Loading Events

« All Events

  • This event has passed.

Quarterly Keynote feat. Ebonie Alexander of the Black Family Land Trust

December 14, 2021 @ 6:30 pm 7:30 pm

Join PEC for a discussion about efforts to retain and protect Black-owned farms and family lands.

In the years between 1920 and 2017, the number of Black-owned farms in the U.S. dropped from more than 900,000 to less than 50,000; their acreage shrank from between 16-19 million to just 2.5 million. Black families who own land today and want to protect it continue to face challenges related to a legacy of discrimination and involuntary dispossession.

Join PEC Director of State Policy Dan Holmes and Black Family Land Trust Executive Director Ebonie Alexander for the fourth webinar in PEC’s Quarterly Keynote series, a virtual conversation about efforts to retain and conserve Black-owned farms and family lands.

*This event is free for PEC members. Suggested donation of $10 for non-members.

About our Guest Speaker: Ebonie Alexander

Lillian “Ebonie” Alexander joined the Black Family Land Trust in 2009, and has since designed and implemented the African American Land Ethic and Wealth Retention and Asset Protection (WRAP) programs. Together, these two programs have assisted landowners to retain family ownership and control of more than $12.5 million of their land assets during the past five years.

Ebonie currently serves on the boards of the American Farmland Trust, the Sustainable Forestry Initiative and the North Farm Stewardship Association. In 2020, she was awarded the Gerald P. McCarthy Award for Leadership in Environmental Conflict Resolution from The Institute for Engagement & Negotiation at the University of Virginia. Ebonie and the land trust community led the effort to make Virginia the 14th state to adopt the Uniform Partition of Heirs Property Act to ensure rightful ownership of inherited family land.

Prior to joining the Black Family Land Trust, Ebonie was the President of the North Carolina Community Development Initiative, Inc., a statewide funding intermediary supporting the community-based economic development and affordable housing sectors.

Ebonie is from Maryland and has degrees in Public Administration and Nonprofit Management. She currently resides in Southside Virginia on a former tobacco farm which has been in her family for six generations. Ebonie is a proud Virginian, avid reader and lover of history. She can trace her family’s history in Virginia back to 1737.

About the Black Family Land Trust

The Black Family Land Trust, Inc. (BFLT), incorporated in 2004 and based in North Carolina, is one of the nation’s only conservation land trusts dedicated to the preservation and protection of African-American and other historically underserved landowners’ assets. The BFLT utilizes the core principles of land conservation and land-based community economic development to achieve its goals.

Land ownership represents generational wealth, power, community, sustainability and economic opportunities. To help reduce the rate of land loss by Black and other historically underserved populations, the Black Family Land Trust educates landowners about heirs’ property and estate planning, intergenerational financial management, conservation easements, and 21st century options for land use. BFLT operates across the Southeast, including Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia.

Questions about this event or your Piedmont Environmental Council membership status?

Reach out to James Bussells, Development & Events Assistant, with any questions about this event or the status of your PEC membership. Contact him at jbussells@pecva.org or (540) 347-2334 ext. 7007. You can also join or renew your membership at www.pecva.org/join.