
Formerly enslaved people got their 40 acres. Then it was taken away.
Our historical investigation found 1,250 formerly enslaved Black Americans who were given land—only to see it returned to their enslavers.

Posted in40 Acres and a Lie
40 Acres and a Lie Part 1
Our historical investigation found 1,250 formerly enslaved Black Americans who were given land—only to see it returned to their enslavers.
February 8, 2025

Credit: Illustration by Michael Foy
https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp...1c5-45f5-a2b9-bfa10d8f51a2/1106_Reveal_PC.mp3
Patricia Bailey’s four-bedroom home sits high among the trees in lush Edisto Island, South Carolina. It’s a peaceful place where her body healed from multiple sclerosis. It’s also the source of her generational wealth.
Bailey built this house on land that was passed down by her great-great-grandfather, Jim Hutchinson, who was enslaved on Edisto before he was freed and became a landowner.
“I know this is sacred land here,” Bailey says, “’cause it’s my ancestors and I feel it.”
Union General William T. Sherman’s Special Field Orders, No. 15—better known as 40 acres and a mule—implied a better life in the waning days of the Civil War. Hutchinson is among the formerly enslaved people who received land through the field orders, which are often thought of as a promise that was never kept. But 40 acres and a mule was more than that.
It was real.
Over a more than two-year investigation, our partners at the Center for Public Integrity unearthed thousands of records once buried in the National Archives. In them, they found more than 1,200 formerly enslaved people who were given land by the federal government through the field orders—and then saw that land taken away.
None of the land Bailey lives on today is part of Hutchinson’s 40 acres. Instead, her family’s wealth is built on her ancestor’s determination to get and keep land of his own, after losing what he thought he had gained through the field orders.
This week on Reveal, with the Center for Public Integrity and in honor of Black History Month, we’re revisiting our three-part series in which we tell the history of an often-misunderstood government program. We explore a reparation that wasn’t—and the wealth gap that remains.
This is an update of an episode that originally aired in June 2024.
Dig Deeper
Learn more: 40 Acres and a Lie (Mother Jones, Center for Public Integrity, and Reveal)
Credits


