Roots Run Deep in the Shenandoah Valley: Honoring African American Heritage in Our Region

At conservation’s core is the understanding that collaboration, education, and restoration are central to our work, ensuring that our resources are not depleted for future generations while also protecting and restoring the Earth’s biodiversity. Land trust efforts help balance human impact on the environment by safeguarding clean water, fertile soil, and the health and safety of wildlife through conservation easements¹. Land ownership and public access play a significant role in determining who participates in these efforts. Yet past inequities continue to shape what land trust conservation looks like today. 

Historical Inequities in Land Access and Ownership 

African Americans represent 1% of visitors to U.S. national parks, forests, and wildlife refuges, while 95% of visitors are white². African American farmland ownership decreased by 75% from 13,358,684 acres in 1900 to 3,263,433 in 2012³. The underrepresentation of African Americans in conservation and farming is the result of complex, historically rooted discriminatory practices, particularly in land and property ownership in the United States. The necessity to confront and remedy this history of exclusion is why equity in land trust initiatives and conservation projects is vital. 

While opportunities for African Americans to acquire land prior to the Emancipation Proclamation in 1865 were extremely limited, it was possible for free African American individuals and families in states like Virginia, North Carolina, and Louisiana to purchase property as early as the 17th century. However, these cases were rare and often challenged by discriminatory laws, economic exploitation, violence, and social barriers. For context, by 1860, nearly 488,000 African Americans were free, accounting for just 10% of the total African American population in the United States at that time⁴. 

The Homestead Acts 

In 1862, three years before the abolition of slavery, Congress passed the Homestead Act, which made 160 acres of surveyed government land available for settlement to U.S. citizens who had “never borne arms against the U.S. government.”⁵  This act primarily benefited white U.S. citizens, as African Americans, including formerly enslaved people, were not granted citizenship until the ratification of the 14th Amendment in 1868. The Southern Homestead Act of 1866 was seemingly a step forward, which was developed this time around to enable free African Americans, including tenant farmers and sharecroppers, to acquire land at a lower price in Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Florida; however, the prices were still too high for most to afford, and the land was primarily forested and undeveloped, which would add an insurmountable cost to make it productive. In the end, there was little chance for the Southern Homestead Act’s success, as it was repealed in 1876 at the end of Reconstruction⁶.  

There were other problematic consequences of the Homestead Acts, as much of this land was made available for settlement while still occupied by Indigenous peoples. It wasn’t until the Indian Homestead Act of 1875 that Congress tried to course correct and provide Native families the opportunity to purchase “unclaimed” public land, under the condition that they relinquish their tribal identity and accept many more formidable conditions.  

The Broken Promise of “40 Acres and a Mule” 

Between the Homestead Acts and following the ratification of the 13th Amendment to abolish slavery in 1865, another attempt to support African American land acquisition was Sherman’s Field Order No. 15. This military directive was ordered by Union General William T. Sherman to allocate 40-acre plots of confiscated Confederate land per formerly enslaved families for settlement and farming. This is where the antiquated phrase “40 acres and a mule” is derived from. This progress was again cut short when, just one year later, the summer after President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, President Andrew Johnson reversed Sherman’s Field Order No. 15 and ordered that nearly all plantation lands be returned to the original owners and their families. A town hall-like gathering of 2,000 African Americans at a local church in Edisto Island, South Carolina, spurred many events that led Congress to pass the 14th Amendment in 1868, which granted citizenship and equal civil and legal rights to emancipated African Americans and enslaved persons. It also prohibited states from depriving any person of “life, liberty, or property, without due process of law,”⁷ so that African Americans could not only acquire land but also protect it against being taken away again.  

Paths to Ownership Beyond Federal Policies 

Outside of the Homestead Acts, the most common ways free African Americans purchased land were from willing white sellers or inheritance from freed relatives or white fathers of mixed-race children. It was extremely challenging for African Americans to purchase land, own homes, and start businesses in the Antebellum South (1812-1861), but not unheard of. One such story is Madden’s Tavern in Culpeper County, Virginia. In 1835, prior to the Civil War, Willis Madden purchased 87 acres on Old Fredericksburg Road from Martin and Martha Slaughter, where he set up multiple businesses at the crossroads, including a tavern that housed overnight guests, a blacksmith shop, a general store, family living quarters, and other small functional structures. This was most likely the only tavern in the region owned by an African American. It is worth mentioning that despite free African Americans’ ability to purchase land during this time, they were still forbidden to vote, bear arms, testify against a white person, or be educated. Culpeper was devastated during the Civil War, and Madden’s property was severely damaged. He was never able to fully rebuild but continued to farm on the property until he passed in 1879. The location was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1984, and Madden’s descendants owned the property until the end of the 20th century.  

