Reneged land promises forced freed people into exploitative sharecropping contracts

Evidence

The newly freed were vulnerable to financial exploitation when the federal government reneged on the promise of Field Order No. 15. As Reverend Frazier noted, the best way for black people to take care of themselves was “to have land, and turn it and till it by our labor…and we can soon maintain ourselves and have something to spare.” They received no land in the end. Even those who were initially awarded land saw it taken from them and given back to their former white enslavers. They were left with the choice of starving or accepting onerous, exploitative sharecropping contracts that required them to work for their former enslavers without the bargaining power to negotiate a fair price for their labor. — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 587

Categorization

• SHARE: The ‘forty acres’ broken promise detail is a strong specific point for someone building the reparations historical record.