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Today, Skidaway Island, Georgia, is home to a luxurious community that the residents, mostly White, consider paradise: waterfront views, live oaks and marsh grass alongside golf courts, swimming pools and other amenities.
In 1865, the island was a thriving Black community, started by freedmen who were given land by the government under the 40 acres and a mule program. They farmed, created a system of government and turned former cotton plantations into a Black American success story.
But it wouldn’t last. Within two years, the federal government took that land back from the freedmen and returned it to the former enslavers. Today, 40 acres in The Landings development is worth about $2 million.
The history of that land is largely absent from day-to-day life. But over a two-and-a-half-year investigation, journalists at the Center for Public Integrity have unearthed records that prove that dozens of freed people had, and lost, titles to tracts at what’s now The Landings.
This week on Reveal, in partnership with the Center for Public Integrity, we show a descendant her ancestor’s land titles in what would become an exclusive gated community – land he received and had taken away. We also look at how buried documents like these Reconstruction-era land titles are part of the long game toward reparations.
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