A Continuing Story of African American Land Ownership 

Since the ratification of the 14th Amendment, Reconstruction failed to fully implement its promise of equality. What followed was the rise of Jim Crow laws (1877-1965), the Civil Rights Movement (1954-1968), and later the emergence of Black Lives Matter (2013-present), among other ongoing movements for racial justice. There is not enough space in this article to fully encompass the breadth of African American experiences with land acquisition. Yet the ongoing work for African Americans to gain sovereignty and equitable opportunities to build generational wealth, community leadership, and economic or political power through land ownership continues to this day. 

Establishing the Black Family Land Trust 

Established in 2002, African American farmers, land advocates, community development practitioners, land conservationists, and academics gathered to identify the required steps to protect and preserve African American-owned lands. It was there that the seed for The Black Family Land Trust was planted. The Black Family Land Trust honors the legacy of land stewardship through generations. As described in their African American Land Ethic land trust initiative, “Land ownership represents wealth, power, community, sustainability, and economic opportunities for generations yet born. The African American’s history and relationship with the land must be reexamined and self-defined in the context of the African American experience in America. We must utilize every tool available to reduce the rate of African American and other historically underserved populations’ land loss.”  

The Black Land Trust draws from “Phenomenology, Land Ethic, and Cultural Competence to describe the African American’s historical relationship with the land,” which together asks African American landowners to contemplate such deep questions as, “Is it a burden that [land] represents the revulsions of slavery, sharecropping, second-class citizenship, and lynching? Or is land a tangible asset, with economic, human, and spiritual value, which connects African Americans with their rich history in the Americas and their ancestors?” The Black Land Trust believes the latter—that land is an asset. And with landownership comes the individual’s responsibility to maintain the health of the land out of respect for its ancestors and future generations. This ethical land practice acknowledges the existence of an ecological conscience and how humans relate to everything they interact with, from objects and others to time in our “life-world.”⁸ 

As of 2015, the Black Family Land Trust retained more than 3,000 acres of family-controlled land assets in 28 designated USDA StrikeForce counties between 2011 and 2015 with a cumulative land value of over $12 million of economic impact in Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina.  

Preserving Black Heritage Sites in the Valley 

The Shenandoah Valley Black Heritage Project illuminates the rich African American history and culture of the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. Established in 2013, with the support of local historians, writers, artists, teachers, descendants, interested residents, and neighborhood associations, the Shenandoah Valley Black Heritage Project has preserved archives containing numerous records of historical resources on African American history of the Shenandoah Valley.  

In the summer of 2025, the Conservancy and Shenandoah Valley Black Heritage Project partnered on a native plant walk at Long’s Chapel north of Harrisonburg, Virginia, in an area known as Zenda. The history of Zenda begins in 1869, when a portion of William and Hannah Carpenter’s land was set aside for the “colored people in this community…and to their successors forever.”⁹ Formerly enslaved persons could establish independent lives on this land in the early days of Reconstruction. Henry Carter, Milton Grant, William Timbers, and Richard Fortune were the first African Americans to settle on this land and named it “Zenda.” By the early 1900s, Zenda had grown into a vibrant community with over 80 residents and a post office, church, schoolhouse, and cemetery. Out of respect for the residents’ ancestors, they buried their elders in a cemetery behind Long’s Chapel, with their names and dates marked, as was not done in enslaved burial grounds on plantations. With the growth of better jobs in Northern cities and terrifying oppression in the Jim Crow South, many families left Zenda during the Great Migration. Only one African American family remained in Zenda by 1940. Zenda’s history, though brief, is important. Following emancipation, formerly enslaved persons were able to legally marry, choose their own last names, and sign deeds as legal landowners.  

