After meeting with Rev. Garrison Frazier and a coalition of other Black community leaders who emphasize that access to land is essential for Black self-determination, the Union Army General issues Special Field Order No. 15. This field order designates approximately 400,000 acres of land in coastal Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina where newly free Black farmers are to receive 40-acre plots of land. These new communities are to be governed by Black people alone: "on the islands, and in the settlements hereafter to be established, no white person whatever, unless military officers and soldiers detailed for duty, will be permitted to reside; and the sole and exclusive management of affairs will be left to the freed people themselves."

President Andrew Johnson will overturn the order and it will never be implemented, leading to the common phrase lamenting the false promise of "40 acres and a mule."