Enslavers deliberately starved enslaved people, who were forced to survive by foraging—hunting game, gathering berries, and fishing the nearby waters after the long workdays in the field. With so many Black communities struggling with food inequity today, and if you've ever wondered why we can't eat for free off the land around us, here's why.
The enslaved created their own parallel food system for survival. After slavery, planters still needed Black people for cheap labor, but Black people didn't need them. In places like Virginia, freed people living off the land worked for no more than six weeks per year.
That's when "black codes" on vagrancy and "no hunting or fishing without the land owner's permission" rules were enacted. In the 1860s, states like Louisiana and Georgia criminalized trespassing to restrict Black access to open land. Mississippi banned hunting without landowner permission across 16 majority-Black counties.
This anti-Black system worked as it was designed to—to keep us hungry and dependent. Unable to feed themselves, many Black folks had no choice but to accept the meager wages planters offered, which ultimately created sharecropping. This exploitative system kept workers on plantations and perpetually in debt.
Today, city parks ban harvesting,but some Black foragers are reclaiming the practice. In this anti-Black world, oppression isn't accidental. It’s by design. A Black garden or farm is never "just” that. It's remembrance. It’s lineage. It's who we've always been.