With support from the Fund, reporters at the Center for Public Integrity produced “40 Acres and a Lie,” a groundbreaking investigation that uncovered hundreds of unpublished land titles issued to freed people after the Civil War. Using image-recognition technology, they identified 1,250 Black people who were granted land by the federal government and conducted genealogical research to locate and interview their living descendants. For the first time, many living Black Americans learned that the government gave land to their ancestors and then returned it to their enslavers. Today, much of that land is expensive coastal real estate in Georgia and South Carolina. Public Integrity partnered with Reveal and Mother Jones to publish the story. The project is an unprecedented and innovative use of Freedmen’s Bureau records – an impossible task for most of American history, until recent advances in genealogical research and the digitization of thousands of pages of Reconstruction-era documents made it feasible. The story was picked up by CNN, PBS NewsHour and 15 public radio shows, including NPR’s Fresh Air, and the story was republished by 10 media outlets, including Essence and the Richmond Free Press.
First-of-its-kind investigation tracks land given to, and then taken from, freed slaves
