Possibly the most daring social experiment in the South during the twentieth century, Koinonia Farm faced years of intimidation, boycotts, and terror in the years leading up to the tumultuous Civil Rights era.1 The agricultural South was becoming more mechanized and automated, eliminating the need for large numbers of farm workers and driving off the land those dependent upon such work for their livelihood. 2 Koinonia Farm is an environmental justice community. Its significance lay in representing low-income communities of black and white people experiencing, or at risk of experiencing, adverse social, health, and environmental effects that denied them self-sufficiency.
Koinonia was established as a Christian interracial farm experiment, and for 75 years has continued as a self-defined radical experiment in Christian living, advocating and practicing racial, social, and economic justice according to biblical teaching. 3 During the American civil rights movement of the and the Koinonia Farm community gained a reputation for pacifism, equality, and interracial cooperation against racism.4 I am convinced beyond any doubt, wrote Clarence Jordan, that God pays no attention to a man s skin. Regardless of his race, the man who respects God and practices justice is welcomed. This point was made clear to the white people when the good news of peace through Jesus Christ was preached. He indeed is Lord of all people.
5 1 Briars in The Cotton Patch, Accessed February 26, from 2 Chancey, Andrew S. A Demonstration Plot for the Kingdom of God : The Establishment and Early Years of Koinonia Farm. The Georgia Historical Quarterly, vol. 75, no. 2, pp. 321 JSTOR, Accessed 27 Feb. 3 Holley, Santi Elijah, The 75-Year (and Counting) Christian Interracial Farm Experiment, Topic weekly; Accessed February 26, from experiment. 4 Koinonia Farm, Georgia Historical Society, 5 Ibid Holley, KOINONIA FARM HALS NO. GA-8 PAGE 2 Description: Near the small chapel along Georgia Highway 49, eight-and-a-half miles southwest of downtown Americus, Georgia, a plain wooden sign embellished with the name Koinonia Farm, a cross, and an arrow points across the highway to a dirt drive.
The arch over the gate on the dirt drive leading into the farm displays these hand lettered words: To speak of money where the well-being of fellow citizens and matters of the kingdom of God are concerned is blasphemy. 6 Inside the gate the dirt drive leads to a model farm of 400 acres, a scattering of a half-dozen or so small attractive houses, workshops, barns, farm equipment, cultivated fields lined with bee boxes, pecan orchards, pastures, and woodland. All is quiet; the half dozen people working on the farm are inside workshops separating and sorting pecans, mixing chocolate and pecans in the bakery, and preparing packages of these goods to send out by mail order. Whites and blacks work side by side, a testament to Koinonia s 75-year ambition, and evidence of its survival.
History: Established in as a collective, communal, intentional community supporting interracial equity, all the residents of Koinonia Farm lived equally, pooling resources into a common purse, and sharing elements of Christian community values. Koinonia is an intentional community and a pioneer in the property stewardship movement where residents emphasize simple living, racial equality, nonviolent resistance, the sharing of resources, and cooperative work. The name Koinonia is an ancient Greek word from the New Testament meaning deep fellowship. Koinonia Farm (pronounced Coy No Knee Uh) was founded in by Clarence and Florence Jordan and Martin and Mabel England as a demonstration plot for the Kingdom of God.
Unlike earlier communal communities, such as the Mennonites, Shakers, Hutterites, Koinonia Farm was open to all faiths or no faith, to all creeds, classes, and colors. While there were no more than 14 adult members in the mid-20th century, the community attracted local attention and the ire of the neighbors. Nearly 60 years ago, this tiny and tranquil place drew the rage of Sumter County. Residents of the Koinonia community faced economic boycott, persecution, social isolation, and even terrorism.
Clarence Jordan and his wife Florence partnered with Northern Baptist minister Martin England and his wife Mabel to create Koinonia Farm as a site of Christian fellowship and agricultural education, where racial egalitarianism provided an alternative to the culture of Jim Crow that pervaded the South. 6 Cook, Cecil, communication by Messenger, February 26, KOINONIA FARM HALS NO.
GA-8 PAGE 3 Jordan, trained in agriculture at the University of Georgia, and earning a doctorate studying the Greek New Testament at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, and England, trained at Furman University and Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and Crozer Theological Seminary, both believed that poor white and black farmers shared similar problems in supporting their families in the cycle of poverty which kept sharecroppers in perpetual debt, and tied to land that belonged to other men, in what they perceived as the Southern injustice. Koinonia Farm would make land available and teach scientific agriculture to the farmers to foster their self-sufficiency.
