<
https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2022/06/14/1104660659/why-the-racial-wealth-gap-is-so-hard-to-close>
"It's been almost 160 years since Union General William T. Sherman led 60,000
soldiers on his "March to the Sea," a scorched-earth campaign through Georgia
aimed at bringing the American Civil War to a quicker end. Shortly after,
Sherman met with a group of black ministers in Savannah to discuss the future.
With slavery over and the war coming to a close, these community leaders told
Sherman what their newly freed people wanted: land. Land, after all, was then
the most important form of wealth, the key to a more prosperous life.
Four days after the meeting, on January 16, 1865, Sherman issued Special Field
Order No. 15, which confiscated from Confederate landowners about 400,000 acres
along the coast, stretching from Charleston, South Carolina, down to St. John's
River in Florida. The order, which received President Abraham Lincoln's
approval, redistributed that land — in 40 acre parcels — to newly freed slaves.
Later, Sherman ordered that the Union Army lend these new landowners mules to
help them harvest their land. And that's how we got the well-known phrase: "40
acres and a mule."
But, a few months after approving Special Field Order No. 15, Lincoln was
assassinated. And his successor, Andrew Johnson, was a turncoat. He quickly
began reversing pro-Black policies of the Lincoln Administration, including the
policy of redistributing 400,000 acres of Confederate land to freed slaves.
Johnson returned the land to the white Southern planters who originally owned
it, and America's freed slaves were never compensated for centuries of
exploitation and oppression."
Via Frederick Wilson II.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
