Going over Home: A Search for Rural Justice in an Unsettled Land

by Charles D. Thompson Jr.

An intimate portrait of the joys and hardships of rural life, as one man searches for community, equality, and tradition in Appalachia

Charles D. Thompson, Jr. was born in southwestern Virginia into an extended family of small farmers. Yet as he came of age he witnessed the demise of every farm in his family. Over the course of his own life of farming, rural education, organizing, and activism, the stories of his home place have been his constant inspiration, helping him identify with the losses of others and to fight against injustices. In Going Over Home, Thompson shares revelations and reflections, from cattle auctions with his grandfather to community gardens in the coal camps of eastern Kentucky, racial disparities of white and Black landownership in the South to recent work with migrant farm workers from Latin America. In this heartfelt first-person narrative, Thompson unpacks our country’s agricultural myths and addresses the history of racism and wealth inequality and how they have come to bear on our nation’s rural places and their people.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Politics

240 pages, Paperback

Published October 11, 2019

Reviews

[Pam Dawling · Rating 4 out of 5]

This engaging book is both a farm memoir and a discussion of racial disparities, wealth inequalities, and their effects on rural folk, mostly from 1959 to 1997, with a 2015 update. In his lifetime, Charlie witnessed the demise of every farm in his family. Working by turns as a farmer, a student, an advocate and a teacher, Charlie uncovered why small family farms have struggled so much.

The happiest parts of the author’s childhood were spent visiting his grandparents’ farms, particularly his paternal grandparents in Endicott, SW Virginia. He observed how hard they worked and how little money they earned from farming. This came into focus when he went with his grandpa to sell eight steers at auction in Roanoke. Only much later did Charlie find out how his grandpa ever managed to afford to buy land.

In 1940 there were 30 million people living on farms in the US (one-third of the population). Today it is a mere 1% of the population, and there are more people in prisons than on farms. During the 1980s American Farm Crisis, the bulk of Charlie’s parents’ generation moved off the farms to manufacturing jobs offering more pay.

In 1971, Nixon’s Secretary of Agriculture, Earl Butz, uttered the now notorious advice to farmers to “Get Big, or Get Out”. Black farmers were particularly poorly treated by the Farmers Home Administration (FmHA), which was set up to help beginning farmers and people of limited means (Black and white) get settled into farming. Black farmers were routinely turned down. In 1983, Charlie (who is white) had his own run-in when refused a loan to start Thompson Berry Farm.

In 1972, in High School, Charlie was excited to find a school greenhouse and a Hort 101 course. Most of the other Ag students were poor boys in the Vocational Agriculture program, not expected to do much academic work, but to learn farming and a manual trade, because they couldn’t earn a living solely from farming. Charlie discovered organic gardening and subscribed to Mother Earth News. He had found his tribe!

Charlie started his own garden, dreamt of a small farm. His grandpa owned some mountain land with an abandoned cabin. Charlie planned to move there, but his parents said he should finish high school and college before moving up there. Meanwhile Charlie and his cousin, as teenagers, worked on restoring the cabin, grew a garden, and enquired into the past of the place now named Woolwine Cabin. He read Thoreau’s Walden Pond, and saw through his initial romantic notions, realizing that Thoreau did not own the land he stayed on. He was a privileged guest and free to leave whenever he chose. Thoreau had access to hot meals, baths, laundry services provided by his family. The family who had lived at Woolwine Cabin had no alternative. “Deprivation, unlike simplicity, is not exactly something to celebrate.”

In 1975, Charlie went to Ferrum College, staying with his grandparents on their farm, 3 miles away. He studied art and Blue Ridge culture, and came to realize that living in the woods, growing food and making art for a living would not be enough. He needed connection with others, and to put effort into achieving justice for mountain people (and everyone). After giving thought, he applied to transfer to Emory and Henry College, whose curriculum emphasized community service. Rural justice had become more important to him than farming. This is one of several pendulum swings Charlie makes in his life between farming and doing political work for justice for farmers. He worked hard and volunteered at a campaign to prevent construction of a dam that would destroy a farming community. From there he became involved in other political action for social justice, and took a Politics of Appalachia course. He realized that Appalachian people had been exploited, victimized and then blamed for their situation. Being part of a community is not a passive act – it requires action.