Koinonia advocated pacifism and welcomed conscientious objectors as the United States was absorbed by World War II. Black workers were hired and paid the same wage as whites. Black and white workers ate together at the same tables. In members of Koinonia Farm were excommunicated from the Rehoboth Southern Baptist Church for their views on racial equality. Local shopkeepers of the small town of Americus and the surrounding area ceased to buy and carry its farm produce and refused to sell essential supplies to the farm. Farm insurance was cancelled, bank accounts were closed, disrupting the farming enterprise. By the Koinonia farming community had grown to about sixty residents, who lived, ate, and worshipped together.
While many were not full-time residents, almost all were Southern Baptists from areas of the South outside of Georgia, and about one-fourth were primarily local Black people.7 The interracial integration and equality with black people violated custom and flew in the face of Southern racial codes and Jim Crow law, enraging the local white society, who boiling of resentment warned that these actions were disrespectful of the dictates enmeshed in the system of racial separation. Threat and intimidation by white citizens of Sumter County unleashed violence and persecution against the community that stretched through the decade, particularly in the form of social and economic boycott and violence from the Ku Klux Klan.
Children from the farm faced harassment at school and produce once sold by the farm was boycotted in the town. These hateful actions resulted the establishment of a mail-order business to sell the farm produce, which was a profitable venture enabling survival with minimal local interaction. At the height of the civil rights movement bullets were fired into the property at night causing panic and terror, crosses were set aflame in the fields, farm equipment and roadside market stands were destroyed by dynamite. A motorcade carrying members of the Ku Klux Klan arrived at the farm in warning the residents to leave the state.
The Koinonia farm experiment became 7 Chancey, Andrew S., Koinonia Farm, original entry by Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, Last edited by NGE Staff on accessed February 26, KOINONIA FARM HALS NO. GA-8 PAGE 4 dormant, the community was dismantled until two only families remained, leaving the farm struggling for survival. In at the height of the Civil Rights Movement in rural Georgia and at the low point of the Koinonia enterprise, a sympathetic young lawyer, businessman, and self-made millionaire from Alabama named Millard Fuller, and his wife Linda, gave away their wealth and moved with their children to the farm.
Together Fuller and Jordan with their wives set forth a new mission to build housing for the poor, instituting the Fund for Humanity as a low-cost, interest- free building program. Koinonia Partners, Inc. was chartered as a non-profit to receive donations and set aside land for home construction in Sumter County. The landholding was expanded to more than acres, and land adjacent to the center of Koinonia was divided into two neighborhoods where 200 new low- cost houses were eventually constructed. Dozens of people buying houses in these two villages became a part of the Koinonia extended community. During the the number of full members living at Koinonia Farm peaked at thirty-six, plus children and non-resident volunteers. The Koinonia Partners, Inc.
idea of partnership housing that was developed at Koinonia Farm grew to become Habitat for Humanity.8 In with support and backing of Koinonia members, Habitat for Humanity International 9was launched with the vision of a world where everyone has a decent place to live. The community's population had begun to decline in the and by reached its lowest point in two decades. Abandoning its communal practice, Koinonia converted to a not-for-profit service business in A financial setback in left Koinonia one million dollars in debt. Koinonia sold more than half its land, going from acres to Donations poured in, and within a year, Koinonia was back in the black.
The community, again known by its original name, Koinonia Farm, was designated a Georgia Historic Site in for significance in African American History, Agriculture, Civil Rights. The Koinonia Community was awarded the Community of Christ International Peace Award as an exemplary peacemaking signal community. Koinonia Farm has rededicated itself to communal living and to Clarence Jordan s aim to feed the hungry, physically, and spiritually, with its community outreach programs, hospitality services, and natural farming practices, including pesticide- and herbicide-free produce and grass-fed beef. 8 https://www.habitat.org/ 9 Ibid. KOINONIA FARM HALS NO.
GA-8 PAGE 5 The grassroot effort of two preachers-turned-farmers, established Koinonia Farm as a religious mission endeavor to make a demonstration plot for the Kingdom of God for the common good of mankind, produced abundant spiritual, social, and economic fruit that grew into a far-reaching nonprofit working in more than communities across the United States and in more than 70 countries. Koinonia Partners continues in its quest to restructure society to demonstrate that racial unity and justice reigns on earth as in Heaven because there is no room for human separation by skin color in God's Kingdom!10
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