From Georgia to NYC: The Civil Rights Roots of Community Land Trusts
City Limits
By Abigail Savitch-Lew
When New Yorkers discuss the community land trust, they often describe it as a complicated land ownership structure, one that’s already proven its success in Bernie Sanders’ Burlington and in Boston. But the community land trust’s origin story reveals that it’s not simply a wonky policy tool dreamed up in the Ivy tower; rather, its roots lie in the life-and-death struggle by Blacks for civil rights in the deep South.
In the model, a community-controlled nonprofit owns land and ensures the buildings or other assets on that land continue to serve the community, such as by requiring homeowners to abide by sales restrictions on their homes. The “Arc of Justice,” a documentary released last summer and screened at the New School on Wednesday, explores the founding of the United States’ first community land trust by civil rights leaders in southern Georgia during the 1960s.
New Communities Inc. arose not only as a way to give black sharecroppers a path to economic self-sufficiency and decent housing, but also because black Southerners were getting kicked out of their homes for associating with civil rights leaders or trying to vote. The land trust eventually grew to the size of Rhode Island, survived through racist acts of sabotage, but finally collapsed because it could not access credit because of discrimination from state and federal government entities.
