The most accurate summary lies between denial and overstatement: slavery was foundational to important sectors of the early American economy and helped create wealth extending far beyond the plantations where enslaved people worked. It was not the sole source of everything the country later produced.
What Were “40 Acres and a Mule”?
The expression has a genuine Civil War-era foundation.
In January 1865, Union General William T. Sherman issued Special Field Orders No. 15. The order reserved a coastal region of the South for the settlement of newly freed Black families. Parcels of up to 40 acres were to be assigned to eligible households.
The “mule” portion developed from the distribution or lending of surplus Army animals to some settlers. The formal order principally concerned land; it did not establish a nationwide statutory guarantee of both 40 acres and a mule for every formerly enslaved person.
The program was significant because land represented independence. Formerly enslaved families understood that freedom without property or economic security could remain dangerously fragile.
For a period, thousands of Black people settled on land under the order.
Later in 1865, President Andrew Johnson reversed much of the policy and restored substantial areas to former Confederate owners. Many Black families who had begun farming the land were removed.
The episode became a symbol of a broader failure during Reconstruction: formerly enslaved people obtained legal freedom, but most did not receive the productive assets needed to compete with people whose property and wealth had been protected across generations.
Thus, “we never got our 40 acres and a mule” is historically grounded, although it generalizes a regional military policy into a national broken promise.
Freedom Without an Economic Foundation
The end of slavery did not produce economic equality.
Many formerly enslaved families entered sharecropping arrangements requiring them to farm land owned by someone else in exchange for a portion of the crop. High-interest credit, manipulated accounts and coercive laws frequently trapped workers in debt.
Southern states enacted Black Codes intended to restrict mobility and labor choices. Convict-leasing systems then supplied businesses and governments with disproportionately Black forced labor.
During the Jim Crow era, segregation and political exclusion shaped access to education, employment, transportation and public services.
In the twentieth century, federal policy helped millions of Americans purchase homes and accumulate wealth. But discrimination in mortgage lending and federally supported redlining prevented many Black families from accessing the same opportunities.
Race-restrictive covenants, violence and exclusionary zoning reinforced residential segregation. Even after explicit racial discrimination became illegal, disparities continued through unequal property valuations, credit access and inherited wealth.
This is why Pressley mentioned appraisal bias and redlining. In her argument, reparations are not only payment for labor performed before 1865. They are a response to a chain of policies that constrained wealth after emancipation.