Growing Culture
Within the span of the last 100 years there has been an imigration of people from countryside to cities. The result of this migration was the industrialization of the workforce. People have moved away from their land and into cities, no longer working on their farms but working in factories and now offices. This changed peoples’ needs and how their needs were met.
The Landreth Seed Company commissioned the above oil painting, inspired by a photograph taken by Rudolph Eikemeyer, for 1909
In the city, most of us are familiar with the things we must do to survive. On the land, people farmed for their food and utilized the natural materials around them for their other needs. Skills like iron-working and wood-working were common, there were also healers and story tellers amongst the variety of people who assisted each other within a local village or community.
For African-Americans, living off the land was different than it was for much of the rest of the world. This is because of two main factors. The first factor is slavery, which is well recognized and written about. A second, unmentioned factor, is the correlation between the westward expansion (1789-1849), when European settlers were given land for free, and the emancipation proclamation (1863), when slavery was outlawed in America. The chronology is deliberate, as told by the late Master Naba Lamoussa Morodenibig. “Before they freed the slaves they made sure that there was no place for them to go but back to the plantation they just left.”
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