GONZÁLEZ: Hey, it’s Ana. And you’re listening to Mosaic, a podcast about immigration and identity. A few miles to the west of Providence, the bustle of the capital begins to fade away. Sidewalks and store fronts give way to rolling hills, historical homes and farms. The town of Johnston is the beginning of Rhode Island’s rural western corner. Since it was colonized by the English in the 1600s, Johnston has been a Yankee farming community. But that history makes it hard for newcomers like Julius Kolawole to feel welcome farming the same soil.

JULIUS: Some people are nice. Some are not. But how do we differentiate between one and the other?

GONZÁLEZ: In this episode of Mosaic, we go to Julius’s community farm in Johnston to see how one group of African farmers is challenging the culture of an old New England farming town in the latest chapter in its history, one that’s complicated by generations of land disputes, rural American identity and race.

GONZÁLEZ: I don’t want to interrupt you while you’re working, but can you tell me what you’re doing, while you do it?

GARMIN: I’m planting.

GONZÁLEZ: What are you planting?

GARMIN: I’m planting cilantro. I plant collard green. I planted cucumber. Hot pepper. Sweet potato leaf.

GONZÁLEZ: This is Garmin, and she runs the lower fields of Bami Farm, a community farm off of Hartford Avenue in Johnston, Rhode Island. “Bami” in Swahili and Zulu means “mine”. Garmin is holding a pickaxe and standing in the middle of rows and rows of soil she just tilled by hand. It’s Memorial Day weekend, the first big push of the season here in Rhode Island. This year, Garmin hopes to produce even more vegetables to sell at the market than she did last season, so she doesn’t have much time to talk.

GONZÁLEZ: Where did you first learn how to garden? How to farm?

GARMIN: I work on the farm with my mommy.

GONZÁLEZ: Garmin learned how to farm in Liberia as a child, and she’s carried that knowledge with her to the US, where she’s been living since 2006 as a refugee with her children and grandchildren.

GARMIN: I have a lot of family. Let me just say, if everybody will all go together, we are about 12. Yeah.

GONZÁLEZ: On Bami farm, Garmin is the leader of the lower fields. That means that all of the other growers who farm those fields come to her for instructions about what to do and where things are. She has no problem telling them what’s what.

Garmin yelling in Liberian English

GONZÁLEZ: That’s part of the reason Julius Kolawole, the director of Bami Farm, chose her to be the leader of her section. He needs the help. Aside from Julius and Garmin, there are 13 people who have plots on Bami’s communal land. And they are from all over Africa. The majority of them, like Garmin, are Liberian refugees. They farm closer to Hartford Avenue. But if you go up the hill and walk a few acres back, you find a whole other set of fields worked by refugees from the Congo, Burundi and Rwanda. All of them come from different cultures and speak different languages than Julius, who came here from Nigeria in the 1970’s to go to school.

JULIUS: I've lived in this country for many years. I have a bachelor's degree from School of Engineering in New York, CCNY.

GONZÁLEZ: Julius likes to say he has his “ABCs”: BA, an MBA, a master’s degree in engineering. He returned to Nigeria after school to do research and teach for a while, but then came back to the US for good in the 1990s and made his way from New York to Providence. When he buys his home here, he starts planting fruits and vegetables in his backyard, experimenting with African plants, seeing which ones will work in the short warmth of a New England summer. It’s a way to connect to his childhood.

JULIUS: The first 16 years of my life was with my dad in farm.

GONZÁLEZ: And Julius knows that many other African immigrants and refugees who come to Rhode Island have deep farming knowledge, but it can be difficult to transfer those skills to an American workforce and culture. In 2009, Julius starts a nonprofit called the African Alliance. Its goal is to connect newly-arrived African immigrants and refugees with support and a network of African people here, in Rhode Island.

JULIUS: Many of these people cannot write their names...But in terms of immigrants, we all experienced something similar. Being new. Not sure where you're going. Not sure what's gonna happen. Not sure who to call. All of those things is common to all of us.

GONZÁLEZ: Adapting to a living in a new country is difficult for all immigrants, but it’s even harder for intergenerational refugee families. Julius notices that the younger generations of African families have an easier time with the transition. The kids would go to school, their parents would work, but their parents, the grandparents, would get depressed. Isolated, displaced from their homes, this older generation, mostly women, grandmothers, would feel useless. So, instead of training them in office jobs, Julius has a better idea.

