Wow, that’s a fabulous comment, and I’m worried I’m outclassed by two lawyers here (LOL). But just add a note of interest, that many of the white immigrants he was talking about came in waves starting slight in the 1830 and 40s, like Germans and Irish (the potato famine in Ireland brought over a million from that alone starting the 1840s and it continued, with three of my mothers grandparents coming over during that cycle in the 1850s and so). What is shocking the land grab and giveaway. When I think of what he was saying, that these were “lower class” immigrants, it is surprising to think they received land, given from the Homestead Act starting in 1862. I have to fully absorb it, but to think this act was started by Lincoln, as through it 160 acres were given out to poor WHITE immigrants until 1904, with 80 million acres went to Homesteaders, and more than 270 million altogether to other White Americans. For black Americans, land was “given out” for about 2 or 3 years through the Freedman’s Bureau, but then shutdown by the racist President Johnson. Some of that land was even taken back for those who received it.
Let’s think about it for a second because I could be wrong and I’m not a lawyer, so I would prize your opinion: for forty years, white immigrant non-citizens who did not work or build the country were given a type of reparations, while enslaved black Americans who had built the country for a couple hundred years intergenerational and were paid nothing for their wages in doing this building were given 40 acres and a mule for a few years, then the program shut down and the few percent who were given land had it taken back. In effect, their reparations were nullified. So, I’m not sure what to call that in legal terms, but reparations for white non-US citizens who contributed nothing to America for 40 years and scant reparations for newly freed enslaved black Americans for a couple years.
Additionally, homestead acts continued, with the main one shut down in 1976, and the last one being shut down in 1986 for whites in Alaska, according to the National Park Service, who say the program lasted 123 years—for whites. To me it sounds like a long program of reparations for whites. I would call it vastly and profoundly unfair to black Americans, especially descendants of slaves, but legally I don’t know what it would be called? Any ideas?
Again, I appreciate your comments and insights.
