Bailey & Thomson: Heirs Property and Reparations
In Heirs Property, Critical Race Theory, and Reparations, authors Conner Bailey and Ryan Thomson (both of the Department of Agricultural Economics & Rural Sociology at Auburn) examine the involuntary loss of land and homes among Black residents in the southeastern United States, particularly the Gullah/Geechee population.
The Gullah/Geechee are a Black (or Afro-indigenous) population who have resided in the coastal low country and sea islands of North and South Carolina, Georgia, and northern Florida since before the Civil War. They speak a unique Creole language, have a unique set of religious practices, and they have become increasingly well-organized through founding of the Gullah/Geechee Sea Island Coalition and in electing a Queen to represent the Gullah/Geechee Nation. Despite their strong culture and recognized status, the authors assert that the Gullah/Geechee are victims of predatory real estate practices, particularly surrounding heirs property.
Heirs property is created when a landowner dies with real property that is not probated through the local court system. As a result, land and other real property is passed, often informally, across multiple generations, resulting in scores or sometimes even hundreds of heirs sharing legal claim to undivided interests in the property. Clearing title to heirs property is a lengthy and expensive process involving the identification of all heirs, achieving agreement of all heirs on a course of action, and ultimately engaging the services of a lawyer. However, as the article describes in detail, many Black residents of the South, including the Gullah/Geechee, do not have legal representation and heirs property landowners can be targeted by real estate developers and other predatory buyers.
This article identifies and discusses the legal vulnerabilities associated with heirs property, in particular tax sales and predatory partition actions, as mechanisms used within the legal system to dispossess owners of their land. The authors use critical race theory (“CRT”) as a lens to to look at the systemic vulnerability of heirs property, in particular among the Gullah/Geechee population.
The authors also articulate a case for reparations for the Gullah/Geechee population. The authors do not speak to the larger issue of reparations owed to Black Americans as a whole; however, they propose a far more targeted approach to reparations by tying specific injustices committed within the recent past, where legal documents are likely to exist providing evidence of how injustices were committed. The article describes their vision and methods for implementing these reparations, including a plan that they predict could generate over $21 million annually to be put towards reparations for the Gullah/Geechee people.
In sum, the authors argue that not only did the legal system fail to provide equal protection during the Jim Crow era, but that even now, decades later, the legacy of this era is still with us. Their description of the Gullah/Geechee people sheds light onto the harms they have faced and suggests a starting point for developing an equitable plan to redress harms to the Gullah/Geechee people.
