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18:00
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at ran.org/rainforests. From
20:03
the Center for Investigative Reporting and
20:05
PRX, this is Reveal. I'm
20:07
Al Letzen. Everything
20:09
we've talked about in this series, and there's
20:12
been a lot, it all
20:14
started when public integrity reporter
20:16
Alexia Fernandez-Campbell found herself
20:18
clicking through a folder of documents that
20:21
she found on a Smithsonian website. It
20:23
was labeled miscellaneous, and
20:26
the folder was full of old,
20:28
hard-to-read records. Among them was
20:31
something that looked like a certificate. She
20:34
took a closer look and could see it was
20:36
from 1865. A
20:39
man named Fergus Wilson was being
20:41
given permission to hold and occupy a
20:44
tract of land, 40
20:46
acres on Sapelo Island, Georgia, and
20:49
it, quote, prohibited people from interfering
20:51
with the man's possession of this
20:54
land. The document bears
20:56
the stamp of a major general in the
20:58
military, and here we are
21:00
two years later. Because
21:03
those miscellaneous documents would
21:05
turn out to be possessory land titles, Alexia
21:08
would eventually learn that these land
21:10
titles were part of a trove
21:12
of nearly two million records from
21:14
the Freedmen's Bureau, a federal agency
21:16
created just after the Civil War
21:18
to help formerly enslaved
21:20
people transition into freedom. The
21:23
Freedmen's Bureau records are crucial to
21:25
understanding this pivotal moment in our
21:28
history. So are those land
21:30
titles, and yet most
21:32
of us have never seen them. I've
21:34
never looked at the possessory land titles.
21:37
Including historian Kate Masur, an
21:39
expert on the history of Reconstruction. There
21:41
are certain documents
21:44
associated with this history that have
21:47
been, like, hidden away in the National Archives.
21:49
They're hard to find. They're hard to know
21:52
how to ask for them. Like
21:54
literally, if you were to go to the National Archives, what
21:56
would be the form that you would fill out? The
22:00
only way you could see the Freedmen's
22:03
Bureau records was to travel to the
22:05
National Archives in Washington, D.C. Then
22:08
you'd have to know the exact needle you were
22:10
looking for just to be directed
22:12
to the right haystack. The
22:15
only reason Alexia was able to find that
22:17
document at all is because
22:19
hundreds of thousands of these records have
22:21
been making their way online for the
22:24
first time. And
22:26
the story of how they got there involves the
22:28
Mormon Church, a worldwide
22:31
pandemic, and artificial intelligence,
22:33
all colliding to
22:35
bring this history out of the cold, dusty
22:37
shelves of the National Archives and
22:39
into the 21st century. Here's
22:42
Alexia and Nadia. There
22:46
are few people who are as familiar
22:48
with the Freedmen's Bureau records as Damani
22:50
Davis. He's an archivist with
22:53
the National Archives. These are
22:55
the first records to formally
22:57
document this mass population that
22:59
prior to the Civil War
23:02
was not officially documented outside
23:04
of property records. In
23:07
other words, this was the first time
23:09
the formerly enslaved were seen and documented
23:11
as people, not property.
23:13
The particular records that stood out
23:15
to me or grasped my feelings or emotions
23:18
or whatever you want to call it the
23:20
most would be the transportation
23:22
records. Transportation records
23:24
are exactly what they sound like. They
23:27
show Freedmen's Bureau agents trying to
23:29
find transportation to reunite husbands and
23:31
wives, children and parents after slavery
23:33
tore families apart. One
23:36
case I remember was the father was
23:38
based in Augusta, Georgia, and he had
23:40
two daughters who were in, I
23:42
think, Corpus Christi, Texas or somewhere in Texas, and
23:44
he was seeking help to have them sent back
23:46
to them. This
23:49
man's children had ended up roughly
23:51
a thousand miles away. Damani
23:53
says finding stories like this was
23:56
a sobering reminder of just how
23:58
cruelly enslaved people were treated. Their
24:00
status as a father or mother
24:02
or children was not legally recognized
24:05
within slavery. On
24:07
top of reuniting families, the
24:09
Freedmen's Bureau distributed rations, opened
24:12
hospitals, helped establish schools.
