The land takings are part of a larger picture - a 91-year decline in black landownership in America.
In 1910, black Americans owned more farmland than at any time before or since - at least 15 million acres. Nearly all of it was in the South, largely in Mississippi, Alabama and the Carolinas, according to the U.S. Agricultural Census. Today, blacks own only 1.1 million of the country's more than 1 billion acres of arable land. They are part owners of another 1.07 million acres.
The number of white farmers has declined over the last century, too, as economic trends have concentrated land in fewer, often corporate, hands. However, black ownership has declined 2 1/2 times faster than white ownership, the U.S. Civil Rights Commission noted in a 1982 report, the last comprehensive federal study on the trend.