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“A Privilege and a Challenge”: Valuation of Heirs’ Property by African American Landowners and Implications for Forest Management in the Southeastern U.S.

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Abstract

African Americans have historically struggled to retain land that has been held in their families for generations as heirs’ property, or land held collectively by heirs of the original owners without clear title. Ethnographic interviews with sixty landholding African American families in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Alabama reveal the cultural meanings associated with family land, forestland in particular, and the role of heirs’ property in inhibiting forest management, including the threat of land loss, intra-family conflict, and legal limitations on forestry activities. The majority of interviewees have a strong desire to pass family land on to their heirs, but they also need the land to be economically productive. Sustainable forest management offers both an incentive to obtain clear title to heirs’ property land and a means of paying property taxes and generating intergenerational wealth within families. The U.S. Endowment for Forestry and Communities is currently collaborating with local institutions in several states in an innovative program designed to help African American landowners navigate the legal system in order to obtain clear title and provide educational workshops about the financial and ecological benefits of sustainable forestry as well as site visits by consulting foresters. Analysis of the situations faced by African Americans with heirs’ property adds to the diversity of our understandings of the complex relationships between land tenure and forestry, with potential application for other minority communities in the U.S. and elsewhere.

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Notes

  1. The short-term nature of the field work and the identification of interviewees through program foresters meant that interviewees tended to be more engaged in their communities, enthusiastic about new programs and income opportunities, and/or have at least a nascent interest in land management and forestry. Landowners with a legal stake in more than 10 acres are also likely to be wealthier, more educated, and more engaged. The Sustainable Forestry and African American Land Retention Program is designed to build the assets of African American landowners through forestry, and as such does not target the poorest landowners for whom forestry is unlikely to be viable. While we made efforts to include less wealthy and less educated forest owners, we were limited by these factors, and we were also reliant on our program foresters to choose.

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Acknowledgements

This research was conducted with funding from the U.S. Endowment for Forestry and Communities, as part of the “Sustainable Forestry and African American Land Retention Program” jointly funded by The Endowment, the Natural Resources Conservation Service, and the USDA Forest Service. We would like to thank the project foresters and partner organizations, as well as all participating landowners, in each state. We would specifically like to acknowledge Sam Cook, Alton Perry, Andrew Williams, Hodges Smith, and Alex Harvey for assistance with field work. We also gratefully acknowledge the grant management assistance of the Institute for Behavioral Research and the research support of the Center for Integrative Conservation Research at the University of Georgia.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Integrative Conservation Research, University of Georgia, Holmes-Hunter Academic Building, Room 321, 101 Herty Drive, Athens, GA, 30602, USA

    Sarah Hitchner

  2. Southern Research Station, USDA Forest Service, 320 Green Street, Athens, GA, 30602, USA

    John Schelhas & Cassandra Johnson Gaither

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  1. Sarah Hitchner
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  2. John Schelhas
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Correspondence to Sarah Hitchner.

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Hitchner, S., Schelhas, J. & Gaither, C.J. “A Privilege and a Challenge”: Valuation of Heirs’ Property by African American Landowners and Implications for Forest Management in the Southeastern U.S.. Small-scale Forestry 16, 395–417 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11842-017-9362-5

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