A God Blessed Land (Empire of Dirt), 2022

Denzel Mitchell, Jr.: My name is Denzel Mitchell, Jr. I am a father, farmer, educator, cook, hip-hop head, and a friend of Amy Sherald's. I am that farmer in the painting, A God Blessed Land (Empire of Dirt). That's me.

Narrator: Mitchell is the Executive Director of the Farm Alliance of Baltimore. When asked what he sees when he looks at this painting, he said: 

Denzel Mitchell, Jr.: One of the first things Amy said to me when we met years ago was that "I'm going to paint you," and this was before she was the Amy Sherald. 

It wasn't until we sat down to this, and I had fully developed as a farmer, a farmer owner operator who's running a business, that this is what we settled on. 

We had made a very conscious choice (and I say we, my family and folks that worked on the farm) to wear overalls. And that was kind of a specific nod to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee as a uniform, as a political statement, but also the utility of that. I'm actually, by happenstance, wearing overalls today, that was not by design. 

Narrator: The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, or SNCC, was the student-led arm of the Civil Rights Movement. 

Denzel Mitchell, Jr.: Agriculture is the basis of society. But at the same time, yes, Black people are very well aware of the fact that our labor was extracted and stolen, and was a very significant contribution to the wealth of this country. There's a lot to unpack, but it's important that Black folks stand up and be present in food production, and that all of us are present and active and engaged in shifting food production in a way that is not extractive to the earth, that is stewarding the land and creating a relationship of love with the land, because we all have to eat.