The summer after graduation, he volunteered in the garden at Koinonia Farm in Georgia, a community committed to radical love of all people regardless of race. He was surrounded by poverty, and learned about the lives of former sharecroppers, who gave their lives to agriculture but owned no land to pass on to their children, and often died in debt. Even those who got “40 Acres and a Mule” couldn’t compete with the Big Ag farmers helped by USDA Price Supports. There had never been any “good old days” for most Southern farmers. Charlie’s summer garden work did not satisfy his need to reduce agricultural inequalities. But some of the other work at Koinonia addressed this directly, helping poor people afford housing (this became Habitat for Humanity). “Those who have power must be quiet and listen to those who do not have it.”

In 1979, Charlie got a job with the non-profit HEAD Corporation, organizing community gardens in the coalfields of West Virginia. But he missed farm country. He read Wendell Berry and went to a farming conference at the University of Kentucky. It was all white people. He pondered why the Back to the Land movement was divorced from the social justice cause.

The next year, Charlie got a job as garden caretaker and a member of the farmer-educator team at the Rural Advancement Fund (RAF) Graham Center – a demonstration organic farm in North Carolina, close to the South Carolina border. RAF advocated for racial justice. He worked there for a year and met his future wife Hope Shand. But focusing on organic farming failed to address the farm emergency around them, so they decided to fight the root causes of farm loss rather than teach organic methods. Farm loans to Black farmers were fewer and smaller than those to white farmers. Farmers “needed more help on how to raise hell than how to raise tomatoes.”

In 1982, Charlie applied to do a Master’s degree at the North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University (a historically Black college) in Greensboro. NC A&T is an 1890 School (it got Federal support from the second Morrill Act to establish a “separate but equal” land grant university for people of color.) The 1954 Brown vs Board of Education declared this division was far from equal, and NC A&T was relabeled as the school for small farms, while NCSU was relabeled as for commercial farmers, rather than for white farmers. Inequality and segregation continued.

Charlie saw no other white people on campus. He found he was eligible for a full scholarship through the Federal Minority Presence Grant! Clearly the scholarship money was another form of white privilege, but Charlie reckoned that his contribution of a year as a volunteer with RAF made it fairer. And that the money would just sit there if he didn’t take it. He committed to two years of agricultural research there, becoming the horticulture teacher-in-training at Pittsboro’s Northwood High School. He questions his effectiveness as a teacher, but he learned a lot, and was conveniently near Hope, who worked fulltime for RAF, now in Pittsboro.

Charlie learned about Black land loss, in particular the problem of heirs’ property. When African American farm owners died without making a will, it has to be sold unless all the heirs agree to keep the land in the family. It usually ends up outside the family, often with a white farmer or a developer. During the Great Migration (1916-1970), young Black Southerners moved to northern cities. Some became unfindable, most had little interest in farmland. Charlie learned more about farm loss when he got a side job as a driver for Betty Bailey, the leader of the Farm Survival Project at RAF (she had a broken arm). She had started a Farm Crisis Hotline which got all kinds of calls, from those seeking information to those contemplating suicide or murder.

After graduating from NC A&T, Charlie got a job with RAF as a rural educator, and helped staff the Hotline, as well as visiting farmers, helping train them to support one another as farmer advocates. Unfair laws and credit policies encouraged farmers to go too deeply into debt. He started facilitating local meetings for women and men of all races to unite. Loan officers doled out loans in installments (“supervised loans”) to Black farmers, but deposited the complete loan upfront into the bank accounts of white farmers. Charlie hoped to unite the diverse farmers on common issues, but for Black farmers, the issue of racism was paramount. How to convince white farmers of the importance of dismantling racism? He had some success with this and with getting some of the leadership roles filled by women farmers.

