How African American Land Was Stolen in the 20th Century

At the time of Emancipation, Union General William Tecumseh Sherman declared that 400,000 acres formerly held by Confederates be given to African Americans. His order came to be known as the promise of “40 acres and a mule”. But the newly established Freedmen’s Bureau was never able to control enough land to fulfill this promise. In 1866, Congress passed the Southern Homestead Act, opening up 46 million acres of public land in southern states for Union supporters and freed slaves. The land was uncultivated forest and swamp, difficult for penniless former slaves to acquire or use. Southern bureaucrats made it difficult for blacks to access any land and southern whites used violence to prevent blacks from occupying land. Within 6 months, the land was opened to former rebels. In 1876, the law was repealed.
 
The much more extensive Homestead Act of 1862 granted 160 acres of government land in the West to any American who applied and worked the land for 5 years. Over the course of the next 60 years, 246 million acres of western land, the area of California plus Texas, was given to individuals for free. About 1.5 million families were given a crucial economic foundation. Only about 5000 African Americans benefitted.
 
Despite obstacles, many black families had acquired farmland by World War I. There were nearly 1 million black farms in 1920, about one-seventh of all American farms, mostly in the South. During the 20th century, nearly all of this land was taken or destroyed by whites. Sometimes this happened by violent mob action, as in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1921, or the lesser known pogrom in Pierce City, Missouri, in 1901, when the entire black community of 300 was driven from town. A map shows many of the hundreds of these incidents of white collective violence, concentrated in the South. Many of the thousands of lynchings were directed at black farmers in order to terrorize all blacks and make them leave.
 
Other methods had a more legal appearance. Over 75 years, the black community of Harris Neck, Georgia, developed a thriving economy from fishing, hunting and gathering oysters, on land deeded to a former slave by a plantation owner in 1865. In 1942, the federal government took gave residents two weeks notice to leave, their houses were destroyed, and an Air Force base was created. That site was chosen by the local white politicians. Black families were paid two-thirds of what white families got per acre.