Decker Ngongang‏ may have the Twitter thread of the year. Over the Christmas holiday, Ngongang detailed his family's journey to reclaiming their history.

In a viral thread that has more than 8,600 retweets and almost 44,000 likes, Ngongang‏ tells the story of his family purchasing the land on which his mother and her nine siblings worked as sharecroppers. The land and home are located in Jonesville, South Carolina. Like many places in the rural South, Jonesville's farms relied on sharecroppers to fill the void left by slaves after the Civil War. 

Sharecropping's legacy in the South was one of exploitation. Black families would rent small plots of land, or shares,  and work it themselves. In return, they would give a portion of their crop to the landowner at the end of the year. Many went into debt, lived in poverty and found it impossible to escape the system because of the unfair contracts they had signed. 

The Giles family's purchase is historic. According to the thread, 30 family members came together to celebrate with good cheer all around. Ngongang's daughter also got her first "plate," making her a big kid now.

  

Other family members enjoyed the horses and reminisced about the times they had on the land prior to purchase. One uncle recalled swimming in a pond with poisonous snakes. 

Without a doubt, this is not only black excellence: it is a seed that will grow into generations of black wealth. 

Black family buys house and landSharecropping