The heir's property: one man's struggle to hold onto family land in the American South

USA Today

a day ago

'The Heir's Property" is an in-depth look at the issue of land passed down through generations, told through the lens of one man's struggle to retain land purchased a century ago by his great-grandfather who was born into slavery during the Confederacy. Heirs' property is usually defined as land handed down without clear, official documentation. Over the course of the 20th century, Black Americans lost roughly 80% of the property they owned at the peak of ownership a few decades after the Civil War due to theft and systemic injustices. This is the second of a two-part series. Read part one here.
If 'housing is everything,' as Susan O'Donovan, a University of Memphis professor who researches the lives of formerly enslaved people after the Civil War put it, Black Americans are way behind.
In 2023, 27.2% of Black applicants were denied a mortgage, more than double the 13.4% of white borrowers, according to an analysis from the Urban Institute.
Black borrowers also accounted for only 8.5% of all purchase mortgage borrowers in 2023, the most recent data available. Meanwhile, in 2024, the Black homeownership rate was 45.3%, a whopping 30 percentage points below that of white households, at 74.4%.
That matters because in America, housing is wealth. In 2021, white households were 65.3% of all U.S. households and held 80.0% of all wealth, according to Census Department data. Black households made up 13.6% of the total but held only 4.7% of all wealth. The median wealth of Black households ($24,520) was about one-tenth the median wealth of white ones, at $250,400.
Black land ownership peaked around the time John Thomas Jr., a formerly enslaved man, bought more than 300 acres after the Civil War, and the goalposts just kept shifting with the times. As recently as the early aughts, the subprime bubble depended, in part, on predatory loans being extended to Black households, extensive research has shown.
'Ongoing residential segregation and a historical dearth of access to mortgage credit in American urban areas combined to create ideal conditions for predatory lending to poor minority group members in poor minority neighborhoods,' wrote Jacob Rugh and Douglas Massey in a 2010 paper called Racial Segregation and the American Foreclosure Crisis, 'thus racializing the ensuing foreclosure crisis and focusing its negative consequences disproportionately on Black borrowers and home owners.'
An analysis from the St. Louis Fed for USA TODAY found that Black households lost $336 billion of home equity between 2007 and 2013 - 33.5% of the total, trailing the 28% lost by white households.
"You say to yourself, you can't let these people just take this land from you, from your ancestors, who worked so hard to even get it," Saul Blair, a descendant of John Thomas, mused in June, in the midst of a years long odyssey to preserve the property Thomas handed down. "These people here were vibrant. They were smart. They lived off the land. They purchased the land. I've been asked this question numerous times: why (do) you spend so much time on this? And the (answer) is why not?"
Savings in a coffee can
After lunch with their cousins Ella Barnes and Vivian Gamble, Blair and Linda Benson drove to a leafy cul-de-sac in an Atlanta suburb. Another cousin, Marie Jones, had organized a get-together with a few other relatives. Jones is 76, retired from a career at the EPA and other government agencies. She's also the pastor of a small church, and has spent much of her life - starting as a young girl - documenting the history of the broader Benson clan.
The cousins introduced themselves and Blair brought one of his research binders in from the rental car. Soon the coffee table was strewn with newspaper clippings, family trees, and maps of the land.
They talked for hours: about the suspicious seizure of Barnes' and Gamble's taxes; about the difficulties farming in Rayle; about cousins, second cousins, cousins by marriage, and how they all fit together.
But mostly, the cousins talked about work. Everyone had memories of being put to work as a child: picking crops both before and after school, sewing, cleaning, working in a parent's store or restaurant, or just minding the house or the siblings while the parents were out. There was no such thing as down time, and no child was allowed to neglect chores.
The family savings went into a coffee can that was buried somewhere on their property, one cousin remembered.
The best working theory for how John Thomas had pulled off his achievement made him more relatable, his great-grandchildren thought. Everyone, including the children, likely chipped in.
The heart of the Confederacy
Marie Jones grew up a few miles from the Rayle property. She remembers a white neighbor whom everyone knew was a Ku Klux Klan member. From time to time he would sidle over, wearing nothing but an open pair of overalls, and stare menacingly at her grandmother. It was a signal for the adults to bundle the kids in the house, lock the doors, and pray.
Jones' grandfather, a blacksmith, had his shop across the street from what had once been the community slave trade house. The small structure still stands today, in the shadow of a Dollar General. Up until the 1970's, Jones said, the whole town would shut down on Wednesdays, which had been the day slaves were bought and sold.
In the town square in Washington, the seat of Wilkes County, stand several historical markers commemorating the Confederacy. Jefferson Davis 'performed what proved to be his last duties as President of the Confederate States of America' there, one says.
