Reclaiming land
Last year, John Deere partnered with the National Black Growers Council and the Thurgood Marshall College Fund to create the Legislation, Education, Advocacy and Production Systems, or LEAP, coalition. Since its September launch, the group has been working to help Black farmers and their families overcome legal obstacles stemming from heirs’ property disputes.
Beginning this week, LEAP is paying three Black law school interns from Southern University, an HBCU, to work on heirs’ property cases like Robinson’s. Interns Michael S. Adams Jr., Toria Rotibi and Khyla Morgan are being trained to help Black farmers and their descendants unlock the true value of the land they rightfully own by getting courts to grant them clear-title privileges.
“We have been learning the past few days the correlation between lynching and the stealing of black land, how they go hand and hand,” Morgan told CNN Business on Wednesday. “That comes forward to today where they’re trying to continue taking land from our people. It’s only day three and I’ve learned so much.”
After doing some research nine years ago, Robinson eventually reached out to the Federation Of Southern Cooperatives, a nonprofit group of Black farmers and landowners in southeastern states that has been providing legal and technical assistance for decades to those who need it.
The group’s attorneys helped Robinson get Deshler’s lawsuit thrown out of court.
“That immediately took away the threat of this guy forcing a sale,” Robinson said.
But the Deshler family still owns 1/15 of Joe Ely’s land. LEAP is helping Robinson recover that last share of his family’s birthright.
“I want to make sure the land stays in the family forever,” Robinson said, “to honor our grandfather’s legacy.”
CNN is being dishonest. Some of the land was sold years ago.
Even more stirring up racial hatred crap from CNN? You bet. Nothing new about that.
What the story carefully avoids....is that property taxes come up and if you don’t pay...there will be a point where the county judge will claim the property in the interest of the county and resell the property.
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Oh good God it’s a simple title dispute because of multiple kids inheriting in the past and people dying without wills.
And that’s now related to lynching?
This is total BS. A black family owned this land through the worst periods of racism and now in 2021 a simple dispute over ownership is about lynching?
Can someone explain to me how the land was stolen from BLACKS?
It looks like this a court case BETWEEN blacks.
The headlines makes like some evil white supremacist-nationalists (Trump supporters) stole it.
Don’t you love the false significance of saying a legal claim was by “somebody he never met”.
If I have a claim to land somewhere, I have to know the people squatting on it?
Instead of donating huge sums to the unaccountable, Marxist BLM perhaps Bezos, Gates and all the other guilt ridden bizarre billionaires can buy land and turn it over to the oppressed minority of their choice. That ought to amuse them for a while.
Ok so this land got inherited by 15 people and one of the families sold their share so now it’s “racism” that this guy doesn’t have clear title.
Alabama does have a law where the fractional owner could force sale of the land to him, but they got that thrown out of court.
So in the end this equals we’re black so we’re going to get a court to wipe out a white guy’s interest in the land.
The problem was not that Robison is black; it is because his grandfather did not have a will and his property was divided between his 15 children, one of whom sold his 1/15th share to someone else.
Maybe John Deere and the Feds should get the lands in Alabama and Mississippi returned to the Choctaws, Chickasaws and Creeks from whom it was taken in the 1830’s.
While I generally have a low opinion of Southern, I’ve met a few Black lawyers from there who were decent. White law students from there are, however, someone whom I would never hire. They obviously weren’t able to get in anywhere else. (As I recall, the law school student body is between a quarter and a third white).
“But the Deshler family still owns 1/15 of Joe Ely’s land.”
I’ve seen this same situation in real life. Parents die and leave a home to 3 kids. Two kids want to sell, one doesn’t.
• The two kids are stuck in a business arrangement with the third child who is impossible to deal with.
• The house is used as rental property, but often sites empty due to the obstinance of the third child.
• The two kids’ dreams of investing their inheritance is thwarted by the third kid.
Summary:
Black grandfather had 15 heirs to some acreage. One of the heirs sold their share for a small amount and using a law designed to keep land from being split too many ways, tried to force the sale of it for a profit.
The lesson here is, take your cousins to a Notary and get them to sign over any claims to land.
$1,600 per acre. For those who don’t know, Barlow Bend is in the middle of nowhere in South Alabama, about 60 miles north of Mobile in Clarke County on the Alabama River.
This was a significant factor in the long running issues with USDA. The scurrilous charge was made by the grifters that USDA was systematically discriminating against black farmers; this was never true, at least on a large and systemic scale, and the payoffs executed by the Clinton and Obama administrations on this count were pure political thievery. What was true, however, is that a black small farmer would come to a local USDA office -- today FSA, NRCS, RMA, Rural Housing Service, etc., though they've gone by other names over the years -- typically seeking a USDA loan for various purposes. One can probably find rare cases of outright racial discrimination, but what was very common was that clouded title meant that black small farmers couldn't use their land as collateral for loans. Cousin Ralph might have been working the land since Uncle Phil died, and so on back to the original sharecropper who scraped up enough to buy 50 acres and the old house ... but 57 cousins, uncles and aunts have a share of the title, and Cousin Ralph is hogtied in trying to get a loan. He can't expand. He can't modernize. He can't get a loan for erosion control or tiling or irrigation.
It's not an easy problem to solve. There's no way to tell great-grandpa, a semi-literate ex-sharecropper who died in 1937, that he should get a will. So what can be done? It's been awhile since I've visited the issue. USDA was doing some serious spadework on it back during the Bush 43 administration, but the Obama people were more interested in paying off the political pressure groups. I don't know where it stands now.
Relax guys. The land will have to be sold to pay the estate tax.
“land is worth more than $212,000”
So what would their share of the property tax been had they been in possession of it?
Since they weren’t paying it, they need to deduct that amount from whatever they get.
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How John Deere is helping Black farmers and their descendants take back unjustly seized land
CNN ^ | 6:32 AM ET, Fri May 14, 2021 | Chauncey Alcorn
Posted on 5/15/2021, 9:04:45 AM by snarkytart