The Nation's Once-Broken Promise Over Land

This southwest Missouri farm near Ash Grove was home in the mid-1800s to Ruben Boon, an enslaved African American who initially worked the land for Nathan Boone, son of the famous Kentucky frontiersman Daniel Boone.

When the Civil War ended, measures enforced by the new Freedmen’s Bureau briefly allowed former slaves like Ruben to petition for Confederates’ abandoned or confiscated farms - in one of America’s first attempts at land redistribution to formerly enslaved people. But it largely failed.

Sean Rost, assistant director for research, The State Historical Society of Missouri: “This effort to enact new laws under Reconstruction begins to lose momentum and go by the wayside by the mid-1870s.”

The United States continues wrestling with how to address historical wrongs in agriculture without creating new inequities. USDA’s 2021 loan forgiveness program for “socially disadvantaged” farmers was stalled after legal complaints of reverse discrimination.

In April 1865, federal officials granted Ruben Boon’s request to farm land owned by Howard Boone, one of Daniel Boone’s grandsons who was considered to be a Confederate sympathizer. In exchange, under the one-year agreement, the federal government would receive one-third of his crop.

Within a month, a different family asked to farm the land but officials denied their request, citing the commitment to Ruben. It was around this time that someone wrote to federal officials to say Ruben was “worthy of protection and some of his white neighbors are trying to drive him off.”

The economic pressure also would have been immense as Ruben Boon tried to run a farm that had previously survived on unpaid labor.

Sean Rost, assistant director for research, The State Historical Society of Missouri: “If you’re a formerly enslaved person and you’ve gained your freedom, your emancipation… you have no tools, you have no animals and you have no seed. So in many cases, you are starting literally from scratch…. You know, you have to rent from people the land, you have to  rent or borrow the tools or pay for them on credit, and you’re already in debt in a lot of ways. And now it becomes an issue to where, you know, so much of your crop has to be given over to pay your debts.”

Facing these pressures, it’s unclear whether Ruben gave up or was not offered an extension. He and his wife eventually moved to St. Louis, where the 1870 Census lists his occupation as “Farmer” – though he was likely a farmer without land.

After Republican President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in April 1865 - just two weeks after Ruben was granted access to the Missouri land - Andrew Johnson, a Democrat, came to power and began to undo Lincoln’s post-emancipation work. He effectively overrode the field order that included the “forty acre” promise that was intended to give land to freed slaves.

Sean Rost, assistant director for research, The State Historical Society of Missouri: “Many former Confederates go to Johnson and kind of lobby for their return to power, the return of their rights. And he relatively quickly grants them those rights….And what you see in some instances, especially in the Carolinas, is formerly enslaved people who worked on these plantations were given land and then, within the span of 18 months, a year and a half, that land is taken back from them and returned back to the original slave owner.”

Similar stories of lost opportunity played out across the country, affecting families for generations.

Annette Holmes, of Antioch, California, wonders how different her life might have been had her family been able to keep their land. One side of her family descends from enslaved African Americans who were initially on a South Carolina cotton plantation, and by 1793, on a rice plantation on Butler Island in coastal Georgia. The rice mill smokestack still stands where her ancestors likely worked.

Annette Holmes, Antioch, California: “And so my family lives there for years until the Weeping Time happened when they were sold.”

The “Weeping Time” refers to an 1859 Savannah auction where more than 400 enslaved people were sold. Holmes’ ancestors were taken to Louisiana.

Annette Holmes, Antioch, California: “When I first saw the list with my great, great grandparents and their children, it was like, wow. Once you have a name and then they have the price next to their name, for like, $510… It’s a different ballgame when you know who it is.”

Holmes’ great grandfather, Jim Butler, later owned land in Louisiana near the Red River, but lost it in a legal battle in 1913. The lawsuit shows Butler sued a man who had offered to help him with a debt through a land lease agreement but that man later claimed it was a purchase.

Annette Holmes, Antioch, California: “My great grandfather… argued that, no, this was my land. And I think what happened -o because according to my grandfather…there was oil on that land  … so they found the oil and so Mr. Marston claimed that he knew nothing about the oil.”

A Louisiana judge sided with Marston. In Holmes’ family lore, it was yet another government disappointment that affected her family.

She lauds USDA, however, for distributing over $2 billion to more than 43,000 Black and other minority farmers in 2024 – the method the federal government has used to address what the agency acknowledged was systemic discrimination in more recent decades.

Annette Holmes, Antioch, California: “There’s a lot of people that, you know, why should we have to pay anything for something that we didn’t do?...You know, the taxpayer has to pay for it. That’s why when the United States government gets it wrong, everyone should jump up and holler because we are going to pay for it down the line in some kind of way… The nation is … a 250-year old body that has to pay for its past injustices and you as a taxpayer are just its purse.”

Holmes didn’t benefit from the USDA payments and isn’t waiting around for help.

Annette Holmes, Antioch, California: “The opportunity missed is the generational wealth piece, right? Land was wealth and it is wealth… That’s why immigration opened up: here, the selling point is we can give you some land. We can give you some land that didn’t really belong to you, you know? It was Native land. And you could come and live out your dream.. And we missed that. And so at this point, what would you give? At this point, self-reparation is the key. How do we repair ourselves? And that’s what I’m looking into now.”

By Colleen Bradford Krantz, colleen.krantz@iowapbs.org