There are also, however, memorials to the region's Black residents. 'The history of Africans forcibly brought to America spans centuries of struggle, resilience, and ingenuity, shaping the African American experience and making an indelible mark on the nation's economic and cultural landscape,' one reads.
On a recent summer day, one storefront featured a poster about a Juneteenth celebration.
Yet, the area still felt eerie. Charles Ware, the logger Blair hoped would clear trees from his land, told him and Benson that the town common had been the site where enslaved people were hanged.
When the cousins stopped at a restaurant on the square for a quick lunch, the waitstaff were friendly, cracking jokes and seating them efficiently despite a crowd. But the Benson clan couldn't help but notice they were the only people of color in the restaurant for the duration of their meal.
Out on the highway, Blair stuck to the right lane, refusing to be the 'lead car,' and never touching his cell phone - an infraction that had gotten him pulled over on a previous trip. When he saw police cars on the side of the road, his eyes stayed glued to the rearview mirror until they were long out of sight.
In the tax office
By the time Blair and Benson arrived at the Wilkes County Courthouse, they were on edge. The questions about the tax bills rankled. Had someone been rifling through the mail, or was someone inside the tax office sharing information about delinquencies inappropriately?
'If he's paying the taxes, thank you very much, but now we'll start doing it,' Benson said a few times with perhaps more bravado than she actually felt.
Inside the tax office, they were told that if a tax bill was delinquent, and someone made a payment on that account, the county would reroute bills to that person in the future.
But the taxes had never been delinquent in the first place, Benson and Blair insisted. How could someone have hijacked the bills? The tax official couldn't answer that, but shared her contact information and promised to talk with Barnes and Gamble. The most important thing now, she said, was for them to formally claim the title for the property, which was still in their grandfather's name, and to start paying the taxes.
Benson and Blair left the courthouse buzzing with determination. The tax official seemed sincere, they thought - not like someone who was conspiring to defraud people of their land - but what could anyone believe? In the car, they called Barnes. Benson put her on speakerphone as she explained the morning's events. 'When was the last time you paid taxes?' she asked.
'Oh, we never paid taxes!' came the response.
There was a long moment of silence in the car.
What happens when property taxes are delinquent?
In an interview a few weeks later, Barnes explained that Yolande Minor, the other Atlanta-area relative, had managed their parcel of property for many years. But Minor had taken ill in recent years and had been paring back her responsibilities, including by selling one of her own plots to Blair. Paying the taxes on Barnes' and Gamble's behalf had apparently fallen through the cracks.
Minor was too ill to speak with USA TODAY for this story.
The day he visited the courthouse, Blair emailed Barnes information about McIntosh Seed and the Federation of Southern Cooperatives, believing they would help her as they had him.
In a conversation a few weeks later with USA TODAY, Barnes said she intended to do everything necessary to get the title in her own name, and acknowledged that it 'shouldn't have gone this long.' But as of publication time, she had not reached out to either organization, or made any other efforts.
Outside experts consulted by USA TODAY explained that there is a vast market for unpaid tax obligations. Investors may buy the tax debts – usually in the form of liens – and may attempt to collect the back taxes as well as additional interest and fees that accrue. Or they may try to take ownership of the property via the title.
It's also generally easy to determine when property taxes have gone unpaid, by consulting municipal records such as county websites.
As of publication time for this article, it's unclear exactly what happened in the case of Barnes' and Gamble's taxes, but it seems likely they will have to hire attorneys to sort through the ownership issues. Lawyers consulted for this piece also say Barnes' and Gamble's experience is a reminder that not only is it critical to make sure taxes are paid, but also that titles are up-to-date in the correct owners' name.
The fixer
Blair met Charles Ware, a quiet man with a sprinkling of white in his trim beard, through a Rayle-area cousin. Ware, who grew up locally, can remember a spate of Black church burnings as recently as the late 1970's. He was impressed by Blair, having never heard of the various forestry programs that served small landowners, and was eager to partner with him.
For his part, Blair had a lot of respect for people who showed up - who executed, in his words. And after the disheartening trip to the courthouse, it was almost a relief to get back to the land, to something he could see and touch.
Ware brought along a friend, a slender man introduced as Catfish who had his own land management problems. Catfish had run into trouble paying his taxes and was quietly allowing people to hunt on his land illicitly, hoping to earn enough money from the fees to make a dent in what he owed.
Both men were amazed to hear of Blair's troubles - and persistence - in trying to secure a logger over the past year and a half, by phone, email and video conferences from his home in Phoenix.
'You from out of town and you Black? I tip my hat to you, brother,' Catfish said, shaking his head.
He and Ware could be good for each other, Blair thought. Ware needed work - and Blair couldn't believe he was the only small landowner with trees that needed thinning. Beyond the immediate logging tasks, he reasoned, it would be a relief to have a local representative he could trust.
