40 Acres and a Lie Part 3

02/22/25 • 51 min

2 Listeners

The loss of land for Black Americans started with the government’s betrayal of its “40 acres” promise to formerly enslaved people—and it has continued over decades.

Today, researchers are unearthing the details of Black land loss long after emancipation.

“They lost land due to racial intimidation, where they were forced off their land (to) take flight in the middle of the night and resettle someplace else,” said Karcheik Sims-Alvarado, an assistant professor of Africana studies at Morehouse College. “They lost it through overtaxation. They lost it through eminent domain...There's all these different ways that African Americans acquired and lost land.”

It’s an examination of American history happening at the state, city, even county level as local government task forces are on truth-finding missions. Across the country, government officials ask: Can we repair a wealth gap for Black Americans that is rooted in slavery? And how?

This week on Reveal, in honor of Black History Month, we explore the long-delayed fight for reparations.

This is an update of an episode that originally aired in June 2024.

Support Reveal’s journalism at Revealnews.org/donatenow
Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes at Revealnews.org/newsletter

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The loss of land for Black Americans started with the government’s betrayal of its “40 acres” promise to formerly enslaved people—and it has continued over decades.

Today, researchers are unearthing the details of Black land loss long after emancipation.

This week on Reveal, in honor of Black History Month, we explore the long-delayed fight for reparations.

This is an update of an episode that originally aired in June 2024.

Support Reveal’s journalism at Revealnews.org/donatenow
Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes at Revealnews.org/newsletter

Connect with us onBluesky, Facebook and Instagram

Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Previous Episode

40 Acres and a Lie Part 2

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 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, with the Center for Public Integrity and in honor of Black History Month, 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.

This is an update of an episode that originally aired in June 2024.

Support Reveal’s journalism at Revealnews.org/donatenow
Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes at Revealnews.org/newsletter
Connect with us onBluesky, Facebook and Instagram

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Next Episode

More To The Story with Al Letson

From the unflinching investigative team behind Reveal comes a new weekly podcast that delivers More To The Story. Every Wednesday, Peabody Award-winning journalist Al Letson sits down with the people at the heart of our changing world for candid—sometimes uncomfortable—conversations that make you rethink your entire newsfeed. Whether he's sounding the alarm about the future of democracy, grappling with the shifting dynamics of political power, or debating big cultural moments, Al always brings his unfiltered curiosity to topics and perspectives that go too often ignored. Because, as Al reminds us every week on Reveal, when you take the time to listen, there’s always More To The Story. Find it in your Reveal feed beginning March 5, 2025.