Early on in our country’s history, the implementation of several state and federal legal measures (such as slave codes and the Fugitive Slave Act) created a difference between racialized groups. The slave codes established “servitude for natural life” for enslaved African people. This – 250+ years of labor of millions of enslaved African and Black people – was the foundation for the U.S. economy and the global force that it eventually became. On the eve of the Civil War, the value of enslaved Black people was estimated at $3.6 billion (not scaled for modern inflation).

After the Civil War, only 30,000 Black people owned small plots of land, compared to 4 million who did not because of the 1865 federal policy that rescinded the promise of 40 acres of land for slaves. These 4 million Black people largely resorted to renting farmland from their previous slave owner in exchange for a “share” of their crop. This system of “sharecropping” tied farmers to their former owners because they were legally obligated to BUY all farming materials (usually at higher prices) and SELL their farming crop solely to them (usually at lower prices).

Black people were legally at risk of having their land seized for nearly a 100-year period from 1865 to the 1960s, in part due to the sharecropping debt that many Black farmers found themselves in. Additionally, white landowners could arbitrarily declare that Black farmers or business owners were in debt at any time, which would result in Black people losing their land. Black people could not contest these charges since they were legally unable to fight against white people in court.

This policy guaranteed loans to white people and legally refused loans to Black people and anyone who chose to live near Black neighborhoods. This practice, known as “redlining,” targeted entire Black neighborhoods and labeled them “Grade D.” This made it nearly impossible for appraisers in the private sector to do business in these areas, because Black neighborhoods were considered “bad credit risks.” It was difficult, if not impossible, for Black prospective homeowners to purchase a home anywhere other than existing Black neighborhoods. This policy also sometimes resulted in Black people paying double or triple to buy a contract from a white person to pay the mortgage on a house that legally was not in their name. Meanwhile, Black people were making payments to secure their chances of being able to own their home, while still not receiving any equity on the payments toward that home.

The Wagner Act, officially known as the National Labor Relations Act, is regarded as the most important piece of U.S. labor legislation in the 20th century. The main purpose of the Act was to establish the legal right for workers to join labor unions, organize, and use collective bargaining power with their employers. It helped millions of white workers enter the middle class for decades to come. However, the Wagner Act intentionally excluded agricultural and domestic workers from the right to unionize and allowed unions to exclude people of color, thus denying people of color access to higher-wage jobs and union benefits like healthcare, retirement funds, and job security.

Using “Black” or “African-American” when talking about Race

You may notice that we tend to use the word “Black” more commonly than “African-American” when describing a group of people in our writing. While African-American has been used to highlight the origin of people who were forcibly brought to the United States through the slave trade, in today’s society it is too narrow to encompass the experiences of all who are subject to structural disadvantages against Black people. Read more about this from the  Urban Institute.