40 Acres and a Lie Trailer
Reveal
The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX
4.7 • 8K Ratings
🗓️ 6 June 2024
⏱️ 2 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Our new three-part series launches June 15th, exploring the legacy of America’s broken promise to formerly enslaved Black people.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | 40 acres and a mule. I've heard that phrase all my life and I really thought I knew the history behind it, but I didn't. |
| 0:11.0 | I knew that after surviving the brutality of slavery, newly freed black people were made a promise, |
| 0:18.0 | a promise of land. |
| 0:20.0 | Black people had a vision that if I can get my toehold in this land, I can take care of myself. |
| 0:27.0 | But what I didn't know is that it was more than that. |
| 0:31.0 | It was a program. It was a program. |
| 0:32.7 | It was rolled out. |
| 0:34.3 | There are documents to show it. |
| 0:36.8 | Land titles, Inc on paper. |
| 0:40.2 | After the Civil War, the federal government actually gave formerly enslaved people land, |
| 0:46.1 | 40 acres, and then took it back. |
| 0:49.3 | Can you imagine? |
| 0:50.7 | Can you imagine? |
| 0:52.1 | I can't. They had it and then they just pulled it the rug from under them so to speak. |
| 0:57.0 | This was a betrayal. |
| 1:00.0 | More than 150 years later, reporters from the Center for Public Integrity uncovered many of those |
| 1:07.8 | land titles, the people who got them and where. |
| 1:11.0 | Samuel Miller, 40 acres on Edisto. |
| 1:13.8 | Fergus Wilson, 40 acres on Sabalo Island. |
| 1:17.0 | Primus Morrison, 40 acres on Edisto. |
| 1:20.1 | Lucy Crosby, Philip Young, Amos Jackson, Cyrus Jenkins. |
| 1:24.0 | So far, we found more than 1,200 people who got land and had it taken away. |
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