Skidaway Island, Georgia, is home today to a luxurious community that the mostly White residents consider paradise: waterfront views, live oaks and marsh grass alongside golf courses, 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 program. They farmed, created a system of government, and turned former cotton plantations into a Black American success story.
But it wouldn’t last.
This week on Reveal, with the Center for Public Integrity and in honor of Black History Month, we show a descendant her ancestor’s title for a plot of land that is now becoming another exclusive gated community. And we look at how buried documents like these Reconstruction-era land titles are part of the long game toward reparations.
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