Reporters: April Simpson and Nadia Hamdan | Producers: Nadia Hamdan, Roy Hurst, and Steven Rascón | Editor: Cynthia Rodriguez | Genealogy research: Vicki McGill | Fact checker: Peter Newbatt Smith | Legal counsel: Victoria Baranetsky | Production managers: Zulema Cobb and Steven Rascón | Digital producers: Kate Howard and Nikki Frick | Score and sound design: Jim Briggs and Fernando Arruda | Vocals: Renn Woods | Additional music: Dave Linard | Interim executive producers: Brett Myers and Taki Telonidis | Host: Al Letson | Special thanks: Our partners at the Center for Public Integrity, including Alexia Fernández Campbell, Pratheek Rebala, Jennifer LaFleur, Mc Nelly Torres, Ashley Clarke, Vanessa Freeman, Peter Newbatt Smith, and Wesley Lowery
This project was supported by a grant from the Fund for Investigative Journalism and Wyncote Foundation.
Support for Reveal is provided by listeners like you, and the Reva and David Logan Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Park Foundation, The Schmidt Family Foundation, and the Hellman Foundation.
Transcript
Reveal transcripts are produced by a third-party transcription service and may contain errors. Please be aware that the official record for Reveal’s radio stories is the audio.
Al Letson: | From the Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX, this is Reveal. I’m Al Letson. |
The year is 1983. I was 11, and my parents were forcing me to move from New Jersey to North Florida, just outside of Jacksonville. The culture shock was significant. We were one of two Black families that lived in a middle-class White neighborhood. My elementary school was about a mile and a half away in a neighborhood that was pretty much all Black and mostly poor. Every day, I would ride my bike between those two worlds, from the better off White-community, big homes with pools, yards, and nice cars, to the Black community, many folks living in little houses in need of repair, people barely getting by. I hung out with Black and White kids, and everybody’s parents seemed to work hard, but the fruits of their labor were vastly different. It never made any sense to me. Then came high school. | |
It was the heyday of conscious hip-hop, and Public Enemy burned with righteous anger. They rapped about things that I was experiencing in the world around me and the history behind me. | |
MUSIC: | Have you seen her. |
Jack was nimble, Jack was quick. | |
(singing) | |
Got a question for Jack. Ask him. | |
40 acres and a mule, Jack. | |
Jack. | |
Where is it? Why’d you try to fool the Black. | |
Al Letson: | It led to an awakening, including about 40 acres and a mule, a promise from the federal government that newly freed slaves would be given land, a foundation, something they could pass to their descendants. But that promise wasn’t kept. How different that bike ride I took as a child might’ve been if Black people had actually been given a fair shot, if they’d been given just a small piece of the wealth they spent centuries building for others. Now, I thought I understood the history of 40 acres and a mule, but what I didn’t know is that it was more than just a promise. It actually happened. Land titles, ink on paper. |
Today, in recognition of Black History Month, we’re revisiting our three-part series, 40 Acres and a Lie. It’s an investigation that we first brought you last summer into an important moment in American history. It’s a massive story that all started when our partners at the Center for Public Integrity began digging through thousands of records that were once buried in the National Archives. | |
Nadia Hamdan: | Lucy Crosby. |
April Simpson: | Phillip Young. |
Nadia Hamdan: | Amos Jackson. |
April Simpson: | John Major. |
Nadia Hamdan: | James Byrd. |
Al Letson: | Public Integrity reporters Alexia Fernández Campbell and April Simpson and their colleagues found proof that more than 1,200 formerly enslaved people were given land titles by the federal government. |
April Simpson: | Samuel Miller, 40 acres on Edisto. |
Nadia Hamdan: | Fergus Wilson, 40 acres on Sapelo Island. |
April Simpson: | Primus Morrison, 40 acres on Edisto. |
Al Letson: | And then had that land taken away. This betrayal of Black Americans has fueled a racial wealth gap that continues today more than 150 years later. There’s a line from W.E.B. Du Bois that goes like this. The slave went free, stood a brief moment in the sun, then moved back again towards slavery. This is the story of that brief moment in the sun. We start with Public Integrity reporter April Simpson and Reveal producer Nadia Hamdan in Edisto Island, South Carolina. |
April Simpson: | The first thing you notice about Edisto are the trees, these giant live oaks draped in Spanish moss that form canopies over the old gravel roads. The second thing you notice is the water. This place is a labyrinth of rivers and tributaries speckled with salt marshes and nestled right on the Atlantic Ocean. People say sometimes, if you listen hard enough, you can hear a dolphin go by. This is the island where a man named Jim Hutchinson was enslaved and received his 40 acres. |
Greg Estevez: | This is one of the oldest roads on Edisto Island. |
April Simpson: | And this is Jim’s great-great-great-grandson, Greg Estevez. He’s showing us around. |
Greg Estevez: | Look how the trees go over the- |
Nadia Hamdan: | Like archways. |
Greg Estevez: | Yeah, like archways. |
April Simpson: | Greg is a big guy, over six feet tall, bald with a salt and pepper goatee. He retired from the Navy in 2004, and then he worked for some time as a correctional officer. Now, he lives in Florida. He spends part of his time driving for Uber and the rest of it, he spends writing history books, history books about Black life on Edisto. Greg can trace his roots through seven generations on Edisto all the way up to Jim Hutchinson’s mother, Maria. As Greg drives, he points out house after house. |
Greg Estevez: | Y’all see this house right here? |
Nadia Hamdan: | Mm-hmm. |
Greg Estevez: | That’s MP’s house. |
April Simpson: | An aunt here, a cousin down the road. |
Nadia Hamdan: | So now, would you say that on this street, this is majority Black families? |
Greg Estevez: | Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Look and see. You could probably tell if you’re paying attention. |
April Simpson: | Why would you say that? |
Greg Estevez: | These houses, you can tell that people are not as wealthy. |
April Simpson: | What Greg means is that on Edisto, every Black household earns less than $40,000 a year while close to half of White households earn three times as much. |
Greg Estevez: | So the Edisto Island Black residents have been economically disadvantaged for many, many, many, many, many, many years. |
April Simpson: | Today, just under 2,000 people live here, and the majority of them are White. But on the brink of the Civil War, Edisto’s population was more than double what it is today, and only a few hundred were White. Many were the plantation owners. The rest were enslaved. People like Jim. |
Greg says Jim was a light-skinned Black man who spent much of his enslavement on the water, ferrying people through those many rivers and tributaries. He’s written a lot about Jim and feels a deep connection to his story. So do many others in the family. | |
Greg Estevez: | Now, Aunt Patty looks younger than I do, but don’t be fooled. |
April Simpson: | Especially Greg’s Aunt Patty. |
Patty Bailey: | My name is really Patricia Susan Lee St. Clair Edwards, and then I married a Bailey. |
April Simpson: | Patty is 76 years old, but looks half her age. She’s got shoulder-length hair that she wears in locks and an infectious energy. Patty was born in New York, but remembers visiting Edisto as a kid. |
Patty Bailey: | I didn’t like the outhouse. I didn’t like things like that. But now, when I think about the well, we had fresh cold water. My grandfather had a beautiful horse he would ride sometimes. One time he put me on, my mother had a fit. |
April Simpson: | Patty spent much of her life working as a secretary in the neonatal unit of a hospital, living in Harlem and the Boogie-down Bronx, as she calls it. She was happy there. But then in 1997, she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Over the next several years, the disease would attack her central nervous system and affect her ability to move. Her MS was so bad at one point, Patty had to start using a wheelchair. |
Last edited: