Sarah White's Healing Hands
- Katie Myhre
- Mar 24
- 2 min read
“I’m most comfortable on a Ranger, with my afro, and probably Daisy Dukes. This is Trump country. And I’m Black!”
Sarah White is taking me for a ride on a borrowed four-wheeler, burning through 40 acres of Wisconsin farmland, gifted to her by an anonymous donor sometime between 2021 and 2022 (she says the period of time is a blur). A former cornfield, the now untended land is a thicket of prairie grasses and wildflowers– a sprawling beard of blonde whiskers punctuated tiny sunbursts of Birdsfoot Trefoil and lavender pinwheels of Chicory. The dragonflies and grasshoppers are actively trying to hitch a ride in every crevice of the vehicle. Sarah frantically brushes one that has alighted on her chest as she drives.
On the day I visit (she prefers to keep the name of the town private for her safety), her afro is wrapped into twists and she’s in a crochet bikini top instead of Daisy Dukes. But the vibe is the same: Black girl cruising, equal parts proud, and distressed about what comes next.
The idea that Black people should feel subversive or disconnected to farmland is an utterly ironic one. At the turn of the century, Black farmers were about proportional to the number of Black people in the country. Before emancipation, there would have been no better farmer than the Black farmer, who tended the plantations, fields for the big house, and gardens for their own survival. Naturally, white supremacy could not abide this fact, and Black people have been systematically stripped of their farmlands ever since.
There’s a small movement of Black farm collectives cropping up in the midwest, not far from Sarah’s land, but the numbers are still abysmally low– it’s estimated that there is a total of fewer than 40 Black farmers in Minnesota (out of more than 67,000 farms) and fewer than 75 in Wisconsin, out of more than 64,000 farms. Black farmers make up just over one percent of all farms in America.
At a hardware store in the area with some colleagues, Sarah recalls being asked if they were planning a murder.
“We’re farmers,” she deadpanned. She reports that cars regularly slow down to stop and stare when she’s in the area with friends.