JULIUS: When we began 2009, 2010, the mission was for these women to get out of the house, have a place to go. Because we are a village people. You know, I come to your door, you come to my door and so on and so forth. In America, you have an apartment, you have a key, you can’t go to the next door, no. Okay, so what we did was take them to a garden, so they can grow things to feed their family. And then they can go there and have an evening out of the apartment. We have pictures of things like that, where they're sitting in the farm, just wiling away time. It's like therapy for them.

GONZÁLEZ: The African Alliance starts with transforming vacant lots into community gardens around where a lot of refugee families live. Julius expands the program to housing projects, where some latino families start farming as well. At first, the farmers are just producing enough food to feed their families throughout the year, but the farms thrive, and there’s more than enough. In 2013, Julius starts setting up African Alliance booths at farmers markets around Providence. Now, the women are earning money and connecting to the greater Rhode Island community. They’re selling typical American vegetables like potatoes, broccoli, and tomatoes, but they’re also selling things they grew up growing, like Okra, Uziza, Ewedu, different types of bananas.

JULIUS: So exercise is good. Eating fresh vegetables is also good. On top of that you're eating vegetables that you are familiar with. That's even excellent!

MARIE: I coming here in the garden. It’s good for me. It’s work. And the moving and the work here.

GONZÁLEZ: Up the hill on Bami Farm, from Garmin and the Liberian fields, there’s another clearing that’s just getting started for the season. Marie Mukabahizi is in the corner of the plot, digging holes for her seedlings. It’s her second year on the land here.

MARIE: I plant eggplant, hot pepper, garlic. This is Garlic, yeah.

GONZÁLEZ: Marie was one of the first women to participate in the African Alliance’s community gardens nearly 10 years ago. She grew up in rural Rwanda before civil war tore her country apart, so she knows her way around a farm. When Marie switches to Kinyarwanda, her native language, her son, Christopher steps in to translate. I ask if he’s noticed a change in his mother since she started farming.

CHRIS: Oh, you know what? She has lost weight!... And then she loves it. She likes going to, what do you call those markets? Yeah! Farmers markets. She loves those, you know, that gives her motivation to farm more.

GONZÁLEZ: After 6 years of making profit from community plots in Providence, Julius has dreams of expanding. But buying farmland in Rhode Island is out of the question. Rhode Island land prices are among the highest in the country. 1 acre of farmland can go anywhere between one hundred and three hundred thousand dollars. That’s per acre. So, in 2018, Julius applies to a program through the Northern Rhode Island Conservation District that would lease him land at reduced rates, just $160 per acre per year. In the Spring of 2019, just in time to start working the land for the season, Julius and his group of growers are able to rent a 6.5-acre parcel of land that they name Bami Farm.

JULIUS: And this is the first time in the history of the state, to the best of my knowledge, that we grow African vegetables, sell African vegetables, make products from growth of African vegetable. To me, that's historic.

GONZÁLEZ: But the joy of finally accessing land is quickly outshadowed by the realities of becoming stewards of farmland in New England.

JULIUS: We have problem with water last year. We are already experiencing problem with water again this year. Watch Garmin.

GONZÁLEZ: Julius and I are off to the side of the lower fields, next to a large hose that runs down the hill. The hose is flat and empty. Garmin has just carried a large bucket of water on her head across the field from a spigot that’s connected to the DEM building an acre away.

JULIUS: She’s gonna scoop water with a little container in her hand. Okay, and then put it on vegetables. My hope is by next week this thing will be running regardless of what it's gonna cost me.

GONZÁLEZ: He’s talking about the empty hose, which he wants to connect to the pond up the hill and set up an irrigation system for all of the crops to be watered automatically, not by the farmers physically carrying and scooping water.

JULIUS: Because I want to plant vegetables too. And I can't because my vegetables also need water. But I don't want to compete with them. I want the focus to be on them. When they are happy, then I get some space off my own. If they are not, it doesn't matter what I do. [laughs] It doesn’t matter.

GONZÁLEZ: Water’s been an issue. They’re also worried about safety. Bami Farm is in the middle of a hiking trail in Snake Den Park. The signs for the farm are small and hidden by shrubs. It’s easy for locals to ignore the signs and walk through the farm with their off-leash dogs. The African farmers at Bami are not comfortable around dogs. They view them more as street animals who could hurt them rather than pets. So, when dogs run up to the women, and their owners try to communicate in English, the whole situation overwhelms the women. Sometimes, trucks and motorbikes drive across the fields, ruin the crops, and scare the women while they are working.

JULIUS: Some people are nice. Some are not. But how do we differentiate between one and the other? The women now wear a whistle around their neck. That's not helpful because you don't know what is going to happen. My worry is, once the news gets into the community, they're going to stop coming. That will be a tragedy. That'll be really, really a tragedy.

GONZÁLEZ: And it’s not just about water and signage...there’s a bigger issue in play--race. Julius gets his first taste of it when he goes to the manager of the Conservation District’s program, who no longer works there, to talk about the issue with the lack of infrastructure at Bami Farm.

JULIUS: When we took over this place there was a young lady who is the administrator of the park. ..The first thing, after, I think the first or second of our meeting...The lady immediately said, we are on probation. I was really irate, really, really irate. Because she doesn't think we know anything.

GONZÁLEZ: After this, Julius decides to find other ways to get help. He reaches out to the local Johnston farming community. Johnston is, after all, an old farming town. There are about 13 farms in Johnston outside of the Conservation District's program. Almost all of them have been there for generations, working huge plots of land. Some of them trace their ancestry back to immigrant farmers who worked the land to provide for their families, much like Bami. Julius figures, one of them will help Bami Farm get its footing. That doesn’t happen.

DARLENE DAME: That's one of our irrigation ponds. So what we're going to do is walk around this way, if that's okay.

GONZÁLEZ: Darlene Dame is taking me on a walking tour of part of her family’s 40-acre farm and orchard. It’s been in the Dame family since 1890, and it’s pristine: rolling hills, hundreds of fruit trees in perfect alignment, a horse paddock. Darlene’s grandson is wearing a cowboy hat and riding his bike up and down the rocky path in between the pond and the fields.

DARLENE: So this pond was dug –oh, back in the late 70s, I want to say – for irrigation. That was the sole purpose. We have very dry soil. This land takes a lot of work to produce from it. People come and they say, “Oh, it's so beautiful. You've got such great soil.” We have great soil because we work to make a great soil.

GONZÁLEZ: Dame Family Farm and Orchard is one street over from Bami Farm. So, Julius goes there one day in the spring of 2019 to introduce himself and maybe get Darlene’s help setting up an irrigation system like hers.

JULIUS: We went there. All we said to her is, "We are new here. And we just want to say hello to you. And if we ever need any help, we can come to you." "Oh, we don't take anything from the government. No, no we been here since 1875."

GONZÁLEZ: No small talk. No niceties. Darlene’s only response is rejection. Julius isn’t confused. He sees through Darlene’s dismissal of him to what she’s really saying. He's with some of the women from Bami and a friend of his who lives in Johnston and is a Black American.

JULIUS: The gentleman with me, African American, a retired lieutenant colonel, was fuming. ‘We got here before 1875. Where is our own? You are telling me it isn't fair. You tell me you don't take anything from government, which means we may be on welfare.’ Not taking from government, that's the interpretation. Okay. So I mean, we deal with this. This is life, but you just say “Okay, thank you.” You move on.

GONZÁLEZ: On Dame Farm, I ask Darlene about this encounter. I ask her if she would ever think about helping Julius fix some of his infrastructure problems or rent him some equipment. She won’t do it.

DARLENE:: I don't begrudge someone coming from another country wanting something better. And I don’t have the answers, necessarily. But you have all this land now that the country owns. If you wanna give them a start, and if you say you’re doing something so wonderful, and you’ve got all the land grant colleges, let them have a 2-year or 3-year stint on one of those. [ANA off-mic: When you say “them”, who are you talking about?] I’m talking about the immigrants that you’re talking about coming in. Let them do it on a rotational basis. So that way you can learn the methods, you can learn the language, you can learn the different intricacies of it. Cus some people decide: they don’t want it. They find out how hard it is: they don’t want it. [39:29] If you're doing the hard work that it takes to raise your family, to make your children, grandchildren, responsible individuals that aren't leeching off of the public domain all the time, and aren’t expecting to stand there with a handout –“Buy me my shoes and they better be Nike air” or whatever – I feel that that is my job to make sure that they know: you’re part of giving to this society not taking.

GONZÁLEZ: It’s easy to write this exchange off as racist and xenophobic because it is, especially in a town that’s just under 90% white and less than 2% Black. But there’s something else behind Darlene’s resistance to the newcomers at Bami. What the Bami farmers don’t know is that Johnston, and the Dame Family Farm in particular, is at the center of a bitter land dispute that started over fifty years ago.

GONZÁLEZ: In 1964, the state of Rhode Island passes The Green Acres Act. This program promises to conserve forest and farm land for future generations of Rhode Islanders to use as such.

Anchor: Mr. White, what do you think the Green Acres Program will do for the State of Rhode Island?

