The most experienced farmers were the least eligible for land grants

Evidence

Against this backdrop of federal largesse for the benefit of white people and to the detriment of Tribal Nations, black freedmen, who started with nothing and had to buy land without a helping hand, were generally forced to struggle in ways their white peers did not. Which seems more than a little unfair, if for no other reason than the fact that freedmen had significantly more experience farming. Many had spent their entire previous lives as enslaved people tilling the land of white folks, growing crops and reaping harvests without compensation. Who was more qualified to farm than those who had formerly done the farming? — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 334

Categorization

• CANDY: The rhetorical irony — freedmen as the most experienced farmers who were excluded — is a concise, quotable point.