interest from real estate developers. “It started a few years ago when I saw people canoeing through the
river,” Aubrey Terry says.
The eldest Terry brother died in 2015, and because he didn’t have a will, his wife inherited his part of the
estate. “She wanted to sell her portion of the property, and we don’t, so she hired attorneys to work with,”
Terry says. In January, while tending to the cattle on the farm, he and his son saw a man on the property.
“He said he was an auctioneer and he was here on behalf of the Bagwells,” Terry remembers. After filing a
trespassing charge, the Terry family learned that Halifax law firm Bagwell & Bagwell had contacted nieces
and nephews living in Atlantic City who were listed as heirs to force a partition sale. Those nieces and
nephews “have nothing to do with the farm at all,” Tashi Terry says. “They’ve never even lived here.”
The Bagwell & Bagwell law offices blend into
their surroundings on Main Street in HalifaxLike many other rural areas, Halifax’s once affordable acreage is considered prime real estate. That’s also a
familiar story for many black families who settled where they could, finding shelter and safety in the
communities they built, only to be pushed out a generation or two later.
George Bagwell, owner of the firm pursuing partition sales in the Terry and Freeman cases, says he
understands why some family members want such sales. “This is one of the most depressed areas in
Virginia,” he says. He grew up in the county in the 1960s, when the area was mostly tobacco farms, and
remembers when the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994 led businesses out of
the county. Industry and opportunities fled to other parts of the state, and families followed.
While most lawyers in the area used to do partition sales, he says, now most don’t because it’s too hard. “It
gets so that when you have four, five, six people, no one wants to keep the houses up or the barn, but they
might still pay the taxes,” he says. “There’s a whole lot of black families in that position.”
Stripping people of their real estate is stripping them of their wealth
The Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018, also known as the Farm Bill, included an amendment designed
to help solve multiple claims of ownership and provide access to federal funds for farming. The amendment,
co-sponsored by Senator Doug Jones (Democrat, Alabama), provides owners with a “farm number” to use
when applying for funds. “With a farm number, heirs can access resources and support from federal
programmes run by USDA and other agencies, like Fema [the Federal Emergency Management Agency],”
Jones says. He says he learned about heirs’ land loss and how it impacts black communities after farming
advocacy groups reached out to his team. He hopes farm numbers “will help address one facet of this issue”