Clear Cuts: African Americans & the Nature of Dispossession

• In Event: Deep Cuts: Forests and United States History

Abstract

The histories of forests tend to focus on just that: forests – or quantifiable changes in forest cover, forest uses, and timber supply. This narrowed and numerical focus detrimentally overlooks the human dimensions of forested spaces, forest management, and the forestry profession overall. More specifically, the ways in which the human dimensions of race, racism, power and discrimination inform and impact forestry. This leads me to my doctoral research, which explores the enduring histories of African Americans in forests and forestry across the U.S., both geographically and temporally.
For this panel, I will explore the environmental and racial dimensions of deforestation as an extractive forest practice throughout African American History. The verb deforest is defined as clearing an area of forests or trees. My work seeks to highlight the ways in which deforestation clears, or cuts down, or clearcuts more than just trees alone.
My work will rely on themes from Black environmentalism and agrarianism to consider the role of Black labor, resistance, and access to forests within the lens of deforestation. At this time, my presentation will most likely explore the connections between African Americans and deforestation with a targeted focus on one of three potential time periods: 1619-1865 (Enslavement), 1910-1970 (the Great Migration), and 1920s-1930s – to the present (redlining). I intend to shed light on the nature of deforestation practices during one of the aforementioned time periods, and highlight thematic connections between forest history and African American history.

Author

• Jasmine Kiara Brown, Michigan State University