Owning a Piece of America

Bernice Bennett (0:02)

My parents own a home.

I'm a homeowner. My sisters are homeowners. Land ownership was just something that we understood was part of the American Dream for us.

Imani Moise (0:16)

For over a hundred years, the US government has helped everyday people pursue home ownership.

Jacob Freefeld (0:22)

It is this awesome challenge.

Imani Moise (0:25)

But now this core part of the American Dream is starting to feel more like a fantasy. And many people wonder if their own kids will have the same shot.

Bernice Bennett (0:34)

When I close my eyes, I want to know that he has his own home.

Imani Moise (0:39)

As an affordability crisis plagues the housing market, can the federal government once again put home ownership within reach?

It's Sunday, June 28th. I'm Imani Moise for The Wall Street Journal. This is USA250, a podcast series connecting America's economic present to its past. This is the fifth and final episode, Owning a Piece of America.

Bernice Bennett (1:05)

Now know we that there is therefore granted by the United States unto the said Peter Clarke the track of land above described.

Imani Moise (1:16)

That's Bernice Bennett. She's reading a deed from 1896, signed by President Grover Cleveland, bestowing 159.33 acres of land in Louisiana to her great-great-grandfather, Peter Clarke, who just years before was enslaved.

Bernice Bennett (1:34)

I had chills when I opened it and I saw his name, his age, and understood that, wait a minute, he went through this process and he acquired that land. It's just told me that this man born enslaved was definitely determined to own land.

Imani Moise (1:57)

Peter acquired the land at the ripe age of 38 through the Homestead Act of 1862, which granted citizens or wannabe citizens of the United States, 160 acres of federal land for a small fee.

Bernice Bennett (2:10)

You have a receipt because he had to pay money, $18.

Imani Moise (2:15)

The catch? You had to farm that land for five years. They called it Proving Up. At the time, home and land ownership was an exclusive club, made up almost entirely of wealthy white men.

But that was about to change.

Just about anyone could make a claim under the Homestead Act of 1862, as long as they hadn't taken up arms against the US. People came from all over, by ship, by train, by horse and buggy. There were men, single women, and even black Americans recently freed from slavery. One historian has called it the most comprehensive form of wealth redistribution that has ever taken place in America.

Rick Edwards (2:59)

It helped support the notion that poor people could, if they worked hard, could rise in society.

Imani Moise (3:08)

That's Rick Edwards, the Director Emeritus of the Center for Great Plains Studies at the University of Nebraska. Before Americans ever dreamed of owning a home, the key to building wealth in this country was through land.

Rick Edwards (3:21)

Well, in a farming society, the biggest asset you had was the land you owned or rented. And so the idea that if you move to this new area, you could get land for free was a bonanza.

Imani Moise (3:39)

Edward says about 3 million people tried their hand at homesteading, including tens of thousands of Black Americans like Peter Clark.

Rick Edwards (3:46)

And so it's the first piece of national legislation that did not restrict its benefits to white people.

Imani Moise (3:58)

But that's not all. Hundreds of thousands of immigrants and single women heeded the government's call to the West.

Jacob Freefeld (4:06)

In fact, it was a really beneficial law to immigrants that encouraged immigration.

Imani Moise (4:11)

That's Jacob Freefeld, Director of the Center for Lincoln Studies at the University of Illinois, Springfield. He's also kind of like Edward's protege.

And together, they've literally written the book on homesteading.

Jacob Freefeld (4:22)

And another thing you get is women claiming land too. It's progressive in that way that women are allowed to claim land in their own name.

Imani Moise (4:30)

But as egalitarian as the act was, it was only made possible through dispossession. Before America's homesteaders could settle the prairies, tens of thousands of Native Americans were pushed out.

Success wasn't guaranteed either. Homesteaders arrived on a treeless prairie in the Great Plains. The only way to build a home was to quite literally dig up the ground beneath you and make heavy bricks out of dirt, grass and roots.

Jacob Freefeld (4:57)

Sometimes people complain that snakes would come in and out of the walls because you're building your house out of their home, essentially.

Imani Moise (5:04)

Homesteaders also had to answer to Mother Nature. One family from North Dakota spent three years building up a prosperous farm. But in one day, a fire tore through the prairie, burning their home, their barn, their livestock, and all of their crops.