"I believe the Great Creator has put oil and ores on this earth to give us a breathing spell. As we exhaust them, we must…
History’s ironies never cease to amaze me. The same day that Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, on January 1, 1863, the Homestead Act went…
“Learn to do common things uncommonly well; we must always keep in mind that anything that helps fill the dinner pail is valuable.” – George…
There are many reasons why people are drawn to the homesteading lifestyle and sustainable agriculture. There is the lure of living simply and sustainably off…
Oscar Micheaux walked the walk, talked the talk, wrote the book, and made the movie; he was perhaps more than anyone, deserving of the title: The…
There has always been a female face to agriculture: the tough homesteader pioneer woman on the frontier; the milkmaid; the tender of the flocks; the…
There were a lot of reasons for Americans to head West after the Civil War, with the Homestead Acts initiated by Abraham Lincoln being a…
If you’ve ever traveled through the southern Appalachian Mountains, you will immediately understand, even from the window of your car, that it would have been…
It was tough to be Black in the U.S. in the era of “reconstruction” which some people frankly think of as a continuation—for African Americans—of…
In the space of a few short months, two momentous and highly positive events occurred in America, even as the Civil War was at its…
It’s a story with a simple, but remarkable, beginning. In 1910 a Black American entrepreneur joined forces with a legendary spokesman for Black innovation to…
Down on the southern Georgia coast, there was a time when you could say the soil was rich and the people were poor. Matthew Raiford…