In 1983, Charlie helped start the United Farmers Organization (UFO), a multi-racial, multi-gender farmer group. UFO called for a moratorium on all FmHA farm foreclosures nationwide (because of the inequities). Congress supported the call and prevented foreclosures for two years. This involved attending a lot of meetings. Some white farmers worried that their political activity might jeopardize their farm loans. Some Black farmers wanted faster change and refocused on saving Black land. UFO disbanded. In 2010 (under the Obama administration) payments were finally made to 34,000 African American farmers who had waited 25 years.

In 1984, the author continued his work advocating for and helping farmers stay on their land and making a living farming. He and his fiancée Hope applied for a Beginning Farmer loan to buy a farm. Near Pittsboro they found a 22-acre parcel of a worn-out tobacco farm with a decrepit house. The loan request was rejected by the FmHA, despite a carefully crafted farm plan. Charlie wrote a 5-page appeal, which he hand-delivered to the new county supervisor, asking for reconsideration, along with a revised 8-page plan and supporting letters from farmers and the extension agent. He got a second rejection, and appealed again, adding more allies and endorsements. He had been denied based on the opinion that his plan was “unusual” but this is not valid grounds for rejection. He went to Wake County Courthouse in Raleigh, and stressed how well-prepared he was to start farming. After another month, he got a letter reversing the decision of the county committee, but it did not guarantee that a loan would be approved if he reapplied! Charlie did reapply, this time directly to the loan officer, who admitted to the unfairness and illogicality of the previous loan decisions. He could have got a loan for a large chicken farm, even though he knew nothing about chickens! This time he got his loan. Happily, the landowner had kept faith with Charlie for over 9 months, and refrained from building a trailer park on the land.

In 1985, Charlie and Hope married and moved to the land, Whippoorwill Farm. Both still had day jobs, but Charlie was working 14 hour days, starting the farm, and selling produce at the Carrboro Farmers Market. He also helped start more farmers’ markets in the area, to meet demand, and campaigned against the large Raleigh State Market that was not a growers’ market. After his Op Ed appeared in the paper, he started receiving threatening phone calls. Meanwhile many other farms in North Carolina were still struggling to pay their bills and the moratorium on foreclosures would soon end. Poor people did not have ability to buy food at the Carrboro prices. Charlie worked to incorporate WIC vouchers as a way of paying for produce.

Meanwhile the USDA Organic Standards allowed distant large farms to compete with small local farms, co-opting terms like family farm, natural, local as well as images of bucolic small farms. By focusing on small local organic farms, many foodies had stopped monitoring big corporate ag. RAF, now RAFI, revealed that agribusiness was merging with Big Pharma, and seed companies were bought by chemical companies. These changes squeezed out medium-sized farms, and reduced access of poor people to good food.

In 1986, Charlie (now farming full-time) needed more labor to pick his fruit. He got help from some Mexicans out-of-work from a chicken factory. He learned a lot about the struggles of farmers in Mexico, and reflected on the irony of local crops harvested by global labor! He came to see his deepest devotion is to farmers, not farming. “We as a nation have become dependent upon displaced farmers from elsewhere to do our hand labor in the fields. We eat because of their losses. US agriculture depends on the displaced. Indeed, it always has.”

By 1993, he and Hope had a son, and he was missing his extended family, needing a village and not feeling grounded at the farm. He had been asking his neighbors about the history of his land. It was once worked by a family of African American sharecroppers, who said the Black family before them lost the farm to crop failures and debt. Charlie realized he was working land where a silent racial clearance had taken place. He also found native American projectile points (“arrow heads”).

After seven years at Whippoorwill, he was rethinking farming, and wanted to pivot towards learning more, writing and making films. He wanted to amplify the voices of rural people, especially those forced to leave their land. He got a place at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the Religion and Culture program, and decided to sell the farm.

