Founded in 1887 by formerly enslaved people, Mound Bayou, Mississippi, was the “Jewel of the Delta.” Black history is in the soil, but now Black farmers are having that history ripped from underneath them.
Since 2024, 25,000 South Africans have taken up work on U.S. farms after the Trump administration began letting Afrikaners—South Africa’s white minority—acquire refugee status in the U.S. Trump claimed, falsely, that Afrikaners are being racially persecuted at home. Given their history as settler-colonists, this makes no sense.
For the Black farmers who've toiled the land in Mississippi for centuries, the math doesn't add up either. The law requires employers to prove they can't find local workers before hiring internationally. Mississippians say White South African workers are replacing them, and some locals have even had to train their replacements before being fired.
In May 2025, Black farmworkers sued their employer for discrimination, claiming that white South Africans were being paid more for the same work. “ Kimberly Jones Merchant, President and CEO of the Mississippi Center for Justice, said, “The intentional underpayment and misclassification of Black farmworkers in favor of white foreign labor not only violates federal law but has become increasingly common in the Mississippi Delta, holding our communities back for generations and perpetuating the historical exploitation faced by Black agricultural workers in our community.”
We have always been each other’s business. And especially right now, we must act like it. We must care about what’s happening to Black people everywhere. Start here: Use the Black Farmers Index to find the Black farmers in your community and buy from them.