Deloris McGee, a longtime community activist in San Francisco, who has moved back to her home state of Mississippi, shares an article from Blacknews.com about the importance to revisiting abandoned Black homesteads in the South.  Here's an article by Lee Perry worth revisiting.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 24, 2015

CONTACT:
Lee Perry
infoleeperryjva@usa.com
(713) 499-9671

BLACK LAND OWNERSHIP -- ARE YOU A MILLIONAIRE AND DON'T EVEN KNOW IT?

By Lee Perry

Nationwide (BlackNews.com) -- No ethnic race of people in the United States of America has lost more land to the Oil & Gas industry than Black Americans. We are constantly trying to find out who we are kin to all the way back to Africa. The problem is we never ask what type of assets our ancestors had. Any assets our ancestors in Africa had are long gone and even if they could be located the odds are 1 in a trillion that you could actually reclaim them. Our American ancestors after slavery all owned land at some point. It is a historical fallacy that they were all share-croppers and poor. It is a fact that they worked very hard to leave a legacy and we, the remaining family members have decided to be passive and just let it go.

If you can not go directly to the site of land where your great-great-grandmother lived on your mother’s side of your family then I am talking about you. I am willing to wager that less than 5%, and be honest with yourself could say yes. That is insane, because we are supposed to be the smart generation academically. Oil & Gas companies have benefited from our lack of motivation to just check to see.

You would be surprised at the amount of black families who are millionaires that do not even know it. Your great-great- grandmother’s parents may have been the wealthiest blacks in whatever area they lived. Many times they sold their property, but most of them had very good business sense, and common sense. If you were to take the time to just check and see in most cases they kept all or at least a portion of their mineral rights. That is huge, because those minerals have been passed on to you. When we moved to the big cities,( New York, Chicago, Los Angles, Houston, etc.) we left our legacy behind. In most cases it is never to late to reclaim it.

I am still amazed at how little we know about our ancestor’s wealth. I have been in the oil & gas business for over 43 years, locating heirs, and proving that millions belong to black families. I hope that every person that reads this press release get motivated enough to check your own ancestor’s assets.

I want you to be honest with yourself and put some effort into researching to see if you are one of the black families who are millionaires and do not even know it. It will take only a few hours of your time on week ends or an hour at night to see if your family is one of the millionaires that do not know they are a millionaire. Do not check only your father’s side.

You can check on your own, or attend a free seminar to be conducted by the NAACP Houston Chapter (Economic Development Oil and Gas Committee) on how to get started. Included in this seminar are other ways to make your land into a money maker instead of a tax burden without any oil and gas minerals. Free your mind. The seminar is free.

Harriet Tubman, a former slave and abolitionist said: “I freed a thousand slaves; I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves.”

Think about it. Do something about it!

Lee Perry is the author of the National Oil & Gas Museum commissioned book, “The Good Ole Boys in Oil & Gas Book”. He can be contacted at (713) 499-9671 or via email at infoleeperryjva@usa.com.

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