Losing Ground

July 26, 2017

For Eddie Wise, owning a hog farm was a lifelong dream. In middle age, he and his wife, Dorothy, finally got a farm of their own. But they say that over the next twenty-five years, the U.S. government discriminated against them because of their race, and finally drove them off the land. Their story, by John Biewen, was produced in collaboration with Reveal.

Photo: U.S. Marshals presenting eviction papers to Eddie Wise. Nash County, North Carolina, January 2016. Photograph by John Biewen.

 

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Dorothy and Eddie Wise at a black land-loss prevention conference in Raleigh, North Carolina, 2009. Photo by Elena Rue

 

Link to Five Farms, a 2009 Center for Documentary Studies documentary project featuring Eddie and Dorothy Wise and four other American farm families.

Download a transcript of the episode here.

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