In 1881, African American educator and political leader Booker T. Washington founded Tuskegee Institute in Tuskegee, Alabama. The school's mission was to provide practical education and vocational training in fields such as agriculture and mechanics to African Americans in the post-Reconstruction South. Tuskegee ultimately became a world-renowned agricultural and industrial school for African Americans – and actually for all people. Today, we're speaking with Duke University's Jarvis McInnis about his award-winning book Afterlives of the Plantation: Plotting Agrarian Futures in the Global Black South.

Interview Transcript

Jarvis, I cannot tell you how much I appreciate this book. And hopefully we'll make a link to the Franklin Humanities gathering (https://youtu.be/rfSy1lWWOwA?si=dVcWH3xDBuBStEEc) that we had for your book launch. As I said at that time, and I'll say it right now, this book resonated with me so deeply because of my rural upbringing. My experience as a son, a grandson of farmers and agricultural workers. And someone who grew up in the 4-H Club down South. Hopefully we will get to some of those topics as we go through. So, let's start off with a real basic idea. Could you give our readers an overview of what the book is? And also, about what you mean by the Afterlives of the Plantation.

Yes, absolutely. Thank you so much for that question, Norbert. The book is an effort to think about the cultural and intellectual and political ties between Southern African Americans and Afro-Caribbean people in the late 19th to early 20th Century as they were responding to the legacies of slavery, right? This is the period after emancipation, and across the hemisphere. And so, I'm really interested in the way that they are sharing ideas as they are confronting the new modes of racial oppression that emerged in slavery's aftermath. In the United States, you have Jim Crow, right? Segregation, and other forms of violence and dispossession like lynching and land dispossession and so forth and so on. And then in the Caribbean, in Latin America, you have institutions like the European colonialism, and US imperialism, right? And so that is the afterlife of slavery. They're emancipated, but it's not a period of full citizenship, right? Of full access to the rights and privileges of citizenship. And so in telling that story, I center Booker T. Washington's school, the Tuskegee Institute, which was founded on the site of an abandoned and burned cotton plantation in Alabama in 1881.

And this is getting at the second part of your question. I became really fascinated by what it meant to establish a school, to establish a future-oriented institution, that's committed to uplifting Black people. To establish that on the site, on the ruins of a burned plantation. And, in some ways, I became curious about that as an undergraduate student because I'm a graduate of Tougaloo College, in Tougaloo, Mississippi, which is a historically black college much like Tuskegee. And much like Tuskegee, Tougaloo was also founded on the site of a former cotton plantation.

And I saw that this idea, or this practice, this logic of transforming these sites of violence into something that is more liberatory and more emancipatory was really a strategy that Black people used throughout the US South and throughout the Caribbean. Throughout much of the Americas where slavery and the plantation had existed. I placed Tuskegee, and particularly its approach to agriculture, at the center of that story to demonstrate how an institution rooted in the US South is not backward. It's not pre-modern. That's firmly rural, but that rurality... they're taking the knowledge that's cultivated there and disseminating it to other Black people in other parts of the world to aid in their struggles toward freedom and citizenship.

I think this is an important point to make. And I know we've had conversations about this as you were developing the book. And I'll just say again, out of my rural Southern agricultural background, I often found a sense that people thought, oh, well you must be backward. Oh, you must come from this... and that's not a good thing. I can only imagine that people of this time must have thought, well, shouldn't people want to move away from agriculture? Why would you want to be invested in this thing that was a part of former enslavement? How do you think about this in light of this notion of agrarian futures? You would think people would want to move away from that. What is your understanding of sort of this move towards agriculture and seeing this as something for the future and even modern.

That's such a great question. And I, you know, I have to say that I came to agriculture relatively late in the project. I was initially most interested in what Tuskegee was doing with Black aesthetics: with photography and with music and with literature. I'm a literary scholar after all. But as I sat with Tuskegee's aesthetic output, I realized the significance of agriculture within that. And as I began to explore the ways that Tuskegee was being disseminated to other parts of the Black world, to places like Haiti, to places like Puerto Rico. And as they were admitting students from those particular colonies at that time. Now some of them are countries; Puerto Rico is still a territory. But I realized that what other Black people, both in the US South and abroad, were interested in was its agrarian vision. Was the work, the research that someone like George Washington Carver was doing at Tuskegee and as a mode of self-help. And so I really had to wrestle with that because it was outside of how I had conceived of agriculture. And in many ways, writing this book transformed my own understanding of what the modern was. And, you know, forced me to, or perhaps invited me, to think about agriculture to understand it as intellectual. To understand it certainly as a skill, in all of these ways that I had not really given much thought to it previously. But as I sat with George Washington Carver's bulletins. As I sat with Tuskegee's extension initiatives. As I sat with the knowledge that they were producing, the various print cultural artifacts, the newspapers. And again, the agricultural bulletins and so forth and so on. I realized, wait a minute. This is a site of knowledge production, and its modern up-to-date knowledge production that actually still has a lot of sound basis that can be used in contemporary agriculture to this very day. And so, it radically transformed my understanding of Tuskegee, of a figure like Booker T. Washington. who as we know, is a much-maligned figure in Black studies and American studies because of his conservative politics. But agriculture gave me another way into that institution and to think about, again, the significance of the cultural and intellectual contributions of the US South at this particular period.

