Union General William T. Sherman issued Field Order 15 on January 16, 1865. It took a strip of coastland extending approximately thirty miles inland from the Atlantic Ocean, stretching from Charleston, South Carolina, to Jacksonville, Florida. The 400,000 acres were to be divided among newly emancipated enslaved Africans in forty-acres sections. This order became the basis for reparations. Unfortunately, the order was rescinded by President Andrew Jackson in the fall of 1865. Enslaved Africans did not receive 40 acres and a mule. The period known as Reconstruction, that soon followed the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, became the nightmare of Jim Crow and orchestrated segregation in the south and subtlety in the north.
What do you do when you are denied rights? What do you do when you witness your ancestors mistreated on auction blocks and in fields? What do you do when your blood, sweat and tears are poured into a land you were forced to claim and love? You learn to value your new home and teach all its residents what it means to be free in the “land of the free and home of the brave.”
Despite what was done to our ancestors and subsequent generations of African Americans, America became a great nation. That happened because those who came to its shores after the initial Europeans came with a determination to make it better. Native Americans were pushed westward in the Trail of Tears between 1850-1860. Many African Americans found refuge migrating northward and westward. Newly freed enslaved people received no acres and no mule. Promises were replaced with—NOTHING.
The government didn’t keep its promise of 40 acres and a mule. Following President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination on April 15, 1865, President Andrew Johnson rescinded Field Order 15 and returned the 400,000 acres of land to Confederate owners—“a strip of coastline stretching from Charleston, South Carolina to the St. John’s River in Florida, including Georgia’s Sea Islands and the mainland 30 miles in from the coast.”
Knowing that America was a place of broken promises, our ancestors took NOTHING and created their own safety nets and thriving communities. Our church is in one of those communities, Smithfield, that learned to thrive during the painstaking days of Jim Crow. Despite the bombings and brutalities around us, our ancestors fought back and survived. We celebrate their accomplishments. We give thanks to the Lord for victories and triumphs over setbacks and defeats.
Amen.
