Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl performance included a series of symbolic references that the average viewer may have missed at first glance. One of Lamar’s subtle messages was a reference to “40 acres and a mule,” a phrase with deep historical significance originating after the Civil War.
During his performance, Lamar declared: “40 acres and a mule, this is bigger than the music. They tried to rig the game, but you can’t fake influence.”
The History Behind ‘40 Acres and a Mule’
After the Civil War, formerly enslaved people were promised “40 acres and a mule” as a form of reparations. However, this promise was short-lived. According to USA Today reported., the American government quickly abandoned the plan.
The policy originated from Special Field Order No. 15, issued by Union General William Tecumseh Sherman in 1865. This order aimed to redistribute confiscated Confederate land to formerly enslaved people. However, after President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, his successor, Andrew Johnson, overturned the policy and returned the land to former enslavers, according to The Center For Public Integrity in its investigative report, “40 Acres and a Lie.”
The Broken Promise: Land Seized from Black Communities
One of the first beneficiaries of the policy was Jim Hutchings, a formerly enslaved man who received 40 acres on Edisto Island, South Carolina. However, his land was seized and returned to white landowners shortly after.
A similar story unfolded on Skidaway Island, Georgia, where Black communities briefly thrived on land that had been part of former cotton plantations. By 1865, the federal government reversed its decision and gave the land back to its previous owners. Today, Skidaway Island is a gated community owned by a wealthy family, with little trace of its former Black prosperity.
The Lasting Impact of Reparations Denied
Historian Henry Louis Gates Jr. described the “40 acres and a mule” policy as the first significant attempt at reparations for formerly enslaved people, calling it “astonishingly radical for its time.” “In fact, such a policy would be radical in any country today: the federal government’s massive confiscation of private property…formerly owned by Confederate landowners, and its methodical redistribution to former Black slaves,” Gates Jr. said, according to Mother Jones.
Historian John David Smith echoed this sentiment, emphasizing that the effects of this broken promise still resonate today. “The freed people desperately wanted land, believed that they had been deceived, and felt betrayed,” Smith wrote, per Mother Jones. “The legacy of that sense of betrayal lingers on…a sober reminder of the ex-slaves’ broken hopes and shattered dreams.”
Lamar’s reference to “40 acres and a mule” was more than just a lyric—it was a powerful reminder of a historical injustice that continues to shape racial and economic disparities in America today.