Thank you for that. I want to talk about a particular section of the text that has to do with both the agricultural philosophy, but also this idea of sharing information, and you've made some reference to it. So, I grew up, as I mentioned, going and being a part of the 4-H program, which was a part of the Cooperative Extension System. And Tuskegee, in many ways, helped form and helped inform what extension would look like. Which ultimately became a thing, federally, in 1914. But I want to read this one passage from your text, and you say:

"In 1897, the state of Alabama passed legislation allocating $1,500 to establish an agricultural experiment station on campus. The station also known as the Experiment Plot."

And plot is something you come back to. And I would love to hear your thoughts about this garden plot and the Experiment Plot and just the metaphor of plot throughout your text.

"But the station also known as the Experiment Plot, was managed by George Washington Carver. Washington insisted that the experiment station ' should not be used for scientific experiments of interest only to experts. Should deal with the fundamental problems with which the Negro Farmers of Alabama were daily confronted.' The results of Carver's experiments were thus published in bulletins that were then distributed among farmers throughout Alabama and the broader US South."

And then you go on and talking about the different courses that were made available. But I wanna get this one quote from the Tuskegee student. And you said the Tuskegee student observed: 'Tuskegee Institute is primarily a school for the masses of our people. Both old and young and in all degrees of development.'

I mean, Tuskegee was doing something that other land grant institutions would eventually take on, is this idea of sharing knowledge and using this. As a means of uplift and I would say even citizen building. What are your thoughts about that sort of perspective?

Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to try to wrap all of those questions up into one response. We'll see how successful I am.

I know I gave you a lot.

Well, one of the things that I wanted to say, that I did not get a chance to say in my response to your previous question is that, you know, the majority of African Americans lived in the South in this particular period. And many of them viewed agriculture as a viable future. And that was one of the aspects of, you know, doing research on this book that was transformative for me. Was understanding that they did not hold this same necessarily, sort of, denigrating attitudes toward agriculture. In part because the United States was largely agricultural writ large, right? [00:11:00] And so it was across the country, across the color line, was regarded as a viable pathway. But it is the case that Booker T. Washington was attempting to rebrand agriculture, to re-signify it. Because there were a number of African Americans who did not want to have anything to do with it because it reminded them of the degradation of slavery. And so, what Washington said was he said, hey, you know, that there's a distinction between working and being worked, right? Being worked means degradation. Working for oneself, right? Being independent is a mode of civilization, is what he argued. And so what I argue in the book is that Washington is attempting to resignify labor, to make it something that is regarded as self-proprietorial, right? And that is a necessary tool in not just labor but agricultural labor in particular. But we can add, I would say, industrial labor also as something that is self-proprietorial and that is a part of that citizenship making project. So, I wanted to be sure to home in on that aspect of your previous question. And then I think the way into this next question is to talk a little bit about the plot. The slave garden plot. So, this idea in the book, right? The subtitle is Plotting Agrarian Futures. And there are multiple residences of the plot throughout the book. But the easiest way to, sort of, describe it is that it is an elaboration on the slave garden plot. The patches of land that enslaved people could cultivate throughout the Americas to grow foods to nourish themselves, because the rations that were provided from the plantation owners, those rations were too meager, right? A number of scholars and theorists across disciplines have theorized that the slave garden plot was a site of resistance to the plantation system. In part because it is enabling them to survive, to live, to nourish their bodies, right? But also because of what they did on the plot, right? Not only growing food, but also perhaps growing flowers. There's one scholar who regards it as the botanical gardens of the dispossessed, right? And so this idea that on these garden plots where they could cultivate food for themselves, their time was their own. They weren't growing food for sale on the global market, necessarily, or other cash crops for sale in the global market. They were growing foods that perhaps have been a part of their diets in Africa. And in addition to that, they were engaging in communal practices, singing, dancing, and sometimes perhaps even plotting revolutions, right? Another valence of the plot.

