of resilient spirit in the face of astonishing odds."--New York Resident

"The photographs reflect a strength, pride, beauty, and endurance of a dying breed of African Americans."--Booklist

"Gorgeous."--Washington Post

"Traces the long evolution of American apiculture and focuses upon the key personalities who shaped and promoted the industry. . . . A clearly written, well researched, and sharply focused work."--Ohio Valley History

"Images of emotional faces and determined eyes of the black farmers who remain today evoke America's original sin--slavery--and its aftermath. Ficara's photographs afford us a unique angle for understanding why slaves freed after the Civil War sacrificed everything to buy land and become independent farmers."--Juan Williams, from the book

"Rich and groundbreaking. . . . Ficara's images bear witness to the devastating impact of agribusiness on all small farmers, the intractability of racism in the USDA, and the aging of the farm population."--Agricultural History