AFRICAN AMERICANS FREED FROM SLAVERY, ALSO FREE OF LAND AND RIGHTS

Southern Poverty Law Center

This is critical to understanding the legacy of slavery. A must read for‪#‎BlackHistoryMonth‬ from the African American Intellectual History Society: "Thus, by essentially giving away land to white individuals and white-owned businesses, the Homestead Acts were the most extensive, radical, redistributive governmental policy in American history. The number of original (1862) Homestead-recipient descendants living in the year 2000 was estimated to be around forty-six million people, about a quarter of the U.S. adult population. As sociologist Thomas Shapiro pointed out, if so many white Americans can potentially trace their "legacy of property ownership" to these entitlement programs, modern-day issues like "upward mobility, economic stability, class status, and wealth" need to be understood as directly related "to one national policy - a policy that in practice essentially excluded African Americans."

Race, Reconstruction, and Reparations

While African Americans were the only freed slaves to be granted political rights so soon after emancipation, those rights were limited for a people without land, capital, or job prospects.

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