Election-day violence forced Black landowners to sell land worth millions for pennies

Evidence

Similarly, an attack on Election Day 1920 sent the black community of Ocoee, Florida, packing. A group of white Americans “went hunting for a black man who had dared approach the ballot box in the 1920 presidential election.” Their attack on him resulted “in the single bloodiest day in American political history.” Eighteen black families owned property in the town, making up 330 acres and forty-eight city lots. They had no choice but to sell their land, whether the amount offered was fair or not. Valentine Hightower, for instance, sold his fifty-two acres for a piddling 10 in 1926. In 2001 the land ceded by those eighteen families was worth more than 4.2 million. And that figure doesn’t take into consideration that property assessments are typically lower than market value or that they include buildings that were later erected on the property. — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 316

Categorization

• SEED: The quantified gap — 330 acres sold under duress, worth $4.2M by 2001 — is a ready-made stat for any reparations argument.