24:14
It legalized informal marriages entered into
24:17
during slavery. The agency
24:19
not only tracked incidents of racist
24:21
violence, it pushed for
24:23
prosecutions. The Freedmen's
24:25
Bureau touched so many aspects of Black
24:27
life at the time, and
24:29
its records are the best window we have
24:31
into what was and wasn't done for
24:34
Black people at this turning point in American
24:36
history. But Damani admits
24:38
that for a long time, They were
24:40
extremely difficult for the everyday
24:42
American citizen to research. One
24:46
big reason? The agency's records
24:48
were in really bad shape. These
24:50
are very old bound volumes in various
24:53
states of deterioration. Sometimes you can see
24:55
that some of them are actually falling
24:57
apart. It
24:59
took an act of Congress to protect them.
25:02
I'm Earl Hilliard, former member of
25:04
the United States Congress. Earl
25:06
served in Congress from 1993 to 2003. At
25:10
the time, he was the first Black congressman
25:13
from Alabama since Reconstruction, part of
25:15
an influx of Black legislators that were elected in the
25:17
90s. They realized that
25:19
records had not been preserved. And
25:22
he says the reason they all learned that the
25:24
records were not being preserved was in large part
25:27
because of legislation called H.R. 40. It
25:30
was a reparations bill named after 40 acres and
25:32
a mule. Many Black lawmakers
25:34
at the time were supporters of the bill, and
25:36
they knew if they ever wanted to make a
25:38
case. You have to have records. You
25:41
need to know what has taken
25:43
place, or who was involved, what
25:45
need to be done, or what
25:47
was done, or what action was
25:50
taken to either give or to
25:52
deter. All of this is
25:54
so important when you get ready to
25:56
move forward with any action. So
25:59
Earl was part of the bill. of a group
26:01
of legislators who introduced the Freedmen's Bureau Preservation Act
26:03
of 2000. The
26:05
bill required that a majority of the records
26:07
be indexed and scanned, so instead of touching
26:10
them, they could be viewed on rolls of
26:12
microfilm. And because microfilming
26:14
a bunch of old historical documents
26:16
isn't necessarily the flashiest of bills,
26:19
no one really connected it to the
26:21
political hot potato that was HR40. So
26:23
it passed with bipartisan
26:25
support. We slipped it in, so
26:28
to speak. Congressman, they knew
26:30
about it. It was not really
26:32
contentious. We didn't go
26:35
out and beat our drums only
26:37
before non-athletes. Nobody really thought
26:39
about the application of it. They
26:41
didn't think about what the consequences
26:44
would be in the future. It
26:47
was a monumental preservation effort.
26:49
The project cost just $3 million, but
26:52
took half a decade to finish. And
26:55
it was just one step in a
26:57
very long game towards reparations. But
26:59
it was something we really wanted, and
27:01
we really needed it. I mean, you
27:04
wouldn't be interviewing me now if the
27:06
bill had not passed. The research you're
27:08
doing was made easier
27:10
by that bill. Earl
27:13
is right. It did make
27:15
researching the records so much easier, but
27:17
it didn't make them all that more accessible, because
27:20
they still weren't on the internet where
27:22
the rest of the world was. And it
27:24
would have been a daunting task to get them there,
27:27
if not for two unlikely developments.
27:31
The first involved the Church of
27:33
Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Yes,
27:37
the Mormon Church. They had thousands
27:39
of reels of microfilm already in
27:41
their collections. That's Hollis
27:43
Gentry Brown. She's with the
27:46
Libraries and Archives branch of the Smithsonian. Hollis
27:48
had been working to get more than one
27:50
million Freedmen's Bureau records online when she heard
27:53
that the Mormon Church was already way ahead
27:55
of her. They had hundreds
27:57
of thousands of published genealogies
27:59
and and anything that had been
28:01
published related to local history, family history,
28:04
that's what they were collecting in Utah.
28:06
And when Hollis says, in Utah, she's
28:09
referring to a pretty one-of-a-kind place.
28:11
They have a mountain in
28:15
which they preserve these records. I've
28:17
been to the facility. In a literal mountain?
28:19
In the mountain. In the Utah site, the
28:21
mountain. It's amazing. Billions
28:26
of records are kept there. It's
28:28
the largest genealogical collection in
28:30
the world. And
28:32
among all the reels of microfilm
28:34
were copies purchased from the National
28:37
Archives, including the Freedmen's Bureau records.
