Freed people’s central demand was land confiscated from rebel enslavers

Evidence

Millions of Black people, liberated with not a cent to their names, desperately wanted property so they could work, support themselves, and be left alone. They understood that land in this country has always meant wealth and, more important, independence. Black people implored federal officials to grant the land confiscated from enslavers who had taken up arms against their own country to those who had worked it for generations. They were asking, as the historian Robin D. G. Kelley puts it, to “inherit the earth they had turned into wealth for idle white people.” — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 1337

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Directly relevant to the reader’s ‘On Sacrifice’ and ‘Grafting’ pieces — the freedpeople’s demand for land as independence echoes the infrastructure-as-worldbuilding theme.