Entry · catalog no. 3001
40 acres and a mule
/ /ˈfɔrti ˈeɪkərz ənd ə ˈmjul/ /FAW-tee AY-kerz and uh MYOOL
noun phrase · Sea Islands / South-wide · 1860s
✓ Verified
1.
The wartime redistribution of confiscated Confederate coastal land to freed families in forty-acre plots, authorized in January 1865 and rescinded within the year. In Black speech the phrase long ago stopped naming the policy and became standing shorthand for a debt owed and never paid.
“Every conversation about reparations starts in the same place: forty acres and a mule.”
Origin & Attribution
Black Savannah, January 1865. On the night of the twelfth, twenty Black ministers met General Sherman and Secretary of War Stanton at the Green mansion. Their spokesman, Rev. Garrison Frazier, sixty-seven and self-emancipated, told them land worked by their own labor was how his people would take care of themselves. Field Order No. 15 followed four days later. Correct the standing error: this is almost always framed as Sherman's idea or a Union gift. It is a transcribed Black demand.
1865
Jan 12 — the Savannah Colloquy; Garrison Frazier and twenty ministers state the demand for land
1865
Jan 16 — Sherman issues Special Field Orders No. 15, setting aside roughly 400,000 coastal acres in forty-acre plots
1865
Andrew Johnson rescinds the order; the land is returned to former planters
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
The South
Sea Islands / South-wide · 1860s
Spoken by
Freedpeople of the coastal South; every generation since
$ACRESAThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Steady161 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
88/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1865
in the culture
Cultural energy indexed from documented usage, search interest, and citation frequency. The recorded date is the archive’s permanent point of record.
Hear it spoken
By region — how it actually sounds
@nolakid
New Orleans, LA
@htxdri
Houston, TX
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Citations & Sources
■
Special Field Orders No. 15, William T. Sherman — federal military order · January 16, 1865
archive-desk
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Savannah Colloquy, transcript of the meeting with Rev. Garrison Frazier — historical record · January 12, 1865
archive-desk
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+ Cite a sourceForty Acres and a Mule: The Freedmen''s Bureau and Black Land Ownership, Claude F. Oubre — LSU Press · 1978
archive-desk
See also