Black Land Ownership: What We Built, What We Lost, What Is Left

Black land ownership is one of the great stories of what we built with nothing, and one of the plainest records of what was taken. The numbers tell it.

The promise and the reversal

In January 1865, General William T. Sherman issued Special Field Order No. 15, setting aside a strip of coast from Charleston to Florida's St. Johns River, roughly 400,000 acres, in forty-acre pieces for newly freed families. It is the likely origin of the phrase "forty acres and a mule." In the fall of 1865, President Andrew Johnson overturned the order and returned most of that land to the planters.

We bought it anyway

Black farmers bought land anyway. The Census of Agriculture recorded at least 12.8 million acres in 1910, up from about 3 million in 1875. Other estimates put it at roughly 16 million acres, mostly in the South. The gap comes from different definitions, missing records and changes in how the count was done. Researchers say Black agricultural land ownership peaked just after the turn of the twentieth century.

The fall

The same study found a nearly 90 percent decline in ownership from 1910 to 1997. Its authors put the present, compounded value of the land lost from 1920 to 1997 at roughly $326 billion.

Two causes are on the record:

• USDA discrimination. In the Pigford case, settled by a consent decree on April 14, 1999, the court found USDA had for decades denied, delayed or frustrated Black farmers' applications for loans and benefits.
• Heirs' property. USDA describes this as family land jointly owned by the descendants of someone who died, with no clear title.

What is left

The latest Census of Agriculture counted 46,738 Black producers on 32,653 farms in 2022.

Those 5.3 million acres are 0.6 percent of U.S. farmland. There are fewer Black farms than in 2017, but the acres went up 14 percent. Black farmers in 2022 were older than farmers overall, 60.8 years against 58.1, so the question of who inherits this land is close at hand.

What to do with this

If your family holds land, find out today whose name is on the deed. USDA says heirs can establish a farm number on inherited land to become eligible for its programs, and its Heirs' Property Relending Program offers loans through lenders to help clear up ownership. If your family holds none, start with our guide on how to buy it.