Photograph by Al J. Thompson for The New YorkerIn the spring of 2011, the brothers Melvin Davis and Licurtis Reels were the talk of Carteret County, on the central coast of North Carolina. Some people said that the brothers were righteous; others thought that they had lost their minds.
Between 1910 and 1997, African-Americans lost about ninety per cent of their farmland. This problem is a major contributor to America’s racial wealth gap; the median wealth among black families is about a tenth that of white families. Now, as reparations have become a subject of national debate, the issue of black land loss is receiving renewed attention.
Land was an ideological priority for black families after the Civil War, when nearly four million people were freed from slavery. On January 12, 1865, just before emancipation, the Union Army general William Tecumseh Sherman met with twenty black ministers in Savannah, Georgia, and asked them what they needed. “The way we can best take care of ourselves is to have land,” their spokesperson, the Reverend Garrison Frazier, told Sherman.
Heirs are rarely aware of the tenuous nature of their ownership. Even when they are, clearing a title is often an unaffordable and complex process, which requires tracking down every living heir, and there are few lawyers who specialize in the field. Nonprofits often pick up the slack.
Gertrude was the administrator of the estate. She’d left school in the eighth grade and wasn’t accustomed to navigating the judicial system, but after Mitchell’s death she secured a court ruling declaring that the land belonged to his heirs. The judgment read, “The surviving eleven children or descendants of children of Mitchell Reels are the owners of the lands exclusive of any other claim of any one.
Wheatly told me a different story. In his memory, the Torrens hearing was chaotic, but the heirs agreed to give Shade, who has since died, the waterfront. When I pressed Wheatly, he conceded that not all the heirs liked the outcome, but he said that Calvin had consented. “I would have been upset if Calvin had not notified them, because I generally don’t get involved in those things without having a family representative in charge,” he told me.
The Reelses knew that if condos or a marina were built on the waterfront the remaining fifty acres of Silver Dollar Road could be taxed not as small homes on swampy fields but as a high-end resort. If they fell behind on the higher taxes, the county could auction off their property. “It would break our family right up,” Melvin told me. “You leave here, you got no more freedom.”
This article was written in 2019.
Stolen generational wealth.
How about the American Indians? How about “ no Irish no Dogs” Signs in Boston. Roughly half of third graders in predominantly Black and Latino schools are 2+ grade levels behind in math and reading —you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink
Do you think a race war will solve this? You and other media keep returning to the past not the future. Right now, blacks have amazing opportunities to succeed. There was a time when Jews couldn’t buy in certain neighborhoods, entire Japanese Americans lost everything during WW2
This is insane, really insane....
Good marks. They have been fantastic businessman.