I Saw Death Coming: A History of Terror and Survival in the War against Reconstruction

by Kidada E. Williams

Land-hungry families encountered whites who refused to sell or lease land to them. Landless whites in their communities were vehemently opposed to African Americans obtaining land before they did. Property-owning whites tried to stop Black people from buying land, especially if they wanted more than the bare minimum for subsistence farming. Black mechanics, one Vicksburg bureau agent reported, “who have made several thousand dollars during the last two years, find it impossible to buy even land enough to put up a house,” yet white men could purchase any amount of land they wanted. As the agent noted, whites knew that if they could deny Black people property or land ownership, then these freed people would be bound to return to the former slave labor camps and work for wages that barely supported themselves and their families. These whites reasoned that “this kind of slavery will be better than none at all,” the agent observed.98