Charles and Willa Bruce bought a 7,000-square-foot beach in California 100 years or so ago, but neighbors harassed them over their plan to open a resort for African Americans. Twelve years later, the Manhattan Beach City Council in Los Angeles County condemned and seized the property. In 1948, the city transferred ownership to the state, which, in 1995, gave it back to the county which began using it to house a lifeguard training facility. This July 20, thanks to pressure from civic leaders, the beach was returned to the Bruce family — grandsons Marcus and Derrick. The county will now lease it for $413,000 annually and