Upon the removal of Confederate statues in his city, New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu observed, “The wounds of the Civil War are still raw because they never healed right in the first place.” The myth of white supremacy, as told through the framers of the Confederacy, pitted poor white farmers and oppressed African people against one another. It was a vision of a greed-driven empire that was never properly dismantled in the US and it expanded to plantations of Central America and exists in factory farms and prisons in the south. Since farming has historically been forced upon people of color in North America, what can be learned from those people of color who choose to work and live close to the land and in close proximity to people who have historically oppressed them? Could stories of African-American, white, and immigrant people living close to the land and one another in small corners of the rural south be a model for the transformation of our racially, economically, and politically polarized nation? Starting with my own personal narrative I wish to explore overlapping stories of memory, violence and grace in the southern landscape and look for signs of resurrection and hope.