Black Landowners Systematically Dispossessed Across the South 1880s

Black land ownership peaked in several Southern counties in the early 1880s — Black farmers owned over 250,000 acres in Mississippi alone by 1880 — and then was systematically stripped through fraudulent contracts, tax sales, violence, and legal manipulation. In counties like Coahoma, Mississippi, and Edgefield, South Carolina, white intimidation campaigns drove Black landowners off properties they had legally purchased during Reconstruction.