Honoring Black Makers, Building Food Sovereignty

Sweet Greetings Community,

As we enter into Black History Month, I invite you to lean in as we reflect on the stories of makers—artists, bakers, herbalists, and creators—we honor the ingenuity that blooms from soil and spirit alike.

Sean, Bupé, Nashia, and Eric are carrying forward a legacy of resilience and resistance through their craft. They remind us that making is more than production; it is storytelling, ancestral memory, and an act of defiance in a world that seeks to homogenize and commodify.

Investing in our local food system means investing in the people who shape it.

From the farmers who steward the land to the artisans who transform raw ingredients into nourishment, we are weaving a web of interdependence that can withstand the storms of uncertainty. At this moment, when federal funding hangs in precarious balance, and communities are left to navigate the shifting tides of policy and politics, we must deepen our commitments to one another on our journey to realize self-determination.

We see the cracks in the system, and we also see the light that pours through.

The growing movement for reparations and land return is gaining momentum. Across the country, Black food businesses and land stewards are reclaiming space and sovereignty—from cooperatively owned grocery stores to community-run urban farms.

Here in Washtenaw County, Black entrepreneurs are creating thriving food businesses despite systemic barriers. The Growing Hope Incubator Kitchen provides a space where small businesses (many of whom are Black-owned) can thrive and where each owner can freely pursue their entrepreneurial dreams. Meanwhile, the Reparations Council is laying the groundwork for justice, ensuring Black food businesses and land stewards have the resources to thrive. We work diligently to meet our community's growing need for this support.

These are not isolated efforts; they are part of a collective reckoning, a return-to-right relationship with land, food, and people. I invite you to lean in, whether it is through listening, learning, advocating, donating, or any other means.

Because it is about food. It is about land. It is about representation, justice, and sovereignty.

It is about us—standing in the fullness of our power and ensuring that everyone has the right to grow, create, and be nourished.

In solidarity and abundance,

Julius Buzzard

P.S. Sign up today to join the conversation with each of these makers.

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Georgia Gilmore & The Club From Nowhere

By Julius Buzzard • February 18, 2026

During the Montgomery Bus Boycott, when formal fundraising was surveilled and criminalized, Georgia Gilmore organized something deceptively simple: a kitchen network . Known as The Club From Nowhere , Gilmore and other Black women sold pies, cakes, and home-cooked meals to quietly raise money for the movement. Their anonymity was protection. Their food was infrastructure. For over a year, as the boycott stretched on, these funds paid for carpools, gas, and daily survival. While history often centers on speeches and marches, Gilmore reminds us that revolutions are sustained behind the scenes by those who feed people, organize logistics, and keep the lights on. Her kitchen was a site of resistance. Her recipes were tools of liberation. At Growing Hope, we honor this lineage every time we invest in food entrepreneurs, incubator kitchens, and cooperative models. When food businesses are community-rooted, they do more than generate income; they fuel movements . Never underestimate what food can do. And never forget who has always been doing the work.

Fannie Lou Hamer & the Freedom Farm Cooperative

By Julius Buzzard • February 11, 2026

“If you have 400 quarts of greens and gumbo soup canned for the winter, nobody can push you around.” Fannie Lou Hamer said this not as a metaphor, but as a lived experience. In 1969, after being evicted from her plantation home for registering to vote, Hamer founded the Freedom Farm Cooperative in Sunflower County, Mississippi. The goal was simple and radical: Black families deserved land, food, housing, and economic independence, without having to ask permission. Freedom Farm grew vegetables, raised livestock, built homes, and supported cooperative ownership. It addressed hunger and poverty at their roots, refusing the lie that liberation could come without material security. Hamer understood what we still grapple with today: political rights mean little without food sovereignty . Voting doesn’t protect you from hunger. Legislation doesn’t replace land. Dignity requires access to the means of survival. This is why Growing Hope centers farming, education, and entrepreneurship together. Food sovereignty is not just about what’s on your plate; it’s about who controls the systems that decide who eats .

The Black Panther Party & Free Breakfast

By Julius Buzzard • February 4, 2026

In 1969, the Black Panther Party launched the Free Breakfast for Children Program , serving tens of thousands of children across the United States every single school day. Not as an act of charity, but as a declaration. The Panthers understood something the dominant systems refused to acknowledge: a hungry child cannot learn, organize, or imagine a future . Feeding children was a political act. It was protection. It was strategy. Volunteers cooked before dawn in church basements and community centers. Children were served breakfast while learning about Black history, self-determination, and collective responsibility. The state noticed and felt threatened. The FBI labeled the program “the greatest threat” to internal security, not because it was violent, but because it worked. And it worked so well that the U.S. government was forced to expand public school breakfast programs nationwide . Mutual aid didn’t just meet immediate needs; it reshaped public policy . This is food sovereignty in action: communities identifying harm, meeting their own needs with dignity, and building power in the process. At Growing Hope, we carry this legacy forward. When we insist on dignified access to food, when we support farmers markets as sites of connection and not extraction, when we center youth and Black leadership, we are walking a well-worn path. When communities feed themselves, systems change.

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