Long After We Are Gone

by Terah Shelton Harris

A family would be able to say the words that need to be said. Tokey stabs at her salad and looks at her siblings. They look like a family. They share the same blood, but are they a family? Are you only a family because you are bound by blood? Ellis wasn’t born into this family and yet they consider him to be an honorary brother. Are you still family if you don’t know each other anymore? Are you still family if you don’t know the whole story?

Ellis has glasses to her soul and could always see into it so clearly.

“The Department of Agriculture has recognized heir property as the leading cause of Black voluntary land loss. Heir property is estimated—and this is only an estimation because I truly believe it could be higher—to make up more than a third of Southern Black-owned land, roughly 3.5 million acres worth over twenty-eight billion dollars.”

This is insanity!!

“Heir property is a form of ownership in which descendants inherit an interest in the land, similar to holding stock in a company,” Ethan explains. “The practice began during the Reconstruction when many Blacks did not have access to the legal system, and it continued throughout the Jim Crow era.”

Today, in the country as a whole, the number of Black Americans without a will is more than double that of white Americans.”

Feelings don’t die. They wait. They stew and grow and surge back bigger, better, stronger than before. They demand to be felt.