Forty Acres and a Mule: The Freedmen's Bureau and Black Land Ownership

First published in 1978, Claude F. Oubre's Forty Acres and a Mule has since become a definitive study in the history of American Reconstruction. Drawing on a vast collection of government records and newspapers, Oubre examines what he sees as the crucial question of Reconstruction: Why were the vast majority of freed slaves denied the opportunity to own land during the Reconstruction era, leaving them vulnerable to a persecution that strongly resembled slavery? Oubre recounts the struggle of black families to acquire land and how the U.S. government agency Freedmen's Bureau both served and obstructed them.