Thread by @dukekwondc

While the postbellum promise of "40 acres and a mule" is typically credited to Union General William Sherman, the idea itself was derived from the words and advocacy of Reverend Garrison Frazier, pastor of First Bryan Baptist Church in Savannah, Ga. #BlackReparationsHistory

On January 12, 1865, Gen Sherman and Sec of War Edwin Stanton met with a group of twenty black ministers from Savannah discuss what they wanted for their newly freed people. The highly respected Rev. Frazier, aged 67 at the time, was chosen to speak on behalf of the group.

During the meeting, later known as the Savannah Colloquy, he was asked a series of questions. Frazier, who had purchased his & his wife's freedom for $1k in gold/silver only 8 years prior, responded with powerful and persuasive words, such as the following:

"Slavery is receiving by irresistible power the work of another man, and not by his consent. The freedom ... promised by the proclamation is taking us from under the yoke of bondage, and placing us where we could reap the fruit of our own labor, take care of ourselves."

"The way we can best take care of ourselves is to have land, and turn it and till it by our own labor-that is, by the labor of the women and children and old men; and we can soon maintain ourselves and have something to spare."

Frazier's words — which echoed growing popular sentiment among black freed people that land ownership was essential to their freedom and a necessary entailment of emancipation — proved influential in the creation of General Sherman's Special Field Orders, No. 15.

Four days after the meeting, on January 16, 1865, Sherman called for 400,000 acres of coastal land that had been confiscated from Southern enslavers to be redistributed to newly freed people in 40-acre plots.

Before the end of the year, Sherman's order was overturned by President Andrew Johnson, who returned the land to former planters and enslavers. "40 acres and a mule," as a promise, proved elusive.

Even so, thanks to the advocacy of Rev. Frazier, "40 acres" remains an important public expression of African American convictions about what emancipation could have, and should have, entailed from the beginning. #BlackRepairers #BlackReparationsHistory