28:40
We tried to speak to the Mormon Church about all this. And
28:43
while officials didn't want to talk, they
28:45
confirmed what Hollis told us. The church
28:47
digitized more than a million Freedmen's Bureau
28:49
records. And in 2015, they went online. But
28:57
we're not done yet, because there was
28:59
still one huge problem. Have
29:01
you ever tried to read 19th century
29:03
cursive in faded ink? It's
29:06
hard, like really hard. So
29:09
the documents needed to be transcribed, something
29:12
Hollis and the Smithsonian were prepared for. They
29:14
began organizing transcribe-a-thons with the
29:16
hope that everyday people would
29:19
sit down at their computers
29:21
and decipher each word. Hollis
29:23
and her team had it all set up. What
29:26
we didn't have was the large numbers of
29:28
volunteers. Maybe because
29:30
it's pretty tedious work. Squinting
29:34
at hundreds of old documents for hours
29:36
on end, trying to make out,
29:38
is that a J or is that an F? It
29:41
isn't exactly going to entice a ton of
29:44
people. That
29:46
is, until another very
29:48
unlikely development. More than 84 million
29:51
Americans are now under state directives
29:53
to stay home. A
29:55
worldwide pandemic. We had a
29:58
lot of people who had an interest in doing this. something
30:00
while they were sequestered. And
30:03
so they turned to the Smithsonian. Pre-pandemic,
30:07
only about 3,000 volunteers signed
30:09
up to transcribe records. After
30:12
the pandemic, that number ballooned
30:14
to more than 50,000. An
30:19
act of Congress, a mountain
30:21
in Utah, and a COVID
30:23
lockdown. All that paved
30:25
the way for me to stumble upon
30:27
that miscellaneous folder of possessory land titles.
30:30
And the story of the documents could have ended here. But
30:33
we at Public Integrity are adding
30:35
our own chapter. I like to
30:37
joke that the distribution of good versus bad handwriting
30:40
has been the same over centuries. This
30:42
is my colleague, Prateek Rabala. He's
30:44
a data reporter. Prateek and
30:46
I have spent the last two years trying
30:48
to figure out how to search through all
30:50
of the Freedmen's Bureau records, including
30:52
more than a million documents that still
30:55
haven't been transcribed. This collection
30:57
is so massive that
30:59
I just don't know where to start. And
31:02
for context, I'm new to this. I
31:04
mean, this is the first time that I've ever worked
31:06
with documents that are this old. The
31:08
language is different. Keywords are different. I mean,
31:10
so I had a big problem because I
31:12
didn't know what to search. Let's
31:15
stop and zoom out for a minute
31:17
to remember the world before computers. It
31:20
was a world that revolved around paper, those
31:22
loose pieces of biodegradable fibers.
31:25
The government, the military, the banks,
31:28
everything ran on paper. It seems
31:30
so precarious now. And
31:32
Prateek and I are hunting for
31:34
some very specific papers, 40-acre land
31:36
titles. But to find them, we
31:39
need to bring these records into the future. And
31:42
that's exactly what Prateek does,
31:44
using artificial intelligence. I
31:46
feel a little weird about saying AI. I've
31:48
been getting s*** for calling this
31:50
AI. Is machine learning OK
31:52
to use? OK, let's call
31:54
it machine learning. You'll hear Prateek refer
31:57
to it as the model. Basically,
31:59
he. He teaches the model to search through
32:01
all the documents that haven't been transcribed yet.
32:04
What you can do is have the model look
32:07
at a land title and
32:09
find other documents that look
32:12
like it. Without text
32:14
transcriptions, Pertique's model can't search
32:16
words, so it functions more
32:18
like an image search. So
32:21
isn't it like, kind of like facial recognition? Yes,
32:23
it's almost exactly like facial recognition. So
32:26
you can think of that first possessory land title
32:28
as the face we want the model to recognize.
32:31
Lucky for us, it has some pretty
32:34
unique characteristics. The land titles
32:36
are much smaller. They're almost
32:38
like the size of a 3x5 photo,
32:41
and they have like a signature in the
32:43
bottom, and then they have
32:45
big bold text title at the top.
