In Terah Shelton Harris's novel Long After We Are Gone, the family at the heart of the story is at risk of losing their land because it's considered "heir property" (aka "heir's property" and "heirs' property"). The author defines this as "a form of ownership in which descendants inherit an interest in the land, similar to holding stock in a company. Heir property does not constitute a clear title which means the land is vulnerable to developers, corporations, and governments to use 'legal' laws to acquire the land." Because of the vagaries of ownership associated with heir property, it's often been used to deprive Black farmers of their inherited land — just one of many such tools that have been systematically employed to dispossess them of their property over the decades since emancipation.

Black farmers have historically faced massive hurdles to land ownership in the United States. Before the American Civil War, not very many were able to establish their own farms, ...