The myth that free-market principles were guiding political choices was further exposed as hypocrisy because blacks could not even pay “market prices” for land. White southerners simply refused to sell land to blacks. Land was sometimes sold at half the price to white buyers compared to what black buyers were offering just to avoid selling their land to blacks. Even when white landowners did not have sufficient resources to cultivate the land themselves, they still spurned black buyers.54 Southern states even passed laws that forbade white sellers to sell land to blacks.
