Black History: Special Delivery!!
We’re continuing our review of select entries from the Equity & Exclusion archive. Today, let’s look at Special Field Order No. 15, better known as “40 Acres and a Mule.” In January 1865, a Union general asked twenty Black ministers in Savannah a question the federal government had never asked before: what do you need to be free?
Their spokesman, Garrison Frazier, a man who had purchased his own freedom eight years earlier, gave an answer that still echoes today: land, and the right to govern themselves, not integration into a system built on their exclusion. Four days later, Special Field Order No. 15 set aside 400,000 acres of coastal land for Black families to settle. Within about eighteen months, almost all of it was gone. This new video traces how that promise was made, kept, and broken. It’s one of 80 entries in Equity & Exclusion, our structural review of 250 years of federal policy toward Black Americans (1776-2026). Check out the video below for the full story and visit equity.blackmail4u.com to review the full archive.
Another installment of melanated mail has been delivered. Ponder, reflect, and pass it on.
