Evan P. Bennett – författare

This collection chronicles the tumultuous history of landowning African American farmers from the end of the Civil War to today. Each essay provides a case study of people in one place at a particular time and the factors that affected their ability to acquire, secure, and protect their land.

The contributors walk readers through a century and a half of African American agricultural history, from the strivings of black farm owners in the immediate post-emancipation period to the efforts of contemporary black farm owners to receive justice through the courts for decades of discrimination by the U.S Department of Agriculture. They reveal that despite enormous obstacles, by 1920 a quarter of African American farm families owned their land, and demonstrate that farm ownership was not simply a departure point for black migrants seeking a better life but a core component of the African American experience.

Tobacco has left an indelible mark on the American South, shaping the land and culture throughout the twentieth-century. In the last few decades, advances in technology and shifts in labor and farming policy have altered the way of life for tobacco farmers: family farms have largely been replaced by large-scale operations dependent on hired labor, much of it from other shores. However, the mechanical harvester and the H-2A guestworker did not put an end to tobacco culture but rather sent it in new directions and accelerated the change that has always been part of the farmer’s life.

In When Tobacco Was King, Evan Bennett examines the agriculture of the South’s original staple crop in the Old Bright Belt—a diverse region named after the unique bright, or flue-cured, tobacco variety it spawned. He traces the region’s history from Emancipation to the abandonment of federal crop controls in 2004 and highlights the transformations endured by blacks and whites, landowners and tenants, to show how tobacco farmers continued to find meaning and community in their work despite these drastic changes.

Florida Historical Society Stetson Kennedy Award

Florida Book Awards, Silver Medal for Florida Nonfiction

Exploring the environmental history of an important natural area

The largest open water estuary in Florida, Tampa Bay has been a flashpoint of environmental struggles and action in recent years. This book goes beneath today’s news headlines to explore how people have interacted with nature in the region throughout its long history.

In Tampa Bay, Evan Bennett reveals that humans have been part of the bay’s ecology since the estuary took its modern form 2,000 years ago, along with the communities of fish, birds, reptiles, and mammals that proliferated in its seagrass meadows, tidal salt flats, and mangrove forests. Bennett discusses the natural resources that drew people to settle there, the trade that encouraged development, and the shipping and industry that increased biological and ecological change.

While the past 150 years have seen serious environmental damage from dredging, water pollution, red tides, and more, Bennett shows how people have been fighting to clean up the bay and regain a balance with nature. Informed by the latest in marine science, area environmentalists, policymakers, and citizens are working to create a model for other societies that have developed in fragile natural areas.

The first book to examine the environmental history of the region, Tampa Bay uncovers deep-rooted relationships between water, land, and people and offers hope for bringing threatened coastal spaces back from the brink.

A volume in the series Florida in Focus, edited by Andrew K. Frank

Florida Historical Society Stetson Kennedy Award

Florida Book Awards, Silver Medal for Florida Nonfiction

Exploring the environmental history of an important natural area

The largest open water estuary in Florida, Tampa Bay has been a flashpoint of environmental struggles and action in recent years. This book goes beneath today’s news headlines to explore how people have interacted with nature in the region throughout its long history.

In Tampa Bay, Evan Bennett reveals that humans have been part of the bay’s ecology since the estuary took its modern form 2,000 years ago, along with the communities of fish, birds, reptiles, and mammals that proliferated in its seagrass meadows, tidal salt flats, and mangrove forests. Bennett discusses the natural resources that drew people to settle there, the trade that encouraged development, and the shipping and industry that increased biological and ecological change.

While the past 150 years have seen serious environmental damage from dredging, water pollution, red tides, and more, Bennett shows how people have been fighting to clean up the bay and regain a balance with nature. Informed by the latest in marine science, area environmentalists, policymakers, and citizens are working to create a model for other societies that have developed in fragile natural areas.

The first book to examine the environmental history of the region, Tampa Bay uncovers deep-rooted relationships between water, land, and people and offers hope for bringing threatened coastal spaces back from the brink.

A volume in the series Florida in Focus, edited by Andrew K. Frank