40 ACRES AND A MULE - THE STATE OF BLACK AMERICA (SOBA)

40 Acres and a mule – that was the promise of reparation for the atrocity called “slavery” which black America endured.

40 Acres and a Mule

“Forty acres and a mule" refers to a concept in the United States for agrarian reform for former enslaved African American farmers, following disruptions to the institution of slavery provoked by the American Civil War. Many freedmen believed they had a moral right to own the land they had long worked as slaves, and were eager to control their own property. Freed people widely expected to legally claim 40 acres (16 ha) of land (a quarter-quarter section) and a mule after the end of the war, long after proclamations such as Sherman's Special Field Orders, No. 15 and the Freedmen's Bureau Act were explicitly reversed.(Lincoln was assassinated and Andrew Johnson revoked Sherman’s order.

Some land redistribution occurred under military jurisdiction during the war and for a brief period thereafter. But, Federal and state policy during the Reconstruction era emphasized wage labor, not land ownership, for African Americans. Almost all land allocated during the war was restored to its antebellum owners. Several African American communities did maintain control of their land, and some families obtained new land by homesteading.. Most blacks acquired land through private transactions, with ownership peaking at 15,000,000 acres (6,100,000 ha) in 1910, before an extended financial recession caused problems that resulted in the loss of their property for many”. -Wikipedia

Have we truly overcome? We have gone from slave shanties to tenement houses; from tenement houses to low-income housing and finally from low-income housing to home ownership. Although we are still a freed people in the natural, the Federal and State policy during the Reconstruction era which emphasized “wage labor” over “land ownership” has passed from generation to generation. With the wage labor mentality, our people have become a nation of consumers and not producers. The economy of the nation depends largely on production and consumption. We, as a people, are largely on the “consumer” end of the deal. In fact, just as the nation was built on the backs of slave labor, our economy is now braced on the shoulders of consumerism. Instead of investing our wages in assets like homes and businesses, we fill our lives with the task of acquiring things that once purchased tend to decrease in value. It’s tax return season. Stores are gearing up to receive all your hard-earned increase and leave you no better off than you were.

There are some black owned businesses and even enterprises but not nearly enough of them. In order to leave a legacy to the next generation, more of us must become producers and asset owners. We must teach our children to become producers and not just work for a wage labor and then hand it over to the producers of this world. We must teach them the tenets of investing, trading, giving and receiving. We must teach them to become land owners because it is the one asset that no one is making more of. Teach them to become landlords instead of tenants. If we must celebrate Black History, let us celebrate our history on Black Wall Street in Greenwood, OK. Let us celebrate more than just our downtrodden slavery history. We are a nation of people that endured the worst the nation could offer and still rose to economic power. It is time now for history to repeat itself, in a positive way. - Apostle Ej, your marketplace Apostle