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Black Towns and Stolen Land: From the Carolinas to the Great Migration

They built towns with their own hands
and named the streets after their own.
They held the deed, the store, the bank, the church, the school.
Some towns were burned. Some were flooded. Some were bought out on paper.
But a town is more than its buildings.
The people walked out carrying it, and they’re still carrying it.

After freedom, and even before it, our people built hundreds of their own towns across the South, the Plains and Indian Territory. They farmed millions of acres. Then, piece by piece, much of that land left our hands. This is the record of the towns, the land, and where it went.

In this guide

  1. What the people hold
  2. The towns we built
  3. How the towns and land were lost
  4. The acres, by the numbers
  5. The Great Migration
  6. How to find your family’s town and land

What the people hold

What families sayStanding
“We had land. Hundreds of acres.”Oral Tradition, often backed by The Record (deeds, tax rolls, the agricultural census)
“We were run off.”Oral Tradition, backed by The Record in many places (Forsyth County, Rosewood, Tulsa and others)
There were far more Black towns than the history books show.Community Belief, backed by The Record (Oklahoma alone had more than 50)

The towns we built

Standing: The Record, unless noted.

TownWhereWhenThe story
Fort MoseFlorida1738A free town of formerly enslaved people who escaped from the Carolinas, with its own militia. See Before They Were Called Seminole.
Seneca VillageManhattan, New York1825–1857A neighborhood of Black landowners, with churches and a school. The city condemned it to build Central Park.
MitchelvilleHilton Head, South Carolina1862One of the first self-governing towns of freed people, with its own laws and a school.
PrincevilleNorth Carolina1865 (incorporated 1885)Founded as Freedom Hill. Often called the oldest town incorporated by Black Americans.
NicodemusKansas1877Founded by families who left Kentucky for the Plains. Now a National Historic Site.
EatonvilleFlorida1887One of the first incorporated all-Black towns. Zora Neale Hurston’s hometown.
Mound BayouMississippi1887Founded by Isaiah Montgomery. It had its own bank, hospital and newspaper.
Boley and the Oklahoma townsIndian Territory / Oklahoma1890s–1910sMore than 50 all-Black towns, many on Freedmen allotments. See The Freedmen Rolls.
GreenwoodTulsa, Oklahoma1906–1921A thriving Black business district, known as “Black Wall Street.”

How the towns and land were lost

  • Burned: Greenwood, Tulsa (May 31–June 1, 1921). Rosewood, Florida (January 1923). Mobs destroyed whole communities, and survivors were rarely paid back. Standing: The Record.
  • Forced out: in 1912, Black residents of Forsyth County, Georgia, more than a thousand people, were driven out by night riders. Their farms passed into other hands. Some of the land in the area, including around Oscarville, now lies under Lake Lanier, a reservoir built in the 1950s. Standing: The Record (the expulsion); the Lake Lanier link is widely reported, verify county by county.
  • Condemned: Seneca Village (1857) and many neighborhoods later cleared for highways and “urban renewal” in the 1950s and 1960s. Standing: The Record.
  • Drained on paper: guardianships over Freedmen allotments, tax sales, unpaid loans, and partition sales of heirs’ property, land passed down without a will, so any one heir or outside buyer can force a sale of the whole tract. The U.S. Department of Agriculture names heirs’ property as a leading cause of Black land loss. Standing: The Record.
  • Denied: Black farmers were turned away from federal farm loans for decades. The government settled the class action Pigford v. Glickman in 1999. Standing: The Record.

The acres, by the numbers

Around 1910, Black farmers owned an estimated 15 million acres or more, most of it across the South. By the end of the 20th century, only a fraction remained in Black hands, often estimated at a few million acres. Standing: The Record (U.S. Census of Agriculture; USDA).

Families from the Carolinas and Virginia are part of this story. Many held hundreds of acres before the Great Migration, and the land often left the family through partition, tax sales and pressure, not through choice.

The Great Migration

Between about 1910 and 1970, roughly six million of our people left the South for the North, the Midwest and the West. Many left farms and towns behind under threat, and many kept the deed for decades, paying taxes from Chicago or Philadelphia on land they’d one day come home to. Standing: The Record.

How to find your family’s town and land

  1. Ask where “home” was. Elders often name a town, a church or a road. Write it down exactly as they say it.
  2. Find them in the 1900–1940 census. The census lists whether a family owned or rented their home, and whether it was a farm.
  3. Search the deeds. Go to the county register of deeds (many are online). Search your surnames as both buyer (grantee) and seller (grantor).
  4. Check the tax rolls. Land shows up every year. When a name disappears, find out why: a sale, a tax sale, or a death.
  5. Look for heirs’ property. If land passed down without a will, there may still be an interest in it. Talk to a lawyer or a heirs’ property group before anyone sells.
  6. Read the newspapers. Chronicling America (Library of Congress) and local papers covered Black towns, sales and expulsions.
  7. Map it. Put every town, church, deed and grave on one map. Patterns show up fast. That’s what Chronoseer is built for.

Go deeper: Tracing Melanated Ancestry Before 1870 · Foundational Black Americans: Lineage, Land and Legacy · the Vault

Renamed Black. Born Aboriginal.

Questions

What was the first all-Black town in the United States?

Fort Mose in Florida (1738) was a free town of formerly enslaved people. After emancipation, Mitchelville, South Carolina (1862) and Princeville, North Carolina (founded 1865, incorporated 1885) are among the earliest towns governed by freed people.

What is heirs’ property?

Heirs’ property is land passed down without a will, so all heirs share ownership. Any one heir, or anyone who buys a heir’s share, can ask a court to force a sale of the whole property. It’s a leading cause of Black land loss.

How much land did Black farmers lose?

Black farmers owned an estimated 15 million acres or more around 1910. By the late 20th century, only a fraction remained in Black ownership.

Sources