In Their Own Words: Black Farmers In Appalachian Kentucky In The 21st Century.

Studies of the southern United States have "the potential to renovate geographic knowledge by centering a Black sense of place in research examining race and region" (Bledsoe et. al 7). Appalachia, a region which both overlaps with portions of the South and maintains a separate regional identity, likewise holds this potential to renovate geographic knowledge. A Black sense of place can be centered through examining how narratives that connect food, land, and collective struggle (White xviii) help to "recover, tell, and honor" the stories of Black rural residents (3). In particular, oral history has the power to disrupt dominant narratives (see Johnson; see D. Scott), address regional knowledge gaps through collective memories (see Grim; Brown, Gone), and seek to understand the lives and experiences of Black rural people and Black rural spaces (see Grim; see Johnson; see D. Scott). In this paper, the author examines twelve oral histories he conducted with Black farmers in central and eastern Kentucky and analyzes how these narratives fit within broader understandings and theorizations of community, identity, agriculture, race, and Appalachia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]