A Message From Our Editor: From Forty Acres and a Mule to a Van and Some Land

Editor: Keith D. Williams

After the Civil War, the promise was simple but transformative: forty acres and a mule. It wasn’t charity—it was justice. It was reparative economics in its earliest form. It was a blueprint to help formerly enslaved Black Americans build a life, start businesses, grow food, and create wealth for generations to come. But that promise was revoked. And the ripple effects of that broken pledge still shape the wealth gap, housing instability, and economic vulnerability we face today.

In 2025, we’re not asking for mules. We’re not even asking—we’re demanding. And what we demand is clear: a van and some land.

The land still symbolizes the same thing it did in 1865—ownership, security, and the ability to build something of our own. But the van? That’s the modern mule. It’s a tool of economic empowerment. A van can transport goods, carry tools, help launch a landscaping company, a mobile salon, a youth mentorship program. It gives movement, hustle, and independence. A van and some land is not about materialism—it’s about mobility and ownership. It’s a new reparations language built for this generation.

In cities like Detroit—where Black Bottom was bulldozed, where Black families were redlined and pushed out of generational wealth—this is not just a metaphor. It’s policy. It’s development. It’s justice. We should not be talking about turning I-375 into an eight-lane highway. We should be talking about returning that land to the people it was taken from and rebuilding a thriving, Black-owned district that uplifts culture and commerce.

It’s time to stop pretending that history doesn’t still live in our budgets, in our streets, and in our planning departments. If we can subsidize billion-dollar stadiums and highways, we can subsidize Black futures.

We never got the forty acres. We never got the mule. But we’re still here, still building, still demanding. And today, we want a van and some land.