And so, a scholar like Sylvia Winter establishes a kind of dichotomy between the plot and the plantation under enslavement. And when I realized that Tuskegeeans were also trying to encourage Black folks to grow food, and in doing so helping them to circumvent the predatory practices of sharecropping, of tenant farming, that would have those sharecroppers and tenant farmers to buy their foods from the local commissary and to remain in cycles of debt. And that of course, that they had an experiment station that they called an Experiment Plot. I thought, okay, this is the post emancipation iteration of the slave garden plot. It stands as a counterpoint to the plantation system, and it is imbued with these logics and ethics of care. And one of those logics and ethics of care is the dissemination of knowledge, right? Ensuring that rural Black farmers who were perhaps too old to attend Tuskegee, or could not afford to do so, that they could come to campus and learn the most up-to-date agricultural knowledge, right? And for those who couldn't come to campus, to attend the Tuskegee Farmers Conference, they would take the Jessup Agricultural Wagon into the countryside and teach them about crop rotation. Teach them about how to grow certain food crops, right? Teach them about how to grow certain plants to beautify their homes and so forth and so on. And so I think about that dissemination of knowledge, right? Whether it's those farmers coming to campus or Tuskegee taking those ideas into the countryside, as an ethic of care that is connected to the way that the plot exists as a counter to the plantation.

Yeah. Wow, this is really wonderful. I love how you're able to weave in this agricultural philosophy that had deep resonance with people of the rural American South. But you also saw this as something that moved beyond the borders of the American South, and thus in your subtitle, the Global Black South. How did Tuskegee get involved in this transnational sharing of knowledge, and working in the Caribbean, and particularly, Puerto Rico, Haiti? Tell us a little bit more about that experience.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Tuskegee really began to recruit students from the broader diaspora in the latter part of the 19th Century. So, around 1897. Certainly, the Caribbean, certainly Cuba and Puerto Rico, following the Spanish American War. And Booker T. Washington sent a Tuskegee student who was actually fluent in Spanish into Florida, and then later on to Havana, to recruit students to Tuskegee. He understood, he believed, that because they were experiencing conditions that were very similar to African Americans, they too were responding to the afterlife of slavery in the plantation. Given that emancipation in Cuba and Puerto Rico, in particular had just occurred in the late 1880s, he believed that their conditions were very similar to those of African Americans and that they could benefit from agricultural and industrial education as well.

And there was a reformer by the name of Grace Mins. She was based in Boston. And she ensured that Booker T. Washington's autobiography, Up From Slavery, was translated into Cuban Spanish. And then that autobiography was then disseminated. A thousand copies were disseminated throughout the island of Cuba. And so as a result of that, he inspired, or the model of self-help that Washington depicted in Up From Slavery, inspired a host of Afro-Cuban readers. Students and parents and government officials and educational officials then begin to write to Tuskegee, write to Washington, wanting entry into the school.

It's also translated into French, right? And so, you have French readers, particularly in a place like Haiti coming to Tuskegee. Someone by the name of the Jean Price Mars, who was the foremost Haitian intellectual of the 20th Century, actually met Washington in France when Washington was traveling there on vacation and became inspired by that model. A year later, he comes to the United States to attend the 1904 World's Fair and then spends two weeks at Tuskegee, learning those ideas and wanting to take them back to Haiti. So, through translation, right? Into different languages, those ideas then circulate throughout the Black world, but also through efforts to actively recruit students from those other places that Washington understood as experiencing a similar condition as African Americans. People whom he understood could benefit, he believed, could benefit from agricultural and industrial education.

Great. And one of the things I loved in the way you talked about this in the text is you talked about not only translation but transplantation. And I thought that was an interesting turn of phrase because of what you were trying to communicate through that term. I want to, sort of, bring us up to some things that are currently happening. We just had a conference and you were a participant on a panel on humanistic issues around addressing food waste. And I've got to say, this was one of the panels that people really leaned into, that were really caught up by it. And you made some really insightful interventions based on some of the work that you've done in your book. So, you spoke about the anti-waste ethos at Tuskegee and I really found that interesting. Could you speak to that for a moment?