32:48
By using this model, we were able
32:50
to identify the names of hundreds more
32:52
people who received land titles. And
32:55
we expect to find more, because the
32:57
model is still learning. Before
33:02
Pertique's tool, I was searching the old-fashioned
33:04
way, opening up each century's
33:06
old document click by click. It
33:09
was slow, but still effective. Together,
33:12
Pertique and I collected more than 1,200 names.
33:16
It's the largest collection of 40-acre land
33:19
title holders ever put together. They
33:21
were always there. They just needed to
33:23
be found. And
33:26
these documents are not just Black history.
33:28
They're American history. Lost
33:31
narratives of individual men and women as
33:33
they tried to build lives from nothing.
33:36
The land titles, they're just one piece.
33:39
You know, we were just six, eight people that were
33:41
like looking through these documents, and our
33:43
lens was always 40 acres, right? So everything
33:46
we were looking for is so closely tied
33:48
to property and land, and we were interested in
33:50
other things, but that was our focus. We
33:52
are hoping that by making these tools available,
33:55
more people, of course, can learn about their ancestors,
33:57
but also just understand what...
34:00
life was like in the immediate aftermath
34:02
of the Civil War. The
34:05
significance of this collection, you know,
34:07
can't be overstated. And
34:11
that's why Public Integrity is making
34:14
their tool available online. When
34:16
the Smithsonian's Hollis Gentry Brown saw
34:19
it, she emailed us to say, this
34:21
is a quote, God send for genealogists,
34:23
historians, and other researchers. But
34:26
it's not just for them, it's for
34:28
anyone, especially descendants of the formerly
34:30
enslaved who are trying to rebuild
34:33
lost narratives. I said, wow, she
34:35
has some more information. This is great. You helped me
34:37
in my quest. We meet
34:39
one of those descendants. Coming up
34:41
next on Reveal. To build any new coal,
34:43
oil, or gas project, fossil fuel
34:45
companies need permits, money, and
34:47
insurance. You may not think about insurance
34:50
as a major driver
34:52
of climate change, but
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these companies are fueling the climate crisis in two
34:57
crucial ways. They provide insurance coverage for coal plants,
35:01
target fuel, and fuel production. The
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company is a company that is a major driver
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of climate change. They
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tar sands pipelines, and fracking wells.
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Without insurance, these projects can't be
35:15
built or operate. Insurance companies also
35:17
take their customers' money, the money
35:19
you and I pay for car
35:21
and life insurance, and invest it
35:23
in fossil fuel companies so more destructive
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projects can be built. Insurers know that climate
35:28
change is here and that they're on
35:30
the hook to pay for the damage it's causing. But
35:33
instead of ditching fossil fuels,
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they're withdrawing coverage from communities on
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the frontlines of climate change. Tell
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the nation's leading insurance companies to
35:42
book communities first and stop ensuring
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fossil fuels. Find out more information
35:46
with Rainforest Action Network online at
35:48
ran.org/ insurance. I'm
36:00
Al Lettzin. We've been talking
36:02
about the importance of first-hand history,
36:05
original records, and how they
36:07
can reveal hidden truths. But
36:09
records can also be a window into
36:12
where we come from, our
36:14
ancestors, and provide tiny details that
36:16
can feel personal and
36:18
mean so much. Alexia
36:21
and her team had this in mind,
36:23
and as they combed through thousands of
36:25
historical records, they started to make a
36:28
list. Any time
36:30
they found a land title or proof
36:32
that someone received land through 40 acres,
36:35
their name went on that list, because
36:38
they wanted to connect those names
36:40
to living descendants. But
36:43
any genealogist will tell you,
36:46
trying to rebuild the narratives
36:48
of the enslaved is painstaking
36:50
work. These people
36:52
didn't have birth certificates, marriage certificates,
36:54
bank records, nothing identifying
36:56
them as anything other than
36:58
property, and even those were
37:00
sparse and full of errors. This
37:03
is one of the most insidious parts
37:05
of slavery, that complete
37:07
erasure of people's histories.
37:11
It took the public integrity team hundreds
37:13
of hours and many dead ends, but
37:15
eventually they were able to identify more
37:18
than 40 descendants, and
37:20
they reached out to dozens of them. Most
37:23
didn't respond, but some did. Come
37:26
on in, welcome to my humble abode.
37:29
A woman named Mila Rios was their
37:31
first win. I know you, I'm going
37:33
to put some fruit out. It's always good.
