40 Acres and a Lie

The loss of land for Black Americans started with the government’s betrayal of its 40 acres and a mule promise – and it has continued for decades. 

Today, researchers are unearthing the details of Black land loss long after emancipation, and local governments across the country are finally asking: Can we repair a wealth gap for Black Americans that is rooted in slavery? And how? 

This week on Reveal, we explore the renewed fight for reparations.

Skidaway Island, Georgia, is home today to a luxurious community that the mostly White residents consider paradise: waterfront views, live oaks and marsh grass alongside golf courses, swimming pools and other amenities. 

In 1865, the island was a thriving Black community, started by freedmen who were given land by the government under the 40 acres program. They farmed, created a system of government and turned former cotton plantations into a Black American success story.

But it wouldn’t last. Within two years, the government took that land back from the freedmen and returned it to the former enslavers. 

Today, 40 acres in The Landings development are worth at least $20 million. The history of that land is largely absent from day-to-day life. But over a two-and-a-half-year investigation, journalists at the Center for Public Integrity have unearthed records that prove that dozens of freed people had, and lost, titles to tracts at what’s now The Landings. 

“You could feel chills to know that they had it and then they just pulled the rug from under them, so to speak,” said Linda Brown, one of the few Black residents at The Landings.

This week on Reveal, in partnership with the Center for Public Integrity, we also show a descendant her ancestor’s title for a plot of land that is now becoming another exclusive gated community. And we look at how buried documents like these Reconstruction-era land titles are part of the long game toward reparations.

Our historical investigation found 1,250 formerly enslaved Black Americans who were given land – only to see it returned to their enslavers.

Patricia Bailey’s four-bedroom home sits high among the trees in lush Edisto Island, South Carolina. It’s a peaceful place where her body healed from multiple sclerosis. It’s also the source of her generational wealth.

Bailey built this house on land that was passed down by her great-great-grandfather, Jim Hutchinson, who was enslaved on Edisto before he was freed and became a landowner. 

“I know this is sacred land here,” Bailey says, “’cause it's my ancestors and I feel it.” 

Union General William T. Sherman’s Special Field Orders, No. 15 – better known as 40 acres and a mule – implied a better life in the waning days of the Civil War. Hutchinson is among the formerly enslaved people who received land through the field orders, which are often thought of as a promise that was never kept. But 40 acres and a mule was more than that. 

It was real.

Over a more than two-year investigation, our partners at the Center for Public Integrity have unearthed thousands of records once buried in the National Archives. In them, they found more than 1,200 formerly enslaved people who were given land by the federal government through the field orders – and then saw that land taken away. 

None of the land Bailey lives on today is part of Hutchinson’s 40 acres. Instead, her family’s wealth is built on her ancestor’s determination to get and keep land of his own, after losing what he thought he had gained through the field orders.

This week on Reveal, with our partners at the Center for Public Integrity, we bring you the first in a three-part series in which we tell the history of an often-misunderstood government program. We explore a reparation that wasn’t – and the wealth gap that remains.

Our new three-part series launches June 15th, exploring the legacy of America’s broken promise to formerly enslaved Black people.