OKLAHOMA VOICE: Black farmers face specific, outsized challenges in rural mental health crisis

TATUMS — Oklahoma State Highway 7 runs by the Mary T. Tatums Municipal Building in one of Oklahoma’s historic All-Black towns, Tatums.Bonnie Hooks sits with her neighbors at one of the round tables inside the building. Like her grandmother, Hooks is a farmer in Tatums, where she raises pigs.“I have grand babies,” Hooks said. “When they come, they like to pick the pigs up and bottle-feed them.”Between 1865 and 1920, Black people founded and governed over 50 All-Black towns in the state. Only 13 remain today. Hooks and others at the table grew up helping with their family’s farm.“I’m just a straight-up country girl, and I love the country and the hogs,” Hooks said.Hooks said she could see her parents deal with stress, but it was never their main focus.“I would just say even though, you know, the struggles that they went through and now have passed on down to us— it’s a mental state, but at the same time you don’t block it out,” Hooks said. “It’s reality, it’s in front of you.”Farming is a demanding job saddled with stressors like increasingly unpredictable weather, rising input costs and changing commodity prices. On top of those issues, producers of color...