They left the land a few hours later, Ware's truck in the lead, as he pointed out some of the key locations in Rayle: the slave trade building, the Black church where ancestors might be buried.
Heirs need legal help
Few heirs have Saul Blair's determination, time, money, and business acumen. But even Blair believes he would greatly benefit from an attorney to review the LLC he set up to make sure it was done correctly. Barnes and Gamble can't afford private legal counsel to sort through what happened, they say.
In 2023, when Barnes became aware the tax bills were being sent elsewhere, she reached out to an organization called Georgia Heirs' Property Law Center. Over a period of roughly a year she said she submitted all kinds of requested documentation, only to receive a form response that was hard to interpret.
Confusingly, she was told that so many of her family members were named as part of her application that 'there is a high probability that you and the other relatives that contacted us would have competing interests,' a suggestion that seemed intractably chicken-and-egg.
Blair also made his own inquiries to the same organization over the same time period regarding his own land. He also submitted pages and pages of documents. Many months went by before he got a call saying the organization couldn't help him.
For all that, the Law Center is the organization to which many other heirs' property groups direct legal inquiries. That included, the University of Georgia School of Law Land Conservation Clinic, which Blair discovered in June. Untangling the issues of heirs like him would be a wonderful project for law students, he believed.
He received a response almost immediately: "The clinic focuses on voluntary land conservation issues and also cannot (participate in litigation.) I also do not have the expertise your complex issue will need." Blair was not surprised to be passed along to the Law Center once again.
USA TODAY made repeated efforts to contact the Georgia Heirs' Property Law Center but received no response.
Meanwhile, even if heirs are able to untangle the title issues around their property, there's still the question of what to do with the land. Blair's intuition was correct: he's not the only one struggling with land stewardship.
'One challenge I see many landowners come up against is if they don't have enough land, it is so financially burdensome for a contractor to come do services on that land that it's really hard for small acreage landowners to get that basic work done,' said Bethaney Wilkinson, the executive director of the Sustainable Forestry and African American Land Retention Network, an umbrella organization of which McIntosh SEED is a member.
At the same time, the political environment is becoming even trickier for organizations working to save Black-owned land, said Cornelius Blanding, executive director of the Federation of Southern Cooperatives.
About three-quarters of the Federation's funding has traditionally come from various government agencies, Blanding told USA TODAY. But starting in 2025, several of their funding agreements were canceled, some because the work they do is deemed to have a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) mandate, and some because it addresses climate change.
Helping small farmers should outweigh the political considerations, Blanding argues.
'Heirs property is a civil rights issue,' he said, but 'at the end of the day, we see the work that we do as critical not just to Black farmers, but to this nation. Because when we lose our farming base, our land base, it becomes a problem.'
One day at a time
Two weeks after returning home, Blair was discouraged.
Charles Ware, whom he'd had such high hopes for as they roamed the land, had stopped answering texts. Blair believed he was back to 'square one' with his quest for a logger.
Meanwhile, the day after Cornelius Blanding spoke with USA TODAY for this article, a lawyer with his organization called Blair wanting to talk about his request for assistance. She kept him on the phone for 45 minutes, Blair said, asking questions about the land and the various family issues, as he tried to direct her to the documents he'd previously submitted and explanations he'd given to other people in her organization.
The lawyer told Blair she'd take a few weeks to review his case. He has no hope she'll be of any help.
But if there's anything more heartbreaking than the do-gooders that don't help, the loggers who won't bite, and the historical records that remain silent, it's the knowledge that it all might end here, Blair says.
No-one in the family's younger generation cares as much about the land as Blair does. His children and nieces and nephews have no interest in carrying on his efforts and often dismiss his updates with two-word responses: 'Great. Thanks!'
One family member called to ask him about his June trip and wound up trying to convince him to sell the land - not the first time he's heard such advice.
'There's a lack of understanding the legacy and the trials and tribulation John Thomas went through to get there,' Blair said in July. 'If you don't care, that's fine. But you can't just let it go.'
Surprisingly, Blair sees parallels between his career in the health care industry and his mission to reclaim the Thomas land.
'If you don't have an advocate when you maneuver through the healthcare system of America, you are lost,' he said. 'It's difficult to manage these insurance companies and get an appointment. This is the same thing. I can understand Ella and I can understand Vivian and Yolande. They just throw their hands up. And that's why millions of acres have been lost.'
Still, the next day, he was back at it. Someone from the Federation of Southern Cooperatives had called, explaining that Blanding wanted to speak and see what else he could do to help. Blair meant to call back, but first he needed to organize a conference call between Barnes, Gamble, and the woman in the county tax office.
He thought of John and he went to work.