It was on that walk at Zenda that Ruby Daniels, “Affrilachian” herbalist and forest farmer, “opened a window into the rich, often-overlooked world of African American ethnobotany and resilience.”¹⁰ Daniels identified native plants that enslaved persons and their descendants used for nutritional and medicinal purposes. Plants like plantain, white oak, and black walnut were utilized “not only to heal bodies but to quietly assert autonomy in a world of oppression.” This is a very powerful act of bodily sovereignty following centuries of oppression when enslaved people were punished, even killed, for foraging roots and herbs. This walk demonstrated just how powerful land ownership is and how that responsibility can be wielded to serve only ourselves or stewarded to serve our community.  

Countless hours over years went into gathering resources to keep the stories of African Americans in the Shenandoah Valley alive and freely available for anyone to seek this knowledge. And Zenda is just one of the important Black heritage sites in the Valley. Through their project, Roots Run Deep, anyone with access to a vehicle can take a self-guided tour through the Shenandoah Valley and experience this rich history at historic African American sites, including homes, churches, burial grounds, schoolhouses, and museums. This self-guided tour expands from the northern part of the region in Frederick County all the way south to Rockbridge County.  

As the Zenda walk concluded, Daniels urged participants to respect the land and its wildlife. She went on to stress that if we continue to take away, there will be nothing left for our great-grandchildren.  

Notes:  

1. A conservation easement is a voluntary contract between a landowner and a qualified land trust that allows the landowner to protect the important conservation features of a property by legally restricting undesirable land use. Easements protect against excessive subdivision and development to protect land for agriculture, wildlife habitat, and recreation. The terms of a conservation agreement are negotiated around the kitchen table and vary greatly depending on the landowner’s plans for their property. Since the agreement is permanent, it remains with the land even after it has been sold or willed to heirs. 

2. Bivens, Dana. “Conserving While Black: Breaking Down Barriers in the Conservation Community.” U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, 23 June 2021, https://www.fws.gov/story/conserving-while-black-breaking-down-barriers-conservation-community. 

3. “‘Pursuing Land’ in Visions of Freedom: Land and Labor.” National Museum of African American History & Culture, https://www.searchablemuseum.com/visions-of-freedom-land-and-labor. 

4. “The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross.” PBS, directed by Henry Louis Gates Jr., 2013, https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0gzTUfTRl5jRjTc-9cP3v5O-ppX9T-lO. 

5. “Homestead Act (1862).” National Archives, https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/homestead-act^. 

6. Reconstruction (1865–1877) was an era after the Civil War that sought to federally protect the civil rights of freed African Americans and support the readmission of the Confederate states into the Union. Amid violent backlash and fears of another civil war, Reconstruction ended abruptly through the Compromise of 1877, when the last federal troops withdrew from the South. This withdrawal effectively rescinded federal protections for African Americans and paved the way for segregation and disenfranchisement under Jim Crow laws. 

7. ^“Fourteenth Amendment.” Constitution of the United States, https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-14/#amendment-14-section-5. 

8. Smith, David Woodruff, “Phenomenology”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2018 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2018/entries/phenomenology. 

9. “Zenda.” Rockingham County Public Schools Local History, http://localhistory.rockingham.k12.va.us/zenda1.html. 

10. Kershaw, Aaron, and Lauren Philp. “Unearthing Hidden History Through Native Plants: A Walk with Ruby Daniels in Zenda.” Shenandoah Valley Conservancy Winter Newsletter 2025, Feb. 2026, https://shenandoah.org/wp-content/uploads/NewslettertPDF.pdf. 

Additional Resources: 

• Timeline of Black Land Loss and Land Acquisition. Civil Rights Teaching Project. https://www.civilrightsteaching.org/resource/timeline-black-land 

• African American Land Ownership and Loss. JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26643068 

• African American Land Ownership and Loss. JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/24572860 

• African American Experience Before Emancipation. National Park Service. https://npshistory.com/publications/nace/hcn-afam-exp-before-emancipation.pdf 

• Agricultural and Applied Economics research on Black land ownership. Wiley Online Library. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/aepp.13401 

• Compromise of 1877 overview. US Law Explained. https://uslawexplained.com/compromise_of_1877 

• USDA StrikeForce Initiative. National Institute of Food and Agriculture. https://www.nifa.usda.gov/topics/strikeforce 

• The Black Family Land Trust. https://www.bflt.org 

• Shenandoah Valley Black Heritage Project. https://www.valleyblackheritage.org 

• Zenda local history archive. Rockingham County Public Schools. http://localhistory.rockingham.k12.va.us/zenda1.html