College of Agriculture > Agricultural Economics & Rural Sociology > Heir Property

Land Loss

African Americans have lost an astounding amount of land over the past half-century. Factors in land loss include tax sales, partition sales, land sales to non-African Americans, inability to make the land a profitable investment, limited access to legal counsel, forceful land takings, inability to obtain credit, discrimination by public and private institutions, and failure of the USDA and the land grant complex to provide adequate resources to small farmers.

Landownership among blacks in the U.S. reached its peak in 1910 when blacks owned approximately 15 million acres. Today that number has dwindled to around 3.3 million. But dispite this significant amount of loss, black-owned land remains one of the most important sources of equity among the African American community, particularly in the rural South.

Land Loss in Alabama

Click the links below to check out numbers and percentages of land loss by race in Alabama from 1954 to 2002:

Number of farms by race in Alabama
Acreage of farms by race in Alabama

Land Loss in the Black Belt

Click on the counties below to see land loss trends in Alabama's Black Belt:

Last Updated Jun. 22, 2011