A Name and a Face: The Black Farmers America Rarely Sees featuring Dexter Davis and Adrian Nelson

By Gary A. Johnson | BlackMenInAmerica.com

There is a version of America that rarely makes it into the national conversation.

It is the America where Black men and women work the land—not as symbols, not as footnotes, but as strategists, stewards, and business operators navigating a system that was never designed with them in mind.

On a recent episode of the Seeking Truth and Justice Podcast, host Lawrence Lucas brings that unseen America into focus through powerful conversations with Dexter Davis and Adrian Nelson, two working Black farmers whose stories disrupt assumptions and demand attention.

Most people I encounter have never met a Black farmer. Many don’t even realize they exist in meaningful numbers today. That invisibility is precisely why this conversation matters.

Adrian Nelson, just 34 years old, is responsible for helping manage more than 3,800 acres of family-owned farmland. His approach to farming is as analytical as it is ancestral. He monitors commodities markets, evaluates tariff impacts, and understands how global economic decisions affect the margins, sustainability, and future of his family’s operation.

This is not the image of farming most Americans carry in their minds—and that disconnect is dangerous.

Dexter Davis adds critical perspective on what it means to be a Black farmer operating within systems shaped by decades of discrimination, delayed justice, and broken promises. Together, their voices cut through abstraction and policy language, grounding the conversation in lived reality.

This episode represents the heart of the “A Name and a Face” campaign—an intentional effort to move beyond statistics and lawsuits and center the people directly impacted. Policies affect land. Land affects families. Families affect generations.

When Black farmers are erased from the narrative, accountability disappears with them. Seeking truth requires listening. Seeking justice requires visibility. This conversation delivers both, because justice cannot exist without recognizing the people standing in its shadow.