Absolutely. Well, first I want to say thank you again for the opportunity to participate in that symposium. I really enjoyed it, and it really gave me an opportunity to think about various dimensions of a kind of anti-waste ethos at Tuskegee. And I think that there are a couple of different ways in which it manifested at the institution. So first there's a kind of metaphorical dimension to waste at Tuskegee. When Booker T. Washington writes to George Washington Carver to hire him, to recruit him to the institution. He said, I can't pay you a lot of money, but we have been tasked with helping to transform formerly enslaved people from conditions of waste to full manhood. Right? And so there is that sort of metaphorical, or what I would argue in the book is a kind of ontological understanding of waste, given the degraded status of the enslaved. And then there's a kind of philosophical dimension to waste as well. One, so Washington, Tuskegee, they are informed by the progressive era, right? It's a progressive era institution that's guided by a commitment to thrift and economy. And so, they're very much interested in a kind of practical attitude toward not being wasteful, right? To being thrifty with money, but also with resources. And what we see is, you know, complaints about food waste in the dining hall at Tuskegee, right? A very practical issue for a poor rural institution wherein the students are growing the food, right? Wherein the students are making the bricks, right? Are helping to transform this plantation into a school. We can't afford to waste food, right? But they're also teaching students and Black folks in the countryside how to preserve fruits and vegetables. There are these photographs of them teaching folks how to can and preserve fruits and veggies, right? To ensure that they have food throughout the winter months, so that they are not stricken by hunger and poverty and starvation. So that they aren't forced to borrow additional money from the plantation owners if they are indeed in sharecropping and tenant farming arrangements. And so, the last aspect I suppose of waste at Tuskegee that I want to highlight here is a kind of ecological one. Where in George Washington Carver is calling on farmers to take advantage of the quote unquote waste that is on their farms, right? The cow manure, right? To regenerate the soil. The swamp muck, right? The dead leaves, the night soil; to use that waste to regenerate the soil, to replenish it, right? In addition to practices of crop rotation and so forth and so on. And so that ecological dimension of waste is really important for understanding Tuskegee's ecological vision.

I think this is so important because conversations around regenerative agriculture, and going back to, sort of, broader notions of traditional farming practices, minimizing the use of chemicals, people were talking about this. Folks like Carver were trying to find ways of using very little resources to help support the growers that he worked with. And we're hearing these echoes again and again. I'm so grateful that you illuminated that throughout your text. Thank you.

I am not the only one who seems to have appreciated that because you won the 2026 Association for the study of African American Life and History Book Prize and the 2025 On the Brink book Award from the University of New Mexico School of Architecture and Planning. Why do you think this narrative of agricultural liberation is resonating with people so strongly?

You know, first of all, Norbert, I just have to say how honored I am that the book has received these recognitions. And that it's finding its audiences. Audiences that I couldn't have imagined. Imagine my seeing my face when I opened the email to see that it had been acknowledged by both of these institutions. But especially the architecture and planning. I thought, oh my goodness. I, could not have, I could not have imagined this. So, I just want to say that I'm grateful first and foremost.

You know, as I've been talking to people, you know, and as I've been moving around and talking to readers at my book tour, or people have been writing to me via email, what I've found is that the historians really appreciate the archival richness, and robustness of the text, right? So, the historians, the literary scholars, they really appreciate that aspect of the book. Many people, I think, also really appreciate the fact that it is giving us a new way to think about Tuskegee and Booker T. Washington. A place and a person who we thought we knew, right? And not in a flat way; a way that holds the complexity of that institution in place. And throughout the text, I really try to wrestle with the critiques, the valid and legitimate critiques that are coming from people like Ida B. Wells Barnett, and WEB Du Bois, about the limits of Booker T. Washington's political philosophy. But at the same time, I say, but if we don't acknowledge what they were doing through agriculture and by extension through aesthetics, then we're missing a really important part of this story, right? And I think that the book is giving us a model for thinking about how to engage in criticism that is both generative and productive, I suppose, right? Like how do we hold them to a particular standard where we say, you know, here are the limits of your political vision, but at the same time, this is what you enabled, right? And that's what the text is trying to do. And I think, you know, others have shared that they appreciate that it honors the intelligence and sophistication and dignity of Black rural people, of Black Southerners, who in my opinion, are often written out of Black studies in a way that is substantive. In a way that honors their contributions, especially in this period. The South is a space that people are simply fleeing from because of Jim Crow. And I'm saying, wait, what about the people who remain rooted in the land, on the land, either in the US South or in other sort of rural places throughout the diaspora.

And then finally, I think that the book seems to be connecting to people who really care about our world. Who really care about the state of environmental degradation that we have found ourselves in as a result of institutions like the plantation, of monocrop agriculture, of industrialization in the way that it abuses, and misuses the earth. And so, because the book is invested in thinking about regeneration and repair, and about more sustainable methods from the past that can be useful for our present. I think that it seems to be connecting with readers who are interested in issues like climate change and environmental catastrophe. So that's what I suspect, based on some of the feedback that I have received. But I just want to reiterate just how grateful I am that it is finding its audience.

BIO

Jarvis C. McInnis holds a BA in English from Tougaloo College in Jackson, Mississippi, and a Ph.D. in English & Comparative Literature from Columbia University in the City of New York.  Jarvis is an interdisciplinary scholar of African American & African Diaspora literature and culture, with teaching and research interests in the global south (primarily the US South and the Caribbean), sound studies, performance studies, and visual culture. Jarvis's research has been supported by numerous grants and fellowships, including the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship, the Ford Foundation Pre-doctoral and Dissertation Fellowships, and Princeton University's Department of African American Studies postdoctoral fellowship. His work appears or is forthcoming in journals and venues such as Callaloo, MELUS, Mississippi Quarterly, Public Books, and The Global South.