Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 17, 1993 TAG: 9303170075
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By LESLIE POSTAL DAILY PRESS
DATELINE: ISLE OF WIGHT (AP) LENGTH: Medium
BLACK FARMERS NEAR THE END OF THE ROW
Sam Chapman worked hard and saved, but it was years before sharecropping earned him enough in the 1920s to buy his 35-acre farm in southeastern Virginia.When he died of lung disease in the 1940s the farm work fell to his two sons, neither yet 20 years old. They worked hard and saved, too, and found getting ahead still wasn't easy for black farmers.
But eventually the long days that Joseph and Leland Chapman spent in their fields paid off: Their acreage grew to more than 200, they built comfortable ranch houses and they sent their children to college.
Now, at ages 64 and 68, Joseph and Leland Chapman are about to retire. Leland Chapman would love for his son and his brother's son to take over the family farm, but he knows that's not likely.
"Farming's so discouraging," he said.
Especially for black farmers.
Across Virginia, black farmers like the Chapmans are leaving their land, retiring without heirs or selling their property.
In the past 57 years, the number of black farmers in Virginia has dropped about 95 percent, according to census figures. Fewer than 1,700 remain.
Years of discrimination have fueled the exodus, preventing black farmers from buying good farmland and obtaining credit. When tough times hit all farmers, black farmers were the most vulnerable.
Even if they held onto their land, their children didn't want it. They wanted to seize new opportunities more widely available to blacks, including college and good jobs in business or government.
Black farmers such as the Chapmans, who succeeded despite the odds, now find they are the end of the line.
Clifton Slade grew up on a Surry County farm and now is an agriculture extension agent in Suffolk. He says he worries that history will repeat itself and, once again, the only black people on farms will be hired hands.
"This country does not need that perception any more," he said.
Slade's cousin still farms their family's land. But he's one of about 10 full-time black farmers left in the county. Slade and his cousin, who share ownership of the farm, both have young daughters. Slade wants them to hold onto the land.
Joseph Chapman's son, Joseph Bernard Chapman, agrees. The 41-year-old businessman said he'd never stand for watching his family lose the farm.
"If my dad called and said, `Bernard, come home,' I'd be on the road," he said.
Joseph Bernard Chapman says he has not forgotten his family's struggles to make the farm profitable.
Since the early part of the century, fewer Virginians - white or black - have earned a living as farmers. But the decline in the number of white farmers has not been as drastic. About 67 percent of whites have stopped farming in the past 60 years compared to 95 percent of blacks.
In Virginia, there were 138,455 farmers - 47,786 of them black - in 1920. That had dropped to 43,034 farmers - 1,756 of them black - by 1987.
Nationwide, there were 5.5 million farmers in 1920, 934,284 of them black. By 1987, the number of farmers had dropped to 2 million, including 44,640 blacks.
When the Civil War ended, some newly freed slaves were able to buy property. But most blacks in the South fell victim to a sharecropping system that kept them in debt to the white landowner who rented them land.
In the early 1900s, as the cotton industry boomed, the black farmers' situation improved. By 1910, 240,000 blacks owned their farms and some 700,000 operated their own farms but rented the land from someone else.
That success was short-lived. World War I, which caused prices to collapse, and the boll weevil had all but ruined the cotton industry by 1920. Black farmers, with little access to bank loans, went under at twice the rate of white farmers.
That decline has continued ever since, black farmers say. Even today, black farmers say they have trouble getting loans.
A recent study of the Farmers Home Administration showed that from 1980 to 1992, loans to black farmers continued to lag behind loans to white farmers.
The average loan to a black farmer, the study found, was about $21,000 smaller than the average loan to a white farmer.
But the agency, which is run by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, denied any discrimination. It said black farmers received smaller loans because they tended to have smaller operations.
In Virginia, the Farmers Home Administration and Virginia State University have set up loan and technical assistance programs to help the state's smaller farmers.
One of its first loans went to Sussex farmer Philip Smith, who at 39 left his "clock job" to take over his uncle's operation.
"I know I'm the youngest black farmer out here," said Smith, now 40.
But even if the farm survives under his keep, the future holds no promises. His 14-year-old son is dreaming of college and a professional football career.