37:36
And finding her felt almost serendipitous,
37:39
because Mila's dedicated the last 30
37:41
years of her life, trying
37:44
to find out everything she can about
37:46
her ancestors. And because she
37:48
already knew so much, we weren't
37:50
sure if we'd have anything to add. But
37:53
Alexia and Nadia still managed to surprise
37:56
her. They pick up the
37:58
story in Florida. We're
38:01
sitting at Mila's kitchen table at her home
38:03
near Fort Lauderdale, where she lives with her
38:05
two Chihuahuas, Bella and Chiquita. Mila
38:09
is showing Nadia and I photos as she lays
38:11
out her family tree. All right,
38:15
so that's my great-grandmother. That's
38:18
Florence? My great-grandmother. This
38:20
is the only photo Mila has of her great-grandmother,
38:23
Florence Chisholm. She's
38:25
posing with her family members during a gathering in
38:27
the backyard of their home near Philadelphia. It's
38:30
the early 1960s, a sunny
38:32
day, and Florence looks serene. Mila
38:36
was just a kid when this picture was taken. I
38:38
was probably running around, but I
38:40
was really little, tiny. I was a real tiny thing. Mila
38:43
is a semi-retired clinical psychologist, the
38:46
widow of an aerospace engineer. She
38:48
grew up old school, four generations
38:50
altogether under the same roof.
38:53
She says her great-grandmother Florence was a headstrong
38:56
woman who got the most out of the
38:58
world around her. I remember
39:00
her going out in the yard
39:02
picking dandelions out of the ground,
39:05
making dandelion wine and she would
39:07
make the most beautiful gardens that
39:09
you would ever see. We
39:12
had all sorts of vegetables and she
39:14
would tell me, this is what my father and
39:16
mother taught me. And they call me Shel.
39:18
Shel, I want you to see. This is how you make it.
39:20
This is how you plant it. This is what you do to
39:22
it. That's what she did. And
39:24
those are the things that she left me
39:27
with. Now I've never planted a seed in
39:29
my life, but it doesn't mean that I
39:31
wasn't taught. That's
39:33
not all Florence taught Mila. She
39:35
was also a storyteller, a
39:37
repository of family history. My
39:40
bedroom was right across from her, so I spent
39:42
an inordinate amount of time with her. And
39:45
she loved to talk about family. Florence
39:47
was born in Savannah, Georgia in 1889. She'd
39:50
come up during Jim Crow and went to school for
39:52
as long as she was allowed. She
39:55
finished the eighth grade, which was pretty
39:57
advanced in those days. Despite
39:59
this, she was confined to washing laundry
40:01
for white families, the
40:03
residuals of slavery. And
40:06
that's another thing. My great-grandmother never
40:08
said slave. Never, ever, ever did
40:10
she say the word slave. It
40:12
was when they were in bondage.
40:15
You know, if you said slave, she'd get quite
40:17
upset. They were not slaves. They were in bondage.
40:20
Florence's parents, Pompey and Patience
40:23
Jackson, they were in
40:25
bondage. She didn't speak about their
40:27
childhood because they had no childhood.
40:30
They were working. They
40:32
were working. Florence talked a
40:34
lot about the lives of Pompey and Patience
40:36
and that first generation of freed people. And
40:39
I would say to her, you've told me that a
40:41
million times. She said, I don't care because I don't
40:43
want you to forget. And you know, I
40:46
didn't forget. Not
40:50
only did Mila not forget, she spent
40:52
the last 30 years trying to verify
40:55
the oral history Florence passed down to
40:57
her. That's
40:59
the paper in which I was referring to.
41:01
She shows us a copy of a document, a
41:05
156-year-old marriage record. It shows
41:07
Pompey Jackson, Patience Simmons,
41:10
and the date in which they were married,
41:12
December the 17th, 1867, exactly what my great-grandmother
41:14
had said. This
41:19
was her very first attempt at research, and
41:22
Mila struck gold. It happened
41:24
during a family reunion in Savannah in
41:26
1992. So I went over to the
41:29
Savannah courthouse and I encountered this really
41:33
elderly, curmudgeon looking
41:35
justice. I mean, and
41:37
he looked like the meanest man in the world.