Mr. White: I think it will have an awful lot to do with what kind of a place Rhode Island is to live in and work in for the next generation or so. And the way you’ve got, really, almost an economic development program…

GONZÁLEZ: Sounds good. But to the farmers, it’s a land grab. Green Acres takes 5,000 acres of land from Rhode Island landowners with the promise to build things like conservatories and parks. What it really does is place an economic value on conservation land that overrides the protection and land rights of Rhode Island citizens. In Johnston, they have plans to build a park that’s gonna outshine nearby Roger Williams Park and bring in tourists from Hartford and Boston. There will be lakes and a zoo and shuttle buses. But the park is never built. The elaborate plans are scrapped. And the Dames still wind up losing more than half of their land to the State.

DARLENE: So when the voting bloc went in, and cast their vote for that, that land got condemned...

GONZÁLEZ: Other farming families lost their land, too, but they are able to purchase it back. Not the Dames. It’s a strange, confusing deal that even people at the DEM today describe as complicated and challenging. Darlene and her husband fight for decades with lawyers to get those acres back, but, in 2012, they give up the fight.

DARLENE: You know, I loved haying. And the last year that we hayed, where Julius, because Julius farms the lower field way in the back. We all cried the entire time we were haying that June. It was the hardest thing we'd ever done. [CRIES] We knew we were leaving it. So that's why some of some of the approaches that the politicians take and the people who are in charge, they don't get it. MUSIC And when we took the swing set from the front yard between the barn, that was tough, because it's like, all the generations, they knew this was it.

GONZÁLEZ: In 2013, one year after the Dames give up their land, the DEM and the Conservation District start leasing parcels of the Dame’s old land to new farmers at reduced rates. They’re even using the Dame’s old family house and barn. One of those parcels is now Bami Farm.

GONZÁLEZ: It’s June now. A beautiful Saturday morning. The fields on Bami Farm have come alive: Garmin’s plot is producing cilantro and collard greens, and cucumbers are beginning to pop off their vines. Marie’s garlic is lush and green.

GONZÁLEZ: Down the hill, close to the main road, Julius is planting seedlings with Arthur, a board member of the African Alliance, and Arthur’s 10-year-old son, Adonis. Arthur grew up in South Providence, but now he lives in Johnston and comes to the farm with Adonis whenever he can.

ARTHUR: I love the serenity part of it. For me personally, I go to the farm to get away. And then seeing the produce after it's harvest, that's a great feeling as well.

GONZÁLEZ: Arthur’s parents grew up in Northeastern cities after the Great Migration. His grandfather was born enslaved. Coming to this farm and connecting with the African Alliance helps him feel connected to an ancestry that was taken from him before he was even born.

ARTHUR: I personally think that's what we need to do to make ourselves rich. We did it to make America rich. Right? America has gotten rich off of Africans, Africans in America. And if we want to be wealthy, we need to go back to the land, make ourselves wealthy

GONZÁLEZ: Julius is teaching Arthur’s son, Adonis, how to care for new seedlings.

JULIUS: The reason we put the tarp is because you see this is weeds.

ADONIS: Yeah, you don’t want that.

JULIUS: You don’t want that. So this will kill the weed.

GONZÁLEZ: This is Julius’s personal plot on Bami Farm. He’s just starting to plant it now because, as you can hear, they finally got the hose working. It’s not a perfect system. Julius says there’s a lot of wasted water, and they’re running on gasoline instead of solar panels. But it’s temporary until more funding comes in. And Julius doesn’t get bogged down in these imperfections anyway.

JULIUS: See this little boy? That's my focus. And I'll tell you why...People who look like me, don't have that urge, don't have that engineering demand... So if you catch them early, like this little one, maybe he may be interested in environmental issues. Maybe zoology, maybe botany. Why is the leaf green? What is called photosynthesis? You know, what, what is butterfly? You gotta catch them early. And I'm inviting them here because we all live in a three-level tenement. You don't have the space. You don't see trees. You see butterflies in your neighborhood you're wondering, has something gone wrong? Hopefully, I've seen signs that this is gonna work.

Mosaic is a production of The Public’s Radio. Edited by Sally Eisele. With production help from Aaron Selbig and James Baumgartner. Thanks to the Rhode Island Historical Society for use of their archives in this episode. Our theme music is by Bryn Bliska. Our intern is Michelle Liu. Torey Malatia is the general manager of The Public’s Radio. I’m Ana González: thank you for listening. If you want to learn more about the stories in Mosaic, visit thepublicsradio.org/mosaic. And, as always, subscribe to Mosaic wherever you get your podcasts.