Monica M. White is the Distinguished Chair of Integrated Environmental Studies (2021–25) and associate professor of environmental justice at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She holds a joint appointment in the Department of Community and Environmental Sociology and the Gaylord Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies — and is the first Black woman to earn tenure in either.
White’s first book, Freedom Farmers: Agricultural Resistance and the Black Freedom Movement (University of North Carolina Press, 2019), revises the historical narrative of Black farmers, revealing agriculture as a site of resistance by Black farm operators and laborers who fought for the right to participate in the food system as producers and to earn a living wage under racially, socially, and politically repressive conditions. The book traces the origins of Black farmers’ organizations to the late 1800s, emphasizing their activities during the late 1960s and early 1970s and providing a historical foundation for the resurgence of agriculture in the context of food justice/sovereignty movements in urban spaces. Freedom Farmers won the 2019 Eduardo Bonilla-Silva Book Award from the Society for the Study of Social Problems, Division on Racial and Ethnic Minorities, and the 2020 Association for the Study of Food and Society First Book Award.
Her project, “We Stayed: Agriculture and Activism of Black Families Who Kept the Land,” recovers Black farmers’ role in the Civil Rights Movement, their strategies of resistance, and the legacy of agriculturally based organizing.
Twitter:
@thegardengriot
http://monicamariewhite.com/
