Almost every one of the African American youth hanging jobless on our streetcorners today had forebears who were promised 40 acres and a mule. What happened? Without the capital to buy a plow for that mule that 40 acres produced no cash crops. The New Deal programs never seemed to make it down to the end of the road where the black farmers lived. And when a farmer needed 400 acres instead of 40 to survive and $100,000 tractor to till all that, the fed's farm loans couldn't find the black farmers either. So over a century after slavery officially ceased there are so few black farmers left it's hard to even count them. In cities like Minneapolis the children of the children of black farmers stand on the streetcorners, the union jobs gone and rent a struggle to hustle for, never mind a down payment.
Less than two centuries ago there was an Indian settlement on some of Minneapolis' priciest real estate on the eastern side of Lake Calhoun. On the western side of the Missouri River in the Dakotahs it's hard to tell where the BLM land ends and the Rez begins- it's all grassland barely able to survive very occassional grazing. Out in the middle of this nowhere stands a town two blocks long, it's streets lined with old mobile homes. The one business in town is a steel shed with bars over the windows that looks like the c-store from hell and probably is. All the faces hanging out in front of the store are Indian. The BLM lands reentered the public domain when the homesteaders fled back to jobs in the cities to the east, while the residents of the Rez were forced there from the east.
The U.S. Army gave my greatgreatgrandfather William a gravestone in Memphis National Cemetary and eventually coughed up a widow's pension for my greatgreatgrandmother Sophrona. But by then the family farm in what is now a pricy suburb in Milwaukee was lost. Like about 90% of the casualties in the 28th Wisconsin Infantry in the Civil War he died of disease rather than combat, succumbing to typhoid fever in the swamps near Memphis. One of his first duties was putting down a draft riot in Wisconsin, and if William had been on the other side of that draft resistance instead of volunteering for military service our family would be wealthy landlords today.
About that same time the federal government passed the Homestead Act, giving any adult 160 acres provided they would live there 5 years and cultivate something. Our federal government was more benevolent to the railroads, giving them wide swaths of land for laying tracks they were going to lay anyway. And showing even more benevolence to the railroads, they didn't bother to regulate them until decades later. I've visited several of these homesteads my family attempted to establish in the Dakotahs, not one was on a paved road and some are not even reachable by road. All are miles from the tiniest of towns and the railroad that charged as much as they pleased to bring whatever you needed in and ship your crops out. At least a half dozen of my forebears homesteaded in the Dakotahs and none of their children remain on the land. In fact, at least half of their homesteads have returned to public ownership.
From the false promise of homesteading on the Buffalo Commons of the Dakotahs my family fled to the jobs in Minneapolis. My mom's family lovingly remodeled a home in Camden then sold it as Grandma Shaub turned 90 and the crime moved closer. She bought one of those senior sham co-op apartments that our city is promoting along with condos as "home ownership" for the masses. Today mom has inherited that "co-op" apartment and with the management company jacking monthly fees over $400 she is abandoning it. So much for the fantasy of home ownership our city is promoting in condo's and co-ops. My brother and his family found a 50 year old home in the 'burbs for less than a 100 year old one in the 'hood here and hope to have it paid for by the time they retire.
Which leaves me with the little house in Hawthorne that we've owned free and clear since grandma bought it on a CD over half a century ago. We're it not for grandma's gift I'd be commuting in 50 miles from a double wide somewhere. I'd love to remodel it and make room for mom and whoever else in the family needs a home, but the assessed valuation is still under $50,000... And with the greedy Republicans I'd best keep it that way, lest I lose it to the taxman before I can pass it on to my nephews and nieces. And don't even talk to me about those $150,000 "low income" condos the city wants to divert NRP funds to instead of fix-up loans to keep us in the homes we really own.
hanging on to the land in Hawthorne (though I may have to move to the Dakotahs or Canada),
Dyna Sluyter
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