Zone1 Not '40 acres and a mule', but much better. The Homestead Act of 1862.

MarathonMike

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Dec 30, 2014
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The Southwestern Desert
Thanks to the Homestead Act of 1862 and subsequent land grant and favorable loan programs, Freed Black slaves acquired MILLIONS OF ACRES of land. By 1900 over 15 million acres of land was owned by freed Black Slaves. Sadly over the next few decades that ownership dwindled by over 90 percent due to a variety of factors. So yes it is true that the so-named 40 acres and Mule never materialized but clearly the US Government bent over backwards to help the freed slaves and their kin be independent and successful.

 
Thanks to the Homestead Act of 1862 and subsequent land grant and favorable loan programs, Freed Black slaves acquired MILLIONS OF ACRES of land. By 1900 over 15 million acres of land was owned by freed Black Slaves. Sadly over the next few decades that ownership dwindled by over 90 percent due to a variety of factors. So yes it is true that the so-named 40 acres and Mule never materialized but clearly the US Government bent over backwards to help the freed slaves and their kin be independent and successful.

Yeah, it didnt help that the "losers" of the 1st Civil War, went on to be such cry babies, that they burned black businesses, homes, murdered blacks and white Republicans also. Nothing has changed with the Democrat Party even today.
 
Thanks to the Homestead Act of 1862 and subsequent land grant and favorable loan programs, Freed Black slaves acquired MILLIONS OF ACRES of land. By 1900 over 15 million acres of land was owned by freed Black Slaves. Sadly over the next few decades that ownership dwindled by over 90 percent due to a variety of factors. So yes it is true that the so-named 40 acres and Mule never materialized but clearly the US Government bent over backwards to help the freed slaves and their kin be independent and successful.


IM2 said the government never helped blacks.

Was he lying, or just stupid?
 
LOL. This stupid white boy forever tries this shit.

Tthe Homestead Acts gave away 246 million acres of land. To qualify for Homestead land, a person had to be a citizen of the United States, and blacks were not given citizenship until 1866. Research shows that 99.73 percent of that land went to whites, including white immigrants. 1.5 million white families were given free land, the equivalent of a minimum of $500,000 per family. Today 93 million whites still benefit from the Homestead Act,

Shawn D Rochester, The Black Tax: The Cost of Being Black in America, pp, 49, Good Steward Publishing, Southbury CT., 2018

"As early as 1865, certain white Southerners put legal obstacles in place to prevent ex-slaves from acquiring property. In the provisional state governments under President Johnson’s protective leniency, planters not only prohibited black landownership but enacted extreme measures of social control that virtually restored slavery. The black codes struck directly at freedmen striving to escape their subordination and to obtain their communities. It was class and race legislation."
“During a period where many citizens were given public land by the government, Blacks who wanted to be small farm owners had to pay for their land and struggle against obstacles that most of their White counterparts did not.”


Williams, T. (2000). The Homestead Act: A major asset-building policy in American history (CSD Working Paper No. 00-9). St. Louis, MO: Washington University, Center for Social Development. Pg.11

Mike, if we got the same thngs whites have been given, we would not be asking for things now. Learn this before the next time you embarass yourself boy.
 

Those blacks in Africa didnt enslave themselves to be marched to the Ivory Coast where the Muslims bought and transported them to the Americas.



Learn What Role Islam Played in Slavery in Africa
Black African captives were transported to the Islamic empire across the Sahara to Morocco and Tunisia from West Africa, from Chad to Libya, along the Nile from East Africa, and up the coast of East Africa to the Persian Gulf. This trade had been well entrenched for over 600 years before Europeans arrived, and had driven the rapid expansion of Islam across North Africa.
And guys like Karem Abdul Jabar and Mohammad Ali, took up Muslim names. I guess they loved slavery?
 
There's a case to be made that "Blacks" got their "reparations" paid in blood during the years of 1861-1865 on the battlefields of Bull Run, Gettysburg, Shiloh, Antietam, and scores of other battlegrounds which ended slavery in the USA via the War Between the States with a Union victory over the Confederacy.

Possibly a mixed blessing since many went from having food, shelter, clothing, etc. provided in exchange for work; to having to fend for themselves to acquire the basics of living~surviving. FWIW, there wasn't any real "social safety net" for anyone of any race or ethnic back then.

Claims for "reparations" for how ever reason after 1865 will require some forms of proof of the disenfranchisement as well as proof, DNA ancestry?, that one is descended from former slaves and not from Freed Blacks prior to the WBS/Civil War.

Also, the issue of reparations might need to be expanded to other/all races and ethnics as well since at various times and places some could claim similar post 1865 disenfranchisement.

Japanese-Americans living on the West Coast USA in 1942, and their descendants, might have the most valid claim for reparations since so many lost their personal belongings, homes, and businesses when gathered and sent to internment camps during World War Two.

And there remains an issue of how much do "sons inherit the sins of their fathers (or grandfathers)" ???
Are those of Irish and Italian ancestry also owed "reparations" for the discrimination's and/or disenfranchisement's their fore-bearers experienced when immigrant to this nation?

Meanwhile, a couple of articles to consider;

American Descendants of Slavery - Wikipedia

American slavery: Separating fact from myth - The Conversation

 
FYI
Homestead Act

Facts, information and articles about Homestead Act, an event of Westward Expansion from the Wild West

Homestead Act summary: The Homestead Act was a U.S. law that enabled adult Americans to acquire ownership of land in the United States at the minimum cost. The first Homestead Act was passed on May 20, 1862 for the purposes of accelerating the settlement of the western territories. It was signed into law by the President Abraham Lincoln. Anyone older than 21 was eligible provided they never took up arms against the US government. This included women and liberated slaves as well.

The homestead laws were proposed several times before the Civil War, but the southern states always voted against them because the homestead principle was related to the Northern policy of “Free Soil” that enabled people to claim and farm their own land. The rich southern slave owners saw this concept as a threat because they feared that the political influence of the free states will be increased in the west. That’s why the first Homestead Act was passed during the Civil War in 1862, when there was no opposition from the South.

By this Act, any adult citizen who never went to war against US government could claim 160 acres of federal land. There were also some conditions that had to be fulfilled: the claimants had the obligation to build a house on the lot they acquired and they had to farm the land. Their task was to improve the land they got. They had to spend 5 years on that land in order to become owners and they only needed to pay a small fee.
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Homestead Act: 1862 Date & Definition | HISTORY

The Homestead Act of 1862 | National Archives

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Kansas: The Land of Promise for African Americans​

In the Reconstruction South during the 1870s, volatile racism pushed former black slaves to seek refuge in the Midwest. Many took advantage of the Homestead Act as an opportunity to manage their own households through subsistence farming while forging new lives in the Midwest. The Homestead Act did not ask for an applicant’s race (it was assumed, at the time, applicants would all be white), so in order for historians to find African American homesteading family records in the National Archives, they must triangulate them with other sources.
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Kansas was the ultimate destination for many African Americans because, as Emile Pitre of the University of Washington states below, Kansas was a place “where the abolitionist tradition seemed to loom large” (31:45). Its history before and during the Civil War had turned the state into a symbol of freedom and justice for many southern blacks. John Brown, a radical abolitionist who led several armed insurrections against slave owners in Kansas in the 1850s symbolized freedom in Kansas. Although Brown was ultimately arrested and hanged, news of his exploits put Kansas at the center of the slavery debate. Kansas was also the first Northern state to allow African Americans to join the Union army in the Civil war, and one of the first to show public support for the Emancipation Proclamation and the slavery-abolishing Thirteenth Amendment.
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