41:39
He looked like he really did. I said to
41:41
him, excuse me, sir, can you please tell me
41:43
why I could find the marriage records? And he
41:45
looked at me and he smiled. And
41:48
I said, okay. And he took me
41:50
in into a room where I saw
41:52
all the books and I was astounded
41:54
because me still being a northern girl,
41:56
you know, even the colored books. Yes.
42:00
annals of Savannah marital history there are
42:02
the white marriage books and quote colored
42:04
marriage books. He asked me do you
42:06
have any idea when they got married?
42:08
I said yes I do because my
42:10
great-grandmother told me her mother and father
42:12
got married in 1867. He
42:15
looked at me and said wow you're good. That
42:17
was my first document and that's where
42:20
it started. And
42:23
then Mila began to find other
42:25
priceless documents, forms with Pompey's signature
42:28
like a Freedmen's Bureau bank record from 1874.
42:32
I was so proud. I said oh look,
42:34
Papa signed his name. Papa
42:38
signed his name. During
42:40
reconstruction a black man's personal signature
42:42
was a political statement all by
42:44
itself. Pompey couldn't write but
42:47
immediately after emancipation he made a point
42:49
to learn how to sign his name.
42:51
That's it to sign his name. When
42:54
he went to take his oath to
42:56
be able to vote even though Jim
42:58
Crow relinquished that right he signed his
43:00
name. According to
43:02
Florence, Pompey was a tall quiet man
43:04
who made the most of being a
43:06
full citizen right after being emancipated. He
43:09
got married, got a job as a carpenter,
43:12
registered to vote, opened a bank
43:14
account. Eventually he bought property a
43:17
fifth of an acre. He built a
43:19
house on it and raised seven children
43:21
there including Florence. He
43:23
did all the things white Americans took for
43:26
granted but had been denied to people in
43:28
bondage. For
43:33
Mila all these pieces of information
43:35
bring her ancestors to life but
43:38
there's more to uncover here. I know
43:41
this because Mila's great great
43:43
grandfather he actually got land
43:45
through the 40 acres
43:47
program. The first time
43:49
I contacted Mila she knew none of this. I
43:52
had no idea that aspect I didn't know that
43:54
we didn't know anything about that. I said wow
43:56
she has some more information this is great. I
43:58
thought it was wonderful. You helped me
44:01
in my quest. When
44:03
I was researching this story, I found
44:05
Pompey Jackson's name scrawled on a document
44:07
that had been buried for more than
44:09
a century deep inside those Freedmen
44:11
Bureau files. The
44:13
document was a handwritten land register from
44:15
April 1865, and
44:18
it said that Pompey Jackson, who was a teenager
44:20
at the time, received a
44:22
possessory title to four acres of land
44:24
on the Ogeechee River Low Country. It
44:27
was a small piece of a massive
44:29
rice plantation near Savannah called Grove Hill.
44:32
The plantation was previously owned by the
44:34
Habersham family, one of the wealthiest and
44:37
most politically powerful families in Georgia. And
44:40
for a fleeting moment, a small slice
44:42
of that wealth was
44:44
Pompey's. We know
44:46
about 40 acres and a mule, but
44:48
we never knew actually who. Yes,
44:52
who were all those freed people
44:54
who received land, settled on it,
44:57
and planned their futures? At
44:59
Grove Hill, they were people like
45:01
Pompey, Peter McKnight, and a woman
45:03
named Jane Jones, people who history
45:06
has largely forgotten. We've
45:08
been able to prove that at least 50 Black
45:10
families got land titles on this former
45:12
rice plantation. After
45:15
I told her about this, Mila started
45:17
digging herself, looking for
45:19
anything she could find about the Grove Hill
45:21
plantation. Grove Hill
45:23
was abandoned. Let me
45:25
see, I'll show you what I
45:28
have here. She pulls out
45:30
another document. What's that? This
45:32
was given in the courts October 1865, and
45:35
Grove Hill was abandoned. And
45:38
it said the name of W.R.
45:40
Habersham. W.R.
45:42
stands for William Robert Habersham.
45:46
Mila had known Pompey was enslaved by the
45:48
Habersham family, but she
45:50
didn't know exactly where or under what
45:52
conditions. Grove Hill was
45:54
a brutal place. People died
45:57
every month, mostly young children.
