The Unhealed Wound

After emancipation in the US, formerly enslaved people received nothing: no land, no money, no reparations. The promised "40 acres and a mule" was revoked by President Andrew Johnson. Meanwhile, former slave owners kept their land, capital, and economic networks intact.

This created a structural wealth gap that compounded over generations. Freed families started from zero, while former owners held land, capital, and credit. Each generation built on what the one before could pass down — and most Black families had almost nothing to inherit.