After the Civil War, the federal government's pledge of 40 acres and a mule to the formerly enslaved

has long been known as a broken promise.

But a new investigative report reveals that not only did the government grant land to

hundreds of formerly enslaved people it also took that land back and returned it

to white southerners that two-year reporting project done by the Center for Public Integrity,

Reveal, and Mother Jones is now the largest collection of land titles from the

40 acres program ever to be analyzed and published. I spoke recently with Alexia

Fernandez Campbell, a senior investigative reporter at the Center for Public

Integrity. Alexia, welcome. Thanks so much for being here. I'm so happy to be here. So take me back to the fall of 2021. You were working on an entirely different project.

I'm related to this. You're digging through the digital archives at the Smithsonian and you come

across the name Fergus Wilson on an 1865 document. How does that change the

course of your reporting? I didn't immediately realize what I was looking at.

I did some googly, I'm like, this is the 40 acres program.

And I was thinking, but everything I knew about it was that it was a promise that was never kept,

it's something that didn't happen.

So to me, like that disconnect were like, oh, there are land titles.

I don't think this is common knowledge.

So a lot of folks have heard this phrase, right?

40 acres and a mule, as you say, a lot of people thought heard this phrase, right, 40 acres and a mule.

As you say, a lot of people thought, okay, this just never happened, and your reporting is called

40 acres and a lie.

What's the truth behind this program?

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