To Have Land and Turn and Till It: Land and Black Intergenerational Mobility, 1880–1900

Unlike formerly enslaved people in the South, freedmen in the Cherokee Nation could claim land after emancipation. This policy provides a fruitful environment to evaluate objections to postbellum land distribution, particularly the concern that freedmen and women would be unable to successfully manage farms and their own economic affairs. In this paper, I use a linked sample of Cherokee freedmen families to better understand the dynamics of intra- and intergenerational occupational mobility. I find no evidence that the Cherokee freedmen could not use free land to improve their lives and those of their children. There was a remarkable occupational persistence in the economic status of those who were adults in both 1880 and 1900. Additionally, the next generation of Cherokee freedmen essentially exhibited the ability to maintain or improve their status vis-à-vis their parents. Downward mobility was limited and may be explained by lifecycle effects. Furthermore, increased wealth levels provided the resources for local black communities to self-finance the construction of schools, which helped to ensure that their children had not only physical capital from land acquisition but also the education to use those resources successfully.