Super Bowl LIX is finally behind us, and just like many Americans hoped, Kendrick Lamar‘s performance was one for the books. The performance split Americans down the middle, with music lovers, Trump detractors, and anyone following the Lamar/Drake feud loudly cheering while Trump fans and the “I’m not racist but…” crowd watched in furious silence.
Lamar has always been as serious a performer as he is a wordsmith, making it no surprise that several of his poignant phrases have taken off online in the wake of his stunning performance. Of course, not everyone is as excited by his history-laced musical set. “40 acres and a mule” might not mean much to some American students of history, but the phrase is as deeply entrenched in Black American culture as the 3/5th compromise.
40 acres and a mule, explained
If there is one thing we can universally agree on as human beings, it’s that people who go back on their word are the worst. When deals are reneged upon, it leaves a bad taste in the slighted party’s mouth and makes it almost impossible to trust going forward. The U.S. government’s penchant for screwing over little guys has left a literal Trail of Tears in its wake, and has crippled race relations between Black and white Americans for centuries.
Depending on who you ask, the American Civil War’s root cause is very different. White Southerners from poor families argue that it was because the North was bleeding farmers dry, most Northerners and Black Americans will say the root cause was slavery. Regardless of which camp you come from, it’s hard to argue that Black Americans weren’t at the heart of the struggle.
The idea to redistribute Southern Plantation land during the Civil War came from southern abolitionists Charles Sumner and Thaddeus Stevens, who argued that taking the land would break slaveholders’ power. The idea to give the land to former slaves came from General Sherman T. Williams, alongside Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, in January of 1865. They prescribed the idea of restitution after meeting with Black ministers, freeborn and former slaves alike, in Savannah, Georgia.
40 acres, Williams declared, would go to any former slave willing to take up arms against the South, and the land would come from 400,000 acres of land along the coastline, captured from wealthy plantation owners. From the spoils, “The islands from Charleston, south, the abandoned rice fields along the rivers for thirty miles back from the sea, and the country bordering the St. Johns River, Florida” would be “reserved and set apart for the settlement of the negroes.”
Families were to get 40 acres apiece to work, and until the communities were strong enough, the U.S. military would protect them. No white man, outside of military personnel, was to be allowed to settle in the area, which would be “governed entirely by Black people themselves.”
Baptist minister Garrison Frazier, a 67-year-old former slave, told Sherman that what freed Blacks wanted most was land. “The way we can best take care of ourselves,” he said, “is to have land and turn it and till it by our own labor.” With land, they could feed themselves, earn a living, and potentially pass wealth down to their children. They wanted to live away from whites simply because, “There is a prejudice against us in the South that will take years to get over,” the reverend said.
The response to Sherman’s decree was electric. Blacks flocked to “Sherman’s land.” Six months after his announcement, more than 40,000 freedmen lived in self-governing communities — a transition made easier after Sherman ordered that the army could lend new settlers mules. They developed the Freedman’s Bureau, which helped develop contact between freedmen and potential employers, established schools, and managed the confiscated lands.
Despite the support from the Northerners and the influx of Black settlers, Sherman’s land was short-lived. By December of 1865, Andrew Johnson, Lincoln’s successor, overturned the order. He returned the land to the very same white southerners who had declared war on the United States. Freedmen were employed by the same plantation owners who had bought and sold them, and the Freedmen’s Bureau turned into little more than armed thugs to enforce the plantation wage system — a new system to keep Black Americans under white plantation owners’ thumbs.
Published: Feb 10, 2025 04:06 pm