46:00
Those who reached adulthood often
46:02
suffered spinal injuries, lung disease,
46:04
and foot rot from sloshing
46:06
through flooded rice fields. Pompey
46:09
survived smallpox. By
46:13
1866, President Andrew
46:15
Johnson had pardoned William Habersham and
46:17
other former slaveholders, and
46:19
they were all trying to regain control of the
46:21
land in the Ogeechee Low country. But
46:24
Mila's research found something even we didn't
46:26
know, that freed people in the area
46:28
weren't letting go of that land so easily. They
46:31
believed that after generations of
46:34
enslavement, the land was their
46:36
birthright. They had formed a
46:38
militia called the Ogeechee Home Guards. And
46:40
this fight over the land became
46:42
known as the Ogeechee Insurrection. And
46:46
get this, Mila discovered
46:48
that Pompey's brother, her
46:50
great-great-granduncle Thomas Benedict, was
46:53
one of the leaders of that revolt. He
46:55
didn't just revolt one time. He
46:57
revolted several times. This is the
46:59
court docket. There's his name, Thomas Benedict.
47:02
And you see it says right here, Insurrection.
47:06
No. Yes. And this is from
47:09
April the 1st, 1869. You
47:12
could see that was four years later. And
47:15
he still, they're still... Oh, four years later.
47:18
Four years later. They refused to give up that land. That's
47:20
right. Like they just refused to leave.
47:22
Yeah. Yeah. I
47:25
told you, I was searching, searching diligently.
47:29
In the end, the army was called
47:31
in, and the revolt was put down. Mila's
47:36
kitchen table is now scattered with documents.
47:40
She's been able to connect so many dots over the
47:42
years. And this
47:44
all started because she listened. She didn't know
47:47
it at the time, but she was collecting
47:49
oral history. There's
47:51
nothing. If we didn't have
47:53
oral history, there's nothing. If
47:55
the Freedmen's Bureau didn't know this, and if I
47:58
hadn't heard certain things, it would have been
48:00
a problem. My Greek grandmother said, there's nothing. And
48:02
I am so grateful
48:06
for that because every
48:08
single thing she told me
48:11
was true. Florence
48:14
died in 1972. She
48:17
was 83 years old. I
48:19
was the last one she spoke to when she passed
48:21
away in bed, you know? She
48:24
looked at me. She said, you're gonna be
48:26
all right? Cause I was sitting in her room again. And I
48:28
said, yeah, I'm gonna be fine. And
48:30
I saw her take her last breath. I
48:33
knew she was gone. Mila
48:38
has spent her time documenting individuals,
48:41
people who forged singular lives, who
48:43
left legacies that led directly to her.
48:46
And yet there was still that one thing she didn't know,
48:49
that Pompey received a 40 acres land title.
48:53
It makes me wonder how many other families
48:55
don't know that their ancestors got land and
48:57
had it taken away. All
49:00
these documents can help set the record straight. Not
49:03
just for Mila, but for countless
49:05
others. Now
49:08
that Mila knows so much about what her
49:10
ancestors went through, she wants to stand in
49:12
the spaces where they once stood, in
49:15
the places where they were once enslaved. In
49:18
African culture, they
49:21
say that when you speak a name, they
49:23
live. And I wanna
49:25
make these people live. And when you
49:27
see what they saw, they
49:30
see it again. I
49:33
went to part of Grove Hill. I
49:36
wanted to see what was once 40 acres land.
49:39
It still looks like a plantation, only
49:41
abandoned. There were
49:44
overgrown fields, a no trespassing
49:46
sign, and near the entrance was a
49:48
for sale notice. Later I
49:50
learned that Grove Hill is being developed into a
49:52
gated community. It's
49:54
called, wait for it, the
49:57
Habersham Plantation. I
50:00
told Mila this when we met. And they're selling them
50:03
in four-acre lots. The up
50:05
front two to four-acre lots for people to build
50:07
the homes that have to be part of it.
