For the Central Arkansas Library System and Little Rock Public Radio, I’m Mark Christ with an Encyclopedia of Arkansas Minute.
A Lincoln County family established an agricultural enterprise that found success in a time when independent Black farmers faced daunting obstacles. Abraham and Katie Carpenter initially sold produce locally from a one-acre vegetable garden but soon expanded to a thirty-acre spread, employing additional family members.
By focusing on fruits and vegetables that matured at different times of the year, the Carpenters were able to grow multiple rotations of crops on the same land throughout the year, selling to both grocery chains and farmer’s markets. Carpenter’s Produce grew to one thousand acres, employing around thirty-five family members and as many as fifty seasonal workers during peak harvests.
The family was among the plaintiffs that successfully sued the U.S. Department of Agriculture for discriminatory lending practices and in 1988 was Arkansas’s Farm Family of the Year; the Carpenter family was also inducted into the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame in 2011.
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