Destroying property records let corporations seize land and profit from it for decades

Evidence

In Paulding, Mississippi, on the evening of September 10, 1932, more than a dozen whites set fire to the city courthouse. The property records for half of Jasper County, a predominantly black area, went up in smoke overnight. Once it was no longer clear who owned title to much of the property, Masonite, a company specializing in wood products, swooped in and won legal ownership of more than 9,500 acres of land in the area. The AP pieced together information from the limited property records that survived the fire and “document[ed] that at least 204.5 of those acres had been acquired by Masonite after black owners were driven off by the Klan.” Masonite has since reaped millions of dollars in revenue from the land in the form of natural resources like gas, timber, and oil. — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 318

Categorization

• CANDY: Courthouse arson as a land-grab tactic is a striking, weirdly specific fact — good defense material and an odd conversation piece.
• SEED: The ‘200 years of corporate beneficiaries’ angle — Masonite still earning from gas and timber — is a strong hook for the reparations accounting case.