Rooted

Starred review from April 1, 2024
Millions of acres of rural land have been systematically taken from African Americans since the end of Reconstruction, reports essayist Baker in her vigorous debut history, which argues emphatically for this land to be restored to Black ownership. Her narrative comprises three parallel threads: emotional stories of her own grandparents, who persevered in maintaining their beloved rural lifestyle on 100 acres of North Carolina land throughout her childhood; accounts of other families whose access to the land was chipped away or lost over the course of the 20th century; and a chronology of anti-Black government policies, such as eminent domain seizures and inequitable loan terms. These policies, according to Baker, formed the mechanism by which land was transferred en masse from Black ownership and into the hands of the government, corporations, and wealthy white people, a historical and ongoing process undergirding today’s racial wealth gap. She writes evocatively about Black farmers’ relationship with the land and argues passionately for Black Americans to return to family farms (she’s unabashedly utopian on this point, and her frustration with Black people uninterested in rural life is palpable). Baker keeps tightly focused on the topic and writes in a conversational prose that casually draws on a wide range of thinkers. Educators in particular will find this invaluable.

May 15, 2024
A well-documented study of land ownership among Black Americans and the accompanying land theft. Land ownership in America has long been associated with trauma, going back to the early days of settler colonialism, slavery, and genocide. Baker asks, "What does it mean to reclaim that tainted history and desecrated land, land rightfully associated with trauma, to become not only a home but also a vehicle for equity?" The author chronicles her grandparents' early stewardship of land in North Carolina before they were compelled to move north (to New Jersey) with the Great Migration. Seeking to return to their roots, however, Baker's family eventually came back to North Carolina in 2012, when she was a teenager, and bought 86 acres. The author examines this trend within a broader historical context, beginning with the enormous strides in Black land ownership after the Civil War, when one in five Black heads of household had become property owners, a number that grew "exponentially" from 1870 to 1890. However, with Black ownership came the inevitable "whitewash." Baker describes the (re)rise of white supremacy in places like Wilmington, where, in 1898, violence broke out, leading to voter intimidation and destruction of Black businesses. The violence forced Black citizens to flee, relinquishing ownership of land to whites. The author notes that the chaos in Wilmington created a "blueprint" for seizing Black property in subsequent riots in Tulsa and Atlanta. The Great Migration lured Black Americans northward to escape, yet by leaving the land, they grew increasingly impoverished. Baker investigates the "complicity" of the Department of Agriculture in allowing Black land theft, and she considers how Black and Indigenous groups have shared land trauma and worked together; the issue of reparations; and Hazel Johnson and the rise of the environmental justice movement. A passionate, engaging combination of history, memoir, and examination of income inequality.

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May 24, 2024

This book is writer/freedom fighter Baker's (contributor, Our History Has Always Been Contraband) way of spotlighting the land theft that her grandfather, along with many other Black people, experienced in North Carolina. There's evidence that between 1910 and 1997, Black Americans lost about 90% of their farmland. But Baker's grandfather and others refused to give up the Southern lands that their Black ancestors cleared, cultivated, and enriched. They wanted to create an inheritance for their progeny, but, as Baker notes, that led to many battles. Her book's 18 chapters weave personal commentary, reflections, and family anecdotes into a historical narrative revealing the ugly, often brutal, history of racial dominance and subordination that dispossessed Indigenous communities and denied landownership to emancipated Black people who saw it as essential to freedom. Baker praises the foresight of Black elders for seeing Black-owned land as the path to securing a vibrant future for generations to come. She also issues a call to action for Black people to return to the land as a path to self-actuating a self-sustaining, ecofriendly, economically and socially free community that thrives while developing intergenerational wealth. VERDICT Readers interested in a broad interpretive sketch of dispossessive effects of colonization, enslavement and its aftermath may be drawn to Baker's personalized recounting of the continuing significance of Black people's efforts to realize the dream of owning land and the profits it produces.--Thomas J. Davis

Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 14, 2024
In her hybrid memoir, Baker examines the history of Black land ownership in the U.S. She uses her own family's history of farming in the South as an entry point, examining Black Americans' collective lineage within a society that linked autonomy with the ability to own property. As a history, the book trades focus for breadth. Baker moves from the inception of American colonialism to the present-day, analyzing the laws, violence, and societal mores that shaped Black Americans' relationship to land and labor. Relayed over the course of dozens of incidents, the scale of such disenfranchisement is clear. Unfortunately, that broadness carries over to the memoir segments as well; readers may wish that her family history, while well-researched, was told less briskly. Baker doesn't particularly delve into the psychologies of the characters involved, making it hard to invest emotionally in her family's story. While the book seems to lack a core argument, overall, Rooted is a good starting point for research into Black Americans' environmental history.

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