50:09
Just like the landings development that we visited earlier
50:11
in the show, this new gated
50:13
community promises home buyers the quote, perfect
50:16
coastal lifestyle. There's already
50:18
a homeowners association. I should go
50:20
and buy one. Yeah. You should buy
50:22
one. I should go and
50:24
buy one. This
50:27
belongs to us from the year... I
50:30
should go and buy one. Mila
50:34
is joking, but an empty four-acre
50:36
lot, the size of Pompey's plot,
50:39
sold for $250,000 last year. There's
50:44
no way of knowing why Pompey only got
50:46
four acres instead of 40. But
50:48
it's probably because he was a teenager with no family
50:50
of his own. But some
50:53
freed people did get 40 acres on Grove
50:55
Hill, which could be worth more than $2.5
50:57
million today. That's
51:00
the kind of generational wealth that the 40
51:03
acres program could have created. I
51:05
wanted to know what Mila makes of all this. What
51:08
if Pompey had been able to keep his land?
51:11
I don't think that my life would have been
51:13
any better. You know, I really
51:15
don't because my life has been wonderful. I thank
51:17
God every day I've had a hell of a
51:20
ride. Do
51:22
you think that you
51:24
are owed anything out of what happened
51:26
with the 40 acres specifically? Me? Personally,
51:28
I'm not owed a dime. I
51:31
don't feel as if I am. Me,
51:33
personally. Do I feel
51:35
that my family should have been compensated in
51:37
some way back in that time?
51:40
Absolutely. But me? No,
51:43
not me. Do you think you'd feel differently though
51:45
if you hadn't been so successful in life? I
51:49
don't know. Maybe I could utilize that
51:51
as an excuse. But would it be a
51:53
valid excuse? Would
51:55
I be able to sit here and say, if
51:58
my great-great-grandfather had been... I'm giving
52:00
those four acres, boy, my life would have
52:02
been better. I don't know. You
52:05
know, I don't know. While
52:11
Mila doesn't think she's owed anything, she's
52:14
in the minority. What do we
52:16
want? Reparations! When? Now!
52:20
What do we want? Because a majority
52:22
of Black Americans want reparations, including
52:24
those who lost land in more recent
52:26
chapters of American history. People
52:29
hear my story
52:31
and they almost see it in their face. What
52:33
can I do? What can I do to make
52:36
up for this? The answer?
52:38
Compensation. But not everyone
52:41
agrees. Nobody is coming to
52:43
save us. Who are we asking to
52:45
pay? That's next on
52:47
40 Acres and a Lie. A
52:49
new three-part investigation from Reveal and
52:52
the Center for Public Integrity. In
52:54
the meantime, to see the historical records
52:57
for yourself, we've got links
52:59
at revealnews.org/40 Acres. This
53:05
story was reported by Alexia Fernandez-Campbell
53:07
and Prateek Rabala with help from
53:09
Nadia Hamdan. Nadia was
53:11
our lead producer. Roy Hirst also produced
53:14
today's episode. They had help from Stephen
53:16
Raskon. Cynthia Rodriguez is
53:18
a series editor, thanks to our partners
53:20
at the Center for Public Integrity, including
53:23
April Simpson, Jennifer LaFlore, McNellie
53:25
Torres, Ashley Clark, Vanessa Freeman,
53:28
Peter Newbit-Smith, and Wesley Lowry.
53:31
We also had help from genealogist
53:33
Vicki McGill. For a full list
53:35
of researchers and document transcribers, go
53:38
to revealnews.org. This project
53:40
was supported by a grant from the
53:42
Fund for Investigative Journalism and Wind Code
53:44
Foundation. Victoria Baranetsky is
53:46
Reveals General Counsel. Missa Peron is
53:48
our Membership Manager. Our
53:51
Production Manager is Zulema Cobb, scored
53:53
in sound design by the dynamic
53:55
duo J-Breezy, Mr. Jim Briggs, and
53:57
Fernando Mamayo Arruda. This
54:00
week from Claire C. Knott Mullen,
54:02
our production intern is Aisha Wallace-Palo
54:04
Mares. Original vocals by Ren Woods
54:06
and additional music by Dave Leonard.
54:08
Our interim executive producers are Brett
54:10
Myers and Taki Telenides. Support for
54:12
Reveal is provided by listeners like
54:15
you and the Riva and David
54:17
Logan Foundation, the John D and
54:19
Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Jonathan
54:21
Logan Family Foundation, the Robert Wood
54:23
Johnson Foundation, the Park Foundation and
54:25
the Hellman Foundation. Reveal is a
54:27
co-production of the Center for Investigative
54:29
Reporting and PRX. I'm
54:32
Al Ledson. And remember, there
54:34
is always more to the story. Rainforest
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