Since the turn of the 20th century, Black America has been deeply impacted by a profound economic injustice: the systematic theft of their farmland. Under the infamous “forty acres and a mule” wartime special order by Union General William T. Sherman during the American Civil War, the Federal government granted plots of land no larger than 40 acres (sometimes accompanied by a mule) to freed slave families. This decree was actually the brainchild of a group of 20 Black ministers, leaders of their community, that had met with Sherman. The group’s leader, Garrison Frazier, spoke of the program as the best way for former slaves to become self-sufficient, emphasizing the importance of being able to to buy land and make it their own. Many freed slaves took advantage of Special Field Order No.15 and other mechanisms to acquire farmland in the South, especially in South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, and Florida. By 1910, former slaves and their families owned nearly 15 million acres of the South’s most arable land. 

Yet, this era of land acquisition by Black people was short lived. Unfortunately, this revolutionary program was overturned by President Andrew Johnson, who returned the 400,000 acres to the original owners, those who had just warred against the United States. And in the years following, this systemic land theft only continued: In the years between 1950 and 1969, an average of 820 acres, an area equal to New York’s Central Park, was stolen from Black farmers each day. Today, only two percent of farmers in the United States are Black, and collectively own only one million acres of arable land. Black folks have been robbed of their land in countless ways, all of which stem from processes of systemic racial discrimination. In 1937, New Deal agencies began unlawfully denying loans to Black farmers, who were then forced off their farms to make room for white farmers and mega-agribusiness operations. Furthermore, the land once belonging to Black farmers is not left green and arable after they are forcibly removed. Rather, it becomes further developed and gentrified into ‘destination oases’ like Hilton Head, South Carolina, an area formerly inhabited by the West African Gullah people. Even today, the government pushes for partition sales and foreclosures, both of which include loan denials, discrimination in government programs, and threats or acts of violence. Although some progress is being made to recognize and right such wrongs against Black farmers, government payouts have been far too little and far too late. 40 acres and a mule, that famous promise of fair and equal redistribution of land, remains unfulfilled to this day.

What explains this massive land theft from Black farmers? For one, many Black farmers lacked a strong formal claim to property. Some 81 percent of early 20th century Black landowners did not make wills, due to the lack of legal resources for rural residents, so their children lacked a clear title to the land and it was not designated as “heirs’ property.” Without heirs’ property, owners cannot get mortgages or apply for state or federal housing aid, and are susceptible to partition sales, in which any relative may be swayed by corporations and developers to sell their share of the land. Hilton Head, South Carolina, was once entirely inhabited by the Gullah people, who are descendents from enslaved West Africans and moved to the island after the Civil War, where they lived largely untouched by Jim Crow restrictions. When developers took interest in the island in the 1950s, forced sales or partition sales by partial owners allowed them to take the land for a fraction of its value. The Gullah people once made up 90 percent or more of the population in various parts of the island, but have been reduced to just 10 percent today. Asphalt and luxury condos have taken over arable farmland in Hilton Head and the same is true for much of the South. The Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association (TIAA), the largest pension firm in the US, holds over 80,000 acres in Mississippi alone, with their total holdings nearly equal to the remaining possessions of the Black Americans who have existed in the South for centuries. 

This land takeover occurred alongside the Great Migration to Northern industrial states, in which Mississippi’s Black population decreased by 20 percent from 1950 to 1970 while the white population grew by the same amount. Black farmers from the South became laborers in Northern cities like Chicago or Detroit. When Black folks finally gained voting rights in Mississippi, they had become a minority, small in comparison to the power of white conservatives. Land theft took more than property — Black Southerners were robbed of their political voice. 

Eddie Wise, a Black American whose family has been sharecropping for generations, knows all too well the systemic injustices Black farmers continue to face. He recently told his story on the REVEAL podcast, in an episode aptly titled “Losing ground,” and explained that his ultimate goal in life was to own his own farm, which he achieved for some time in North Carolina. But due to the discriminatory practices of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), he was foreclosed on in 2016. Annual operating loans are essential for most farms to stay up and running, and the USDA had a habit of refusing loans or manipulating terms for Black farmers. Wise describes how when he walked into his local loan office as a Black man, the officer would close the books, deny him an application or fail to help him with the application, or claim there was no money available when he turned in the application. Wise had a hog farm, and his African American loan officer, Carl Bonds, reported twelve hogs. But a white loan officer marked the number at eight, projecting a drastically lower income for the year and violating USDA rules. When Wise was finally foreclosed upon after years of discrimination at the hands of the USDA, Bonds says he should have been offered Homestead Protection — ten acres of land around his home as personal property. Instead, he and his wife were forcibly removed from the property. 

Today there is progress being made for Black farmers in the American government. In 2020, US Senators Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand, and Elizabeth Warren introduced the Justice for Black Farmers Act, which would provide training for aspiring Black farmers, reform the civil rights process of the USDA, support historically Black colleges and universities, and provide land to be agriculturally conserved and owned by Black farmers. Additionally, President Biden’s American Rescue Plan will provide about $5 billion dollars to disadvantaged farmers. However, reparations experts estimate that the value of the land and wealth opportunities lost by Black people is between $250 and $350 billion, putting government funds into perspective. 

Because Black farmers have lost billions of dollars in profits from land losses, this unjust theft has become a core driver of poverty and continued socioeconomic suppression of Black America. As noted in the Justice for Black Farmers Act, the creation of Black communal spaces may be a way of returning some of the wealth and cultural connection to land that has been stolen repeatedly for generations. The history of land theft from Black farmers is an endless, brutal cycle — but initiatives by community organizations and government powers offer the beginning of the end for the deep-rooted wrongdoing the US inflicted on its own laborers.