LEARNING TOGETHER: The Story of America
We’ve all heard the phrase, “Forty Acres and a Mule”. A promise made by the United States government that land seized from those who tried unsuccessfully to overthrow our country would be redistributed to ex-slaves as a sort of back pay for years of enslavement. Unfortunately, like so many promises to former slaves and their children this was just another promise that our government did not keep.
When Union General William T. Sherman met with Negro leaders and church officials, they told him that the best way to help newly freed slaves was to give them land. So, on January 16, 1865, Special Field Order No. 15 was issued.
Some 400,000 acres of abandoned and confiscated land, farms, and plantations from the Atlantic coast (South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida) was designated for ex-slaves. It was the responsibility of the Freedmen’s Bureau (which was created for the purpose of assisting freed slaves) to divide the land into twenty-acre plots, which was later extended to forty acres for each former slave family. Within a few months, over 40,000 emancipated slaves lived and farmed on this land. Later, U.S. Army mules were given to some families.
With freedom and land, these new American citizens believed that our government had their backs. Boy, were they wrong. The United States government viewed this land as a temporary home for its new citizens. This was information that our government neglected to share with these new landowners.
After the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, the newly appointed president, Andrew Johnson, just happened to be a Southern sympathizer. President Johnson immediately seized this land from former slaves. The only thing that former slave owners aka insurrectionists had to do was promise not to try to take over the government again and just like that they got their land back. Basically, this was a slap on the wrist for trying to overthrow the government, sounds familiar.
A few ex-slaves fought back and managed to hold onto their land. But unfortunately, for most freed Blacks they were left homeless. Desperate to survive, former slaves were forced into a racist system called sharecropping, which was little more than another form of slavery. It became a weapon to keep Black farmers, Black families in debt, poverty and dependent on the very people who had enslaved them in the first place.
One must wonder, had our government kept its promise of forty acres and a mule, how this would have benefited the lives of former slaves and the generations that followed. Had our government protected its people during Reconstruction (the era immediately after slavery ended), Jim Crow, lynchings, voter suppression (this one’s making a comeback), intimidation, beatings, segregation, etc. what a different country this would be for today’s African Americans.
Generations continue to struggle to obtain wealth, power, education, housing, land, etc. all because our government, the most powerful government in the world, can’t or won’t keep its promises and won’t enforce the laws to protect all its citizens from those who seek to undermine the very foundation of what this country is supposed to stand for. Freedom and equality for all its citizens.
So here we are today, still waiting for our forty acres and a mule.
OUR HISTORY MATTERS
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