Our No Permission 40 Acres Hoodie carries a vintage-style line: Forty Acres and a Mule — Still Owed. Here is the history behind the phrase.
A meeting in Savannah
On January 12, 1865, near the end of the Civil War, Union General William T. Sherman and Secretary of War Edwin Stanton met with twenty Black ministers and community leaders in Savannah, Georgia. Asked what freedom would require, their spokesman, Garrison Frazier, answered plainly: land, so that families could support themselves.
Special Field Order No. 15
Four days later, on January 16, 1865, Sherman issued Special Field Order No. 15. It set aside a strip of coastal land and Sea Islands running from Charleston, South Carolina, to the St. Johns River in Florida for settlement by freed families, in plots of up to 40 acres. The army later loaned some settlers mules no longer needed for the war — the origin of “forty acres and a mule.”
Roughly 40,000 freedpeople settled on about 400,000 acres. They planted crops, built homes and began governing their own communities.
The promise reversed
After President Lincoln’s assassination in April 1865, President Andrew Johnson pardoned former Confederates and ordered that confiscated land be returned to its previous owners. By the end of 1865, most families who had settled under the order were evicted from the land they had worked.
The promise was made in writing, acted on, and then withdrawn. That is why the phrase still carries so much weight more than 160 years later.
Why “Still Owed”
The No Permission design is styled like an aged government document because the promise was official. It is a reminder that history is not only something to read about — it is something we are still reckoning with.
- No Permission 40 Acres Hoodie — Unisex Adult, sizes XS–5XL
- No Permission 40 Acres Kids Hoodie, youth sizes XS–XL — so the next generation knows the story too
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