Juneteenth, Heirs’ Property, and Protecting Black Land

Attorney Gregory Robinson

Welcome to the show, everyone. I'm Attorney Gregory Robinson. You know, every year when Juneteenth rolls around, and we hear the brass bands playing and smell the barbecue smoke drifting through our neighborhoods, my mind always travels back to June 19th, 1865. I think about those two hundred and fifty thousand enslaved souls in Galveston, Texas, who finally heard the truth of their liberation, a full two and a half years late. It's a beautiful, triumphant moment of physical freedom. But as a father, a grandfather, and an attorney born and raised in Alabama, I find myself looking at that celebration and asking: what does freedom actually mean for us today? Physical chains were broken in 1865, but modern freedom is bound tightly to economic self-determination and the protection of the land our ancestors literally bled to keep.

Attorney Gregory Robinson

And let me tell you, when we look at the numbers, there is a silent drain on Black wealth that should make us all sit up a little straighter in our chairs. Think about this: in 1920, Black families owned roughly fourteen percent of all United States farmland. That was about fifteen to twenty million acres, largely acquired under the most brutal, hostile conditions imaginable in the decades following reconstruction. Today? That number has plummeted to just zero point five two percent. We went from fourteen percent to virtually half a percent. That is not just a statistic; that is a catastrophic loss of generational power, safety, and heritage. It's a quiet crisis, and we are letting it happen right under our noses.

Attorney Gregory Robinson

Now, how does a tragedy of that scale actually happen? It's not always because of some dramatic, high-profile eminent domain takeover. It happens because of a quiet, everyday omission. Right now, seventy-seven percent of Black Americans do not have a will or an estate plan. Seventy-seven percent! That means more than three out of four of us are leaving our most valuable assets—our homes, our land, our family histories—completely exposed to the default state laws of intestacy. We are working our whole lives to build something, only to leave the keys on the kitchen table with the front door wide open.

Attorney Gregory Robinson

This brings us to a term we absolutely must understand if we want to stop this bleeding: heirs' property. When a landowner dies without a will, the property doesn't automatically go to one person. Instead, it passes to all their heirs collectively under state law. Over generations, as children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren inherit fractional shares, you end up with dozens of co-owners who all have a piece of the pie but no clear, individual title. I call this "second-rate ownership." Why? Because even though you live on the land, pay the taxes, and maintain the house, you cannot get a bank loan to repair the roof, you can't qualify for property tax homestead exemptions, and when a hurricane or a flood hits, you are routinely denied FEMA disaster relief because you cannot prove you solely own the home.

Attorney Gregory Robinson

But the real danger of heirs' property is far more insidious. It lies in partition laws. Because every single heir owns a tiny, fractional share of the whole, any one of those heirs—even a distant cousin who has never set foot in the state—can sell their tiny share to an outside developer. And once that developer buys that tiny sliver, they have the legal right to go to court and file a partition lawsuit. They ask the judge to force a sale of the entire property at auction, arguing the land cannot be physically divided fairly. The developer then buys the whole family legacy for pennies on the dollar on the courthouse steps. It is a legal loophole that has stripped billions of dollars of generational wealth from our community, completely legally.

Attorney Gregory Robinson

So, what do we do about it? This Juneteenth, while the music is playing and the family is gathered around the table, we need to bring some "old school" wisdom to the cookout. Let's start the conversation. It might feel uncomfortable to talk about death and money over potato salad, but trust me, it is the highest form of love we can show our families. We need to identify who holds the deeds to our family lands. We need to take concrete legal action: establishing clear wills, setting up family trusts to hold the property, or even creating a family limited liability company—an LLC—to manage the land collectively so no single heir can sell it out from under the rest.

Attorney Gregory Robinson

We cannot celebrate the freedom won by our ancestors in 1865 while actively leaving the fruits of their labor unprotected in 2026. True liberation isn't just a historical event we look back on with pride; it is a daily practice of securing tomorrow. Let's do the work to protect what is ours. Thank you for listening, and take care of your legacy.