His second focus was to try to understand his family’s agricultural heritage in the context of European exile, concentrating on his mother’s side. They were Old Order Brethren immigrants from Germany in the 1700s. Most German immigrants from the Palatinate region, like the author’s ancestors, were exiles from religious persecution. Few immigrants ever intended to remain working for others as humble renters or laborers. Before they could start their own farms, they had to do 4-7 years of indentured servitude. 4-7 years of making the wealthy wealthier. Thomas Jefferson mused about alternatives to slavery, considering employing landless immigrant German farmers as sharecroppers or tenant farmers. This is another ironic contradiction in Jefferson’s legacy – another unlanded people from another country to work the soil without owning the land.

In 1997, Charlie went with his grandpa to the Floyd Country Store for the weekly dance. It was to be grandpa’s last dance. During the journey, Charlie asked him how he ever made the leap from a family of poor tenant farmers to owning 150 acres and a house in 1930, as a young man. The big secret came out. He had hauled bootleg liquor in a convoy of cars to the coalfields of West Virginia. Most of the money went to the Big Wheels, but grandpa made enough for a down payment on his farm. He had not told the story for 70 years. It was not the American Dream that provided. It was ingenuity and risk-taking in an illegal business. Charlie fit this piece with other stories of hardship and making ends m

[Jessica · Rating 3 out of 5]

There used to be hundreds or thousands of small, family farms dotting rural areas all around the United States. But, over time these family farms are lost either to development or larger, industrial farms. In Going Over Home Charles Thompson discusses both his personal connection to family farms and his advocacy work with rural, low-income areas in Virginia and North Carolina. Thompson grew up in Virginia - initially on a family farm, then in more suburban areas as his parents moved away for jobs. But, he always loved his grandparent's 150 acre farm. As an adult he began to realize that his family members who moved off the farm didn't always do so because they didn't want to farm - they left because farming wasn't a financial option any longer. That's what sparked his advocacy work - Thompson wanted to try to help rural families hang onto their land and make it viable to pass down to interested generations. Eventually Thompson is able to buy his own small farm outside of Carrboro, NC, but like so many other he eventually sold it because it became too much work and didn't generate enough income. While I found the book very interesting, especially his thoughts on the emotional ties to land, it was a depressing read overall. Most of his advocacy work had short-term benefits, but nothing seemed to keep going and continuing to make positive changes. I also liked that he addressed racial issues related to land ownership and loss that are unfortunately still on-going issues today. Overall, it was interesting and I learned a lot, but it was very depressing and not much hope or happiness at the end. I was hoping it would show some kind of hope or ideas on ways to make smaller farms profitable - for more on that read Joel Salatin and Forrest Pritchard.

Some quotes I liked:

"I had tried to hold on to agriculture by exploring ways of going back to the land, but instead of finding answers I witnessed poor people living in isolation in the aftermath of the loss of rural communities. I now knew 'the land' was not the source of utopia it had once seemed. Instead I started to grasp that everything about rural life in America was interconnected with politics controlled elsewhere. So I reformulated my goals into a commitment to give back to rural areas in some general way, and in the long run to work to change society. Hence, my budding decision to work in the field that I came to call 'rural justice' grew directly from our family losing its farm." (p. 78)

"The 1980s, in addition to being known as the decade of the American Farm Crisis, became an era of maneuvering for greater dominance by the industrial giants of agriculture...As the industry grew our own North Carolina Senate agriculture chairman, Wendell Murphy, led the NC legislature in 1991 to outlaw any zoning restrictions for contract-style [CAFOs - Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations] arrangements in any community statewide. This meant that huge hog operations started by swine-farming giant Murphy Farms could move into the rural communities of their choosing, which often meant low-income communities of color, without penalty. Later Murphy would sell his company to Smithfield Foods, but he would retain a strong financial stake in the company..." (p. 170)

[Angela Dribben · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thompson's tone invites readers inside his life, allows us to know where and who he comes from; how it has shaped him. He seamlessly blends farming's factual history with his own work experience. Going Over Home was a salve for me as a woman born to a family and a community of Southside Virginia farmers.

[John Frederick · Rating 4 out of 5]

A memoir with an important message, Going Over Home traces Charles Thompson's journey from aspiring farmer to small-farmer activist and finally to an academic/author trying to change this world. While maybe not as lyrical as Wendell Berry, Thompson's journey provides first-hand insights about the barriers presented to small farmers that Berry has not experienced.
Like so many other commodity-based businesses, the corporate interests which control Big Ag don't just control prices but they control who buys what from whom. Just as tragically, the purchase of land, government programs intended to assist small farmers, and the prospects of foreclosure present a deck badly stacked against those hoping to have their own operation. All these, and related factors force many small farmers to farm while still being fully employed elsewhere.
One of the things that makes Thompson's story different and special is his ability to show the common ground shared by a disparate group of people sharing this struggle - rural whites, blacks from the poorest parts of the South, Appalachians challenged by mediocre soils, immigrants looking for a way forward, and young people trying to break into farming.
In all the despair of this story, Thompson sees some hope, but only if we can find a way to come together, rather than grow further apart.

The great challenge before us, whether in Appalachia, the rural South, or anyplace else in the world, is to plant seeds of hope and change in soil that has been soured by anger and division. Transformation of this sort always begins by looking for an opening. To find one, we need active understanding, followed by constructive education and development of new opportunities... Above all we need to seek ways for people to hear one another across dividing lines.

[Lee Keele · Rating 5 out of 5]

Holy cow! I read other reviews before hopping into this one, expecting to be underwhelmed. But… drum rolI … loved it! I’ve read tons of Koontz and this one is now top of the list for me right under the Odd Thomas series. Is the story a bit predictable? Yes. There are characters you love to love and ones you love to hate… all that adds to the charm.

What makes this one really shine for me are the author asides and the pervasive humor sprinkled with bizarre ridiculousness. Did Dave Barry ghost write this one with Koontz or what? It’s freakin hilarious! Seems to me some reviewers were expecting Koontz typical eloquence and elaborate sequences. Nope.

The fourth wall in this novel is destroyed in uncharacteristic deadpan fashion. The humor actually makes the predictable elements of the story somewhat necessary, otherwise it would just be too chaotic.

Honestly, I hope we get more like this. A laugh or three in every chapter.

[Rob Gelblum · Rating 5 out of 5]

Going Over Home is an eloquent paean to the expression, "Don't Mourn, Organize."
A strongly written, humble telling of the experiences, and ruminations on them, of a Southwest Virginia native who grew up in a family that had farmed for generations, but now had to give it up, given the economic challenges that face small farm folks. And a riled-up call for unity on the part of the non-powerful and struggling for justice.

[Alix St Amant · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book contains some important and well thought out points concerning small farmers and rural communities and the injustices that farmers (especially but definitely not limited to farmers of color) have faced over the decades and face even now. I admire the authors work in trying to help bring about change for rural communities. I did find a few of the chapters gave too much detail on technical things that didn’t feel like they fit the book, but overall it was a good read.

[Lori · Rating 4 out of 5]

While this is a chronicle of Thompson’s personal farm journey, it also brings into perspective the history of the small, family farm and the impact of national farm policies upon those farms and farmers over the decades. Farming is just one more area in which corporations have taken over, and social justice reforms are needed🙁

[Joe Vess · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book. It's a great combination of the author's story along with addressing the issues of rural justice, racial justice and immigration and how they are connected. Really inspiring and gives me lots of ideas.

[Sandy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A well written book outlining the trials and tribulations and eventually the demise of the small, family run farms. Thompson, who grew up in rural Appalachia has a lot of experience with farming. As a child, he worked with his grandfather, and as a student became involved in community gardens, organic farming and organizing farming activists. As an adult he became an organic farmer and a rural educator. He has fought farming injustices along side black landowners and more recently along side migrant farm workers. Throughout his life, he watched as family farms disappeared to large corporations or expanding urban development. The cost of farming is too much for a small farmer to make a profit. Farmers, his grandfather included, had to take on second and third jobs to make ends meet. As someone who grew up in Southwestern Ontario in a farming community I see so many parallels between the author’s account and what I remember from my childhood. Thanks to NetGalley and Chelsea Green Publishing for allowing me to read this ARC.