Black-owned acreage has fallen by almost half since 1900, partly because whites exploited informal land ownership

A map based on the 1910 census shows farms owned by African Americans; a dot represents 50 farms.
(Image from Ag Census Library at Cornell University; for a larger version or to download, click on it)

Black-owned acreage fell from 15 million acres in 1900 to 8 million acres in 2017. "Black Americans lost land in the 20th century for a variety of reasons, including violence, intimidation, immigration to the North, and discrimination by the USDA. But legal experts also blame vulnerable forms of land ownership, such as heirs’ property," Sarah Melotte reports for The Daily Yonder. 

About one-third of Black-owned land in the South is considered heirs' property, in which each heir owns an interest in the entire property and any one of them can force a sale. It "leaves the heirs more susceptible to losing the land and to not realizing its full economic potential," Melotte reports. "Heirs’ property rights are one way developers walked away with some of the region’s most desirable and profitable land at bargain-basement prices."

Legal snarls from heirs' property still prevent many rural Black landowners from accessing government programs today. "Organizations are trying to fix that problem. The Sustainable Forestry and African American Land Retention Network, for example, supports Black landowners with the goal of keeping land in the family and increasing wealth through forestry. But there are still pressures that threaten land ownership for Black Americans," Melotte reports. "As development sprawls from an urban center, adjacent rural areas face higher demand for housing and other resources."

Black farm owners in the southeastern Black Belt and the Gullah Geechee Corridor from North Carolina to Florida have been particularly vulnerable to the heirs' property problem.