On the next Charlotte Talks, we take a deep dive into a recent investigation conducted by the Center for Public Integrity in collaboration with the public radio show Reveal and Mother Jones magazine.
The investigation focuses on how dozens of Black families recently learned that the federal government took the land of 1,250 enslaved people in Georgia and South Carolina right after the Civil War and denied them intergenerational wealth.
Reporters at the Center for Public Integrity made this discovery by analyzing recently digitized records from the Reconstruction-era Freedmen's Bureau, and identified 1,250 formerly enslaved men and women who received land as part of the infamous “40 Acres and a Mule” program — only to then have that land taken back. Some of the land is now located in gated, majority-white communities — and worth as much as $2.5 million.
The discovery is significant because it was largely assumed such lands were only promised to Black people, and yet this two-year investigation demonstrates that was not the case. It’s also the largest collection of land titles from the “40 Acres” program to ever be analyzed and published.
We sit down with two of the reporters who worked on this series, as well as a descendant whose family had been promised land — only to have it taken away.
GUESTS:
Alexia Fernandez Campbell, senior investigative reporter at the Center for Public Integrity in Washington, D.C., where she covers labor and inequality.
April Simpson, senior reporter covering racial equity at the Center for Public Integrity.
Ruth Wilson, North Carolina native and the descendant of formerly enslaved people.
