The American Nightmare of a broken Promise

Kendrick Lamar's performance at the super bowl halftime show left some people amazed and others confused and disappointed. The artist was joined on stage by Samuel L. Jackson, who, dressed as Uncle Sam, made some critical remarks, claiming that the performance was not "American". Lamar countered with the first chords of his highly explicit diss track against fellow artist Drake - certainly not what Uncle Sam wanted to hear. As fans begin to realise that he is actually going to play the highly anticipated song after only teasing it earlier, Lamar has some pre-show remarks:

It’s a cultural divide Imma get it on the flow

40 Acres and a Mule this is bigger than the music

They tried to rig the game, but you can’t fake influence.

But what exactly does he refer to when saying 40 Acres and a Mule? Other black celebrities like Kanye West and Spike Lee have referenced it before, but to really answer this question, we have to go back 160 years in history and uncover one of America's darkest broken promises. 

Special field order no. 15

Picture this: The year is 1865, and the Union, known as the north, and the Confederacy, known as the south, have been fighting a bloody war for nearly four years. After Union General Sherman's March to the Sea left a trail of scorched earth across much of the Confederacy's territory, their war effort was crippled. When Sherman arrived in the coastal city of Savannah, Georgia, he had to find a way to deal with the shattered remains of the institution of slavery. Thousands of slaves had been freed, but they had nowhere to go and often suffered from hunger and disease. Sherman thus called for a meeting with representatives of the black community, namely Garrison Frazier, a 67 year old former Baptist pastor. Frazier suggested that

Both sides agreed that land ownership was the best way to move forward peacefully, so on 16 January, four days after the meeting, Sherman issued "Special Field Order no. 15", in which he first clarified that "the negro is free and must be dealt with as such". He then went on to allot “a plot of not more than (40) forty acres of tillable ground” to each black family. Former slaves were to form their own communities, completely separate from white settlements. An inspector of settlements and plantations was appointed by Sherman, to allocate the land among the freed slaves and to oversee the founding of “police and general management” in these new settlements. Although mules were not mentioned in the field order, they were in practice often given to black families, which led to the phrase “40 acres and a mule”.

Abolitionist members of Congress backed Sherman's orders, and the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands ("Freedmen's Bureau") began allocating land confiscated from former slave owners. The new settlers would have to pay 6% of the land's value each year for three years, after which they would be able to buy it legally. A wave of enthusiasm began to build among the freed slaves and quickly spread across much of the South. Black families flocked to Georgia to claim the land they had been promised. By June 1865, some 40,000 freedmen had settled on 435,000 acres (180,000 ha) of confiscated land.

If the story were to end here, Lamar and other artists would not have had a reason to bring it up. So why does Kanye West sing “We try to buy back our forty acres”?

The broken promise

On April 15th, 1865, at 7:22 am in the Peterson House in Washington D.C., Abraham Lincoln’s heart stopped beating. On that day, a progressive, emancipatory president was succeeded by his conservative, pro-reunification vice-president. After being in office for little over a month, president Andrew Johnson issued an amnesty proclamation to most southern citizens, which also included the return of the land that had been seized from them. The president’s proclamation stood in contrast with the Freedmen’s Bureau’s task to allocate land to black people. The Bureau decided to defend its original task and sent out the so-called “Circular #13”, in which it instructed its officers to continue allocating land. The officers were supposed to allocate “confiscated land”, which General O. O. Howard, chief of the Freedmen’s Bureau, understood to be exempt from Johnson’s proclamation. Johnson, however, quickly stepped in and forced Howard to send out a new circular (#15) which made it really difficult for land to be considered as “confiscated”. This order significantly reduced allocation to black people and, in some places, stopped it completely. 

Issues also arose when some southern legislators prohibited black people from owning land through the so-called “Black Codes”. The Freedmen's Bureau was initially able to base its actions on federal policy, but this became increasingly difficult as the Union army began to demobilise. 

Eventually, under pressure from pro-capitalist politicians led by Johnson in the North and virtually all politicians in the South, widespread black land ownership became a broken promise. Instead, the emphasis was shifted to wage labour. The result was that many former slaves had to return the land they had been given and work for former slave owners with no prospect of land ownership or escaping the shackles of dependency.

“You can’t fake influence”

Fast forward 160 years, and despite the considerable efforts of human rights activists who have significantly improved the rights and living conditions of black people, inequalities still exist. As Lamar pointed out, there is still a "cultural divide", and in many cases, the game is "rigged" against black people. But one thing has changed: the influence that black culture, through artists like Lamar, has on the US. While Jackson's Uncle Sam tries to get artists to "tighten up" because they're "too ghetto", Lamar stands on America's biggest stage, skips many of the crowd pleasers, and accuses rival Drake of being a paedophile. Many football fans disliked the performance, but defying expectations and not conforming to the norm was exactly the point. Black people may never get 40 acres and a mule, but they have the cultural influence to make their voices heard, which is the ace up their sleeve in a rigged game.