1619 · The New York Times

The Land of Our Fathers, Part 1

October 5, 2019·29 min·1 clip

Black church leaders ask for land, and Sherman turns that request into Special Order No. 15.

A sugarcane farmer begins by describing the crop as something beautiful and dangerous. He remembers planting season as the time of year that once made him eager to get to work. The land is not an abstraction here. It is a place of effort, pride, and attachment so deep that he says he talks to the fields. The episode then moves back to 1864. Nicole Hannah-Jones frames Sherman’s march to the sea as a moment when Black Southerners could see an opening in the old order. That historical frame gives the personal story a wider weight. June’s life then takes over the scene. He talks about turning dirt, covering cane just right, and watching a small planting become a towering stalk. Farming becomes a language of devotion. He remembers telling his father that his own cane came up better than the ones they had planted together, and he still sounds amused by the fact that he beat him. In 1994, that pride turns concrete. June wins first place in the state’s non-quarter category, while his father places 13th. The family jokes about it for years. The win also brings attention. Landowners begin coming to them, and June and his father expand by taking on more leases and farming more property. The scale of the operation grows. The episode then introduces Angie, whose family history reaches back to Louisiana sugarcane farming even though she grew up in Texas. Their connection is immediate and intimate. A Keith Sweat concert becomes the moment when the relationship clicks into place. The story treats that scene lightly, but not carelessly. It shows how family history, shared culture, and attraction can fold into one another. As the years pass, the tone darkens. June looks back on a loan, the need for adequate funding, and his sense that his father’s work should have been defended more forcefully. Regret enters the story without replacing love. By 2014, the crop has fallen by more than half. The farm has become a site of strain, memory, and pressure. June says everything came to a head that year. Even then, he and Angie choose not to surrender. They decide to fight for what remains. The episode closes on that resolve, with the weight of history still pressing on the land.

As heard by us

A farm story that turns land, labor, and memory into history.

The episode uses sugarcane farming to move through land, labor, and family memory in the South. It opens with the crop's physical hardiness and Sherman's march, then circles back to June, whose memories of planting, winning in 1994, and expanding the farm carry pride and loss at…

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Why you'd press play

You want a sugarcane story where family pride and land loss hit the same nerve.

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