Factors Associated with Black-Owned Landloss

Black-American culture has been tied to the land and agriculture for over 300 years. Research conducted in the Black Belt Region of Alabama is used to examine the importance of land, particularly the multigenerational ownership of land, on current farm participation and landholdings.

Hilton Head is one of several formerly Black-owned islands, whose transformation came at a heavy, painful cost for decades—all thanks to a shady legal practice that has robbed millions of acres from Black Americans in multiple Southern states over the past century.

As reparations have become a subject of national debate, the issue of black land loss is receiving renewed attention. A group of economists and statisticians recently calculated that, since 1910, black families have been stripped of hundreds of billions of dollars because of lost land.

An expanded concept of the “black commons” – based on shared economic, cultural and digital resources as well as land – could be a part of undoing the racist legacy of chattel slavery by encouraging economic development and creating communal wealth.

For almost a century, the number of Black farmers and Black-owned land steadily declined. One of the primary reasons for that decline was and continues to be heirs’ property. More than 60 percent of Black farmers currently operate on heirs’ property.

The story of substantial black land acquisitions prior to World War I and of steady land losses after the war needs to receive more attention in the pages of black history.

The primary goal of this study was to better describe the impact of heirs' property on Black farm and land loss and recommend policies that could decelerate that loss and improve access to USDA programs for heirs' property owners.

An open letter of resignation written by Ruth Tyson to the environmental nonprofit Union of Concerned Scientists. The 17-page letter presents a honest and unflinching look at the "stressful and traumatic" organizational culture at UGS from the perspective of a Black woman.

Over the course of the 20th century, black Americans have lost approximately 12 million acres of land. This mass land dispossession—a war waged by deed of title, which has affected 98 percent of black farmers—can only be called theft, says Atlantic writer Vann R. Newkirk II.

The Black Family Land Trust provides resources to African-Americans and other historically underserved landowners to protect and preserve their land.