Defending Black Land in the South: A Conversation Between Steve Dubb and Jennie Stephens – Nonprofit Quarterly

Editors’ Note: This article was originally written for the Summer 2025 issue of Nonprofit Quarterly Magazine, “Land Justice: From Private Ownership to Community Stewardship.”
Steve Dubb: I think many people are unaware that Black Americans went from owning hardly any land before the Civil War to 15 million acres, primarily in the South, by the early 20th century. What drove this period of Black land acquisition?
Jennie Stephens: I can only speak to what I’ve read, but one of my advisory committee members put it very succinctly: as African Americans, we went from being “property” to having the ability to own property. This motivated them to acquire land.
Property was seen as a way for families to build wealth, to provide for themselves, to have that “homestead,” where everybody could, no matter where you went, you could come back and have a place to stay.
As African Americans, we went from being “property” to having the ability to own property. This motivated them to acquire land.
SD: What is heirs’ property?
JS: I’m not an attorney, so I’m giving a layperson’s perspective. Heirs’ property is land that has been passed down without a will resulting in joint, fractionated ownership of the deceased individual’s land.
The term that’s often used is tenancy in common. So, I like to think about it as owning shares into a corporation. You don’t own a particular piece, but you have a fractionated ownership of the corporation. And everybody gets to use and share the land the way they would want, which causes issues.
SD: So in the 19th century, before the first generation died, did they have clear titles?
JS: It’s interesting. In some of the research I’ve done, just for my family, I found a great grand uncle who died, but he left a will. There was an X on the will, but he had an attorney execute it for him.
And it seems like the generations behind him didn’t have that knowledge or didn’t have access [to an attorney]. And from what I’ve read, especially for African Americans, there were no African American attorneys, and they didn’t trust the attorneys who were barred.
It’s not just in the South. In the Appalachian region, it’s the same issue. The skin color of the individual or the families have changed, but it’s the same issue: the distrust of the “system.”
SD: How did you come to create the Center for Heirs’ Property Preservation?
JS: I was working at a local community foundation, the Coastal Community Foundation of South Carolina. I’ll just call them CCF.
CCF had received a grant from the Ford Foundation, where Ford was urging urban community foundations to serve rural areas and, specifically, around the issue of rural economic development.
Whenever the foundation staff would go out into the community and start talking about economic development, they would often hear, “I own land, but…” And inevitably, behind that “but” was an heirs’ property issue.
So the foundation started doing a little more research. Then, I came into the picture at the foundation. I was their senior program director, and it was my job to facilitate discussions among the lawyers, the judges, nonprofit service providers, heirs’ property owners, and funders.
After several opportunities of convening, basically that group decided, what would it look like if we were to fix it? “It” being heirs’ property.
So, I cannot take the total credit for creating this organization. I like to say that I’m a steward of a community’s idea. So, literally, our first couple of years we were a project under Coastal Community Foundation.
That was my introduction to heirs’ property.
Whenever the foundation staff would go out into the community…they would often hear, “I own land, but…” And inevitably, behind that “but” was an heirs’ property issue.
SD: As you know, Black American land ownership fell in the 20th century from about 15 million acres to less than 3 million acres. What factors drove this decline? And how much of this decline is due to heirs’ property partition sales versus other causes?
JS: I can’t give you necessarily a percentage, but I can tell you the loss of land, yes, heirs’ property was definitely a driver.
People didn’t know what to do. You were told verbally what to do with the land when your ancestor passed, but if you didn’t have any connection to the “system,” it remained in this state of ownership.
Then, of course, there’s the USDA [US Department of Agriculture]. USDA played a significant role in the divestiture of farmland from African Americans.
The other thing I would say would be, tax sales. So, you’re living in a modest home, right? But now there’s a subdivision that is established next to your modest home. They now have a gate, so it’s a gated community. The value of your property automatically goes up, right? But your income doesn’t increase to support this increase in taxes levied.
SD: You write about how many heirs’ property owners are “land rich and cash poor.” Could you say more about who are heirs’ property owners today?
JS: Over the Center’s 20 years of delivering legal services, the average heir who applies for our legal services is a female in their early 60s and African American.
Now, that doesn’t mean that they’re the only owner of the land. That is the person who happens to come in and apply for services. Sometimes this applicant may be the little old lady who’s on a fixed income, and the only reason she’s approached us is because, as I said earlier, the property taxes have skyrocketed, and she can’t afford to pay the tax bill. Consequently, she seeks legal assistance to clear title to the land, so that she is only responsible for her fraction of the property.
SD: How prevalent would you say heirs’ property is in the United States today?
JS: That’s a good question, but nobody really knows the answer. That is literally the million-dollar question: How much heirs’ property is there in the US? Several researchers have developed methods to determine which land is most likely heirs’ property.
After being asked by funders numerous times about how much heirs’ property is there in South Carolina, we sought funding to answer this question.
At that time, we weren’t even serving the entire state of South Carolina, but we worked with our local law school students who reviewed property records in our seven counties. We identified that there were at least 48,000 acres in this target area.
SD: That 48,000 acres in seven counties: is that one percent of the land, ten percent?
The resolution of title to this land could result in unencumbered assets that families could use to help move themselves out of poverty.
JS: If I recollect, those 48,000 acres were on average of two to five percent of all property located in those seven counties.
But the land to which we resolved the title, its tax assessed value, was an average of $7,000 an acre. So, if you take that 48,000 acres and multiply that by $7,000, that’s in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
The resolution of title to this land could result in unencumbered assets that families could use to help move themselves out of poverty.
SD: What is the Center’s strategy?
JS: We have a three-branch strategy: prevention, resolution, and land utilization. Prevention means both preventing the loss of heirs’ property and preventing the growth of heirs’ property. Resolution is what you have to do to fix the title when it is past the time allotted by state law to probate an estate. So it’s more complicated.
And the third branch is land utilization. The tool we primarily use is forestry and agroforestry with families to make their land productive and generate income.
About 20 percent of the people [we serve]…need housing repairs, and because they don’t have a clear marketable title, they cannot access funds to make repairs.
But underpinning all of these strategies is education. We want landowners to make informed decisions. It’s not our job to tell them how to use their land but to give them the tools, so that they can be informed and make the best decisions for them and their families.
SD: How does heirs’ property affect housing?
JS: We have people who come to us who need housing repairs. About 20 percent of the people who apply for our legal services need housing repairs, and because they don’t have a clear marketable title, they cannot access funds to make repairs.
Also, if a natural disaster comes, if you’re on heirs’ property, it is hard to access FEMA [Federal Emergency Management Agency] funds to rebuild your home, even though FEMA has said they’ve made some allowances for heirs’ property owners.
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SD: Could you talk about what role policy, such as the Uniform Partition of Heirs Property Act, can play in protecting heirs’ property owners?
JS: Anecdotally, it has helped prevent the loss of land as heirs’ property, because that law makes it more difficult for a person to force a sale. The required extra steps and the increase in cost has deterred the partition of heirs’ property. But we’ve also heard that, in some states, specifically Mississippi, they’re trying to actually revoke that law so it can go back to the way it was.
SD: For folks unfamiliar with how the law works, could you explain it?
JS: I’ll describe this law from a layperson’s perspective. Basically, that act has afforded a couple of things to landowners. If somebody requests a partition of the land, there is the first right of refusal.
If a person is petitioning, the other heirs have the right to buy that individual out. But if you’re land rich but cash poor, even though you have the right to buy it outright, if you don’t have any money, that kind of defeats the purpose. But it still makes it a little harder.
They put in extra controls. Let me give you an example. In Berkeley County in 2002, I think it was, a family had a dispute, and the judge decided that, since there were so many people, they could not divide the land to where it would be of any value.
Let’s say it was 17 acres, and there might have been 50 people. There’s not much you could do with that, right? So the premise behind it is, you can more easily divide money than you can the land. So the judge required that the land be put up for sale, but it didn’t go to a traditional real estate sale; it went through an auction. At an auction it means you get what the highest bidder wants to pay; that doesn’t mean that you get what your land is worth.
And from that particular story, there were developers who bought that land for about $900,000 and after the title was cleared, they did nothing else to that land and sold it for like, $3 million. The point to that is,, we know they undervalued what they bid, but that’s what the judge accepted. And so that is how families were losing out.
But now under the new law, you actually have to have a traditional real estate sale rather than an auction.
SD: Are there any other policy measures that you recommend?
JS: For the last three years, I was on the Agricultural Subcommittee of the USDA Equity Commission, and one of the recommendations that I crafted—along with a couple of other people—was around the issue of the Heirs’ Property Relending Program, which had not granted any loans, specifically. The land owned as heirs’ property could not be used as collateral because there is no clear marketable title.
One of the suggestions made was, rather than making loans to families, make grants to nonprofits to resolve title for these families. Basically, use the Center’s service delivery model, thereby allowing these farmers or families to access USDA cost-share programs.
SD: A couple of things the Center does to help people make productive use of heirs’ property are forestry and regularizing land title. Can you describe this work?
JS: Sure, let me walk you through one scenario that happened.
We had an individual who had been attending our forestry workshops when we first started. A timber buyer had approached her to cut the timber from her and her family’s land. The first one offered $45,000. Then another one came by, maybe two weeks later, and offered her $90,000.
There’s a significant difference between those two bids. And because this young lady was participating in our forestry program, she knew to contact our forester to receive help deciding what to do.
And so, his first response is, look, don’t sign anything. Because once you sign it, it’s legally binding. So long story short, a professional timber buyer came out to assess her timber and found out that she did not have clear title. So, literally, she walked out of our forestry door into our legal services door, because we have lawyers on our team as well as foresters.
Once that need was found, she was referred to our legal department. Our legal department assisted her, was resolving the title to her land, and then her family, of course, could sell the timber but also access more USDA programs. And they opted to reinvest that money in the land for future generations.
So there are two doors; you can come in either one of them. You can apply for legal services—legal services being the drafting of a will or probating your loved one’s estate or resolving a title, right? Anyone who owns land in the state of South Carolina can ask us for advice and counsel, and we don’t charge them anything now, but in order to become a client, we do want you to be a South Carolina resident. So we’re doing all of that, and it’s the forestry, there’s the workshops, and there’s a one-on-one technical assistance.
We don’t do traditional agriculture, but we do connect individuals who want to do traditional ag with other partners who are. Because we realized that we wanted to stay in our niche area. We’re not trying to be all-things-to-all people.
How do we build trust?…We’re going to community festivals. We’re doing a lot of our educational seminars at churches, in public spaces.
SD: One reason that heirs’ property is prevalent is because, as you noted, distrust of family landowners in institutions and government processes, such as wills. How do you overcome that distrust?
JS: Especially among people of color, there was this idea that if you had a will drafted, then you were going to die, right? Well, you will. It may not be the day you sign, but that was that fallacy that prevented them sometimes from doing it. But the other reason why they wouldn’t draft the will is because they didn’t necessarily know what they were signing. And they’d heard the stories about people signing stuff and then no longer having land. So there are reasons.
How do we build trust? The way we do it is, we have a community engagement department. We spend time in the communities. We’re going to community festivals. We’re doing a lot of our educational seminars at churches, in public spaces. It really is about building the relationship with the community. And oftentimes, it’s someone in the community that will kind of rally their neighbor to come partake of the services. So it’s about us getting some folk to trust us, but then, that trusted person in the community also helps us. Because it’s about relationships. And it doesn’t really matter the skin color of the attorney. Once the person feels that they can trust you, then that’s fine. But everyone has to… Even I had to, I had to convince people to trust me too. And I look like most of our landowners.
SD: I don’t need legal details, but what’s involved in regularizing title? If it’s too late to go through probate, how do you resolve title?
JS: Well, that’s that resolution part that I mentioned. Regardless of whether or not you’re doing probate or doing the more complicated cases, you’ve got to have family agreement, which we know is not always easy, because we don’t all get along with all our family members.
And you need to know the heirs of the deceased individual whose name is on the deed. And that’s okay if it’s one or two generations, but our oldest deed that we had come into our office was probably in the early 1900s with 200-plus heirs. We couldn’t do a lot for them. That was really complicated. And that’s why we stress, “Let’s do it. Hurry up and get in here and do it at the probate level.” Versus where it becomes multiple generations.
Because if you think about it, you’re really asking strangers to make a business decision, and they don’t know each other.
So, to answer that question, it is those two things. Our team, they conduct family meetings where they’re bringing together individuals from each branch of the family, so that they can hear the law, but the law in relation to their land. And they’re hearing it from a neutral third party, rather than another family member, so that kind of equalizes the playing field.
SD: You mentioned multiple partners were involved. Can you expand on that?
JS: Heirs’ property had been placed in the 2018 Farm Bill for the first time. Concessions for heirs’ property owners said they could access USDA programs. And we had been getting calls from all across the United States of people asking for help, but our lawyers don’t practice law in those other states.
So our thing was, initially, well, we could franchise ourselves. And they’re like, well, no, because when you franchise, that pretty much means you got to do it the exact way that the original organization does. So we just called it our replication model.
We are working with organizations in other states to do this work, and they basically have taken what works for their community. For example, in Mississippi it’s the Mississippi Center for Justice, the Mississippi Association for Cooperatives, and the Federation of Southern Cooperatives.
So it’s a legal provider, but there’s also that forestry/agricultural component. It’s not all under one roof like ours, but we have begun to create that network.
In West Virginia and Kentucky, it is a group called LIKEN [Livelihoods Knowledge Exchange Network]. Once again, in the Appalachian area, they’re also experiencing heirs’ property. They’re using portions of our model to deliver services, as well as do agroforestry. We also have groups in Arkansas, East Texas, and Alabama.
One of our objective is to prove that heirs’ property is not just an African American issue. If you can prove to elected officials that no matter the race, your constituents are being impacted by this issue, therefore, they should support resolution to this issue.
SD: What is the long-term vision in terms of moving toward greater Black land ownership?
JS: It is always the knowledge. But if you’re talking about African Americans acquiring land, it’s always going to take capital. So there is that issue.
Now on the issue of heirs’ property, we actually have two consultants who are helping us determine if there is a need for a national alliance.
Because we also know that policy at the national level needs to be accommodated. And we know as the Center for Heirs’ Property, we can’t continue to replicate our work with five, six, 10 other states because we have limited resources.
So, how do you provide a national perspective of this issue? From our perspective here, it is really going beyond our South Carolina roots and really amplifying this issue from a national perspective.
That way, eventually, we would hope to eradicate heirs’ property, but that’s probably not going to happen, because heirs’ property can recur 10, 15 years after a person dies, if they didn’t probate their will.
That’s why education is very important. And I think that that would be one of our first campaigns as the alliance is doing a national marketing strategy around the drafting of wills.
That doesn’t help African Americans acquire land, but it helps them to hold on to the land that they have, prevent it from becoming heirs’ property, and ensure it can be a productive asset for generations to come.

Steve Dubb is senior editor of economic justice at NPQ, where he writes articles (including NPQ’s Economy Remix column), moderates Remaking the Economy webinars, and works to cultivate voices from the field and help them reach a broader audience. In particular, he is always looking for stories that illustrate ways to build a more just economy—whether from the labor movement or from cooperatives and other forms of solidarity economy organizing—as well as articles that offer thoughtful and incisive critiques of capitalism. Prior to coming to NPQ in 2017, Steve worked with cooperatives and nonprofits for over two decades, including twelve years at The Democracy Collaborative and three years as executive director of NASCO (North American Students of Cooperation). In his work, Steve has authored, co-authored, and edited numerous reports; participated in and facilitated learning cohorts; designed community building strategies; and helped build the field of community wealth building. Most recently, Steve coedited (with Raymond Foxworth) Invisible No More: Voices from Native America (Island Press, 2023). Steve is also the lead author of Building Wealth: The Asset-Based Approach to Solving Social and Economic Problems (Aspen 2005) and coauthor (with Rita Hodges) of The Road Half Traveled: University Engagement at a Crossroads, published by MSU Press in 2012. In 2016, Steve curated and authored Conversations on Community Wealth Building, a collection of interviews of community builders that Steve had conducted over the previous decade.
Jennie L. Stephens, Ph.D., is a nationally recognized nonprofit leader, land justice advocate, and community development strategist. A native of Walterboro, SC, she serves as CEO of the Center for Heirs’ Property, where she has led transformative growth since 2006.
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