June 2023

When four million enslaved African Americans were liberated -- or liberated themselves -- in the midst of the Civil War, their hopes for freedom often went hand-in-hand with reparations claims for their years of unpaid labor. Many left farms and plantations with their owners' personal belongings. Others stayed and sought to take possession of the land they had worked. A few made arguments that African Americans should have political autonomy in the form of a black state or nation. This was owed, they argued in the words of one fictional former slave, because they had "buyed it with themselves."