Welcome to

Acres of Ancestry Initiative / 

Black Agrarian Fund

Welcome to

Acres of Ancestry Initiative / 

Black Agrarian Fund

Acres of Ancestry,  Jess Hill

Preserving the Black Family Land Commons Through Imagination, Art, and Cooperative Economy

Who We Are

About the Acres of Ancestry Initiative/Black Agrarian Fund 

The Acres of Ancestry Initiative/Black Agrarian Fund is a multidisciplinary, cooperative nonprofit ecosystem rooted in Black ecocultural traditions and textile arts to regenerate custodial landownership, ecological stewardship, and food and fiber economies in the South.

Our Grounding

Gunny Sack of Wisdom

Gunny sacks were the bags our Ancestors carried while toiling in the fields of racialized capitalism and bondage. Our Gunny Sack of Wisdom archives share Black Diasporic wisdom across time, space, and geography from Black freedom-builders.

Click the button below to learn more.

I love to think of nature as an unlimited broadcasting station, through which God speaks to us every hour, if we will only tune in.

-George Washington Carver

Two things worry me about the future of humanity: the tendency to think hierarchically, and the tendency to place ourselves higher on the hierarchy than others.

-Octavia Butler

Our Heritage

Imagination Remembrance

The 400-year Black agrarian liberation struggle in the United States is inextricably bound to the European construction of racial identity, hierarchy, and domination enshrined in American jurisprudence and societal custom.  In her seminal work, “Whiteness as Property,” Cheryl Harris examines how the origins of property rights in the United States were ingrained in the racial subjugation of Africans and Native Americans through the parallel systems of slavery and colonization. 

Spring Planting,  Jonathan Green

Our Work

Initiatives

Allied Funders

Engage

The Cuban agroecologist Fernando Funes Monzote shared, "you make the path by walking."  

Engage with our tribe on social media as we make our path toward collective liberation through the preservation of Black agrarian custodial landownership, ecological stewardship, and food and fiber economies in the South.

“There is nothing new under the sun, but there are new suns.”

-Octavia Butler