In 2009, in a journal published by the American Sociological Association, Teaching Sociology, I reviewed the documentary Banished, by Marcos Williams (see a version of that review here). It just crossed my mind in the current furor over squatters’ rights; today, Florida governor Ron DeSantas signed into law a bill that allows property owners to immediately evict squatters from homes and other structures. What Williams shows in his documentary is that, during the nineteenth and twentieth century, squatters’ rights, or adverse possession, was used as a means to dispossess black communities of their homes and property, particularly in the context of racial violence and systemic discrimination. While adverse possession laws have historically been intended to address issues of land abandonment or neglected properties, that they have been exploited in ways that disproportionately harm marginalized communities, including black Americans, is not the topic of discussion in the ongoing controversy over squatters’ rights is odd. It should be.
In the United States, during periods of racial discrimination and segregation, de jure and de facto, black communities often faced intimidation and violence, as well as legal barriers that restricted their access to housing and property ownership. In some cases, white supremacist groups and racist individuals engaged in violent action, including arson and bombing attacks, targeting black-owned homes and businesses in order to drive residents out of predominantly white neighborhoods. In the aftermath of such violence, opportunistic whites would take advantage of adverse possession laws to claim ownership of abandoned or vacant properties left behind by displaced black families. This practice effectively facilitated the transfer of property from black to white ownership, entrenching patterns of racial segregation and enlarging the scope of economic and political disenfranchisement of black Americans.
The evidence indicates that this was not an emergent or happenstance phenomenon but a concerted strategy by whites to achieve white-only communities. Adverse possession laws were thus used as a tool of racial dispossession and displacement, perpetuating inequalities and reinforcing patterns of racial segregation and discrimination in housing and property ownership. This historical context underscores the ways in which legal mechanisms, ostensibly neutral on the surface, can be manipulated to perpetuate systemic injustices and uphold structures of power and privilege. Understanding the role of adverse possession and similar legal mechanisms in the context of racial violence and discrimination is therefore crucial for advancing efforts toward equity in housing and property rights. It also highlights the importance of critically examining the broader social and historical contexts in which laws and legal practices operate.
freedom and reason 