Although over 140 years have passed since slaves were emancipated in the United States, African-Americans continue to lag behind the general population in terms of earnings and wealth. Both Reconstruction era policy makers and modern scholars have argued that the large gap between black and white income and wealth could have been reduced or eliminated if plans to allocate each freed slave family "forty acres and a mule" had been successfully implemented following the Civil War. My dissertation addresses this issue by considering the impact of free land on former slaves in the Cherokee Nation. The Cherokee Nation, which joined the Confederacy in 1861, was forced by the United States to extend full citizenship to its former slaves. In contrast to U.S. freedmen, the Cherokee's former slaves could claim any unused land within the Cherokee Nation as their own. This variation in the treatment of former slaves provides a compelling way to assess both the shorter-and longer-term effects of land distribution as a policy to ameliorate economic inequality.

My dissertation makes three contributions to exploring this policy difference. First, I compiled, encoded, and developed documentation for 3 previously unavailable datasets: a 60% sample of the 1880 Cherokee Census, a 100% sample of the 1860 Cherokee Nation slave schedules, and a sample of individuals linked from the 1880 Cherokee Census to the 1900 United States Census. Second, I examine how the availability of free land affected the Cherokee freedmen in 1880. Cherokee freedmen farmers have levels of income and wealth that are between 20 to 40% higher than those of southern freedmen farmers. Third, I explore the relative status of Cherokee and southern freedmen in 1900. I find that the Cherokee freedmen continue to be relatively better off than southern freedmen. They have higher rates of home ownership, are employed in higher status occupations, and have higher literacy rates. Additionally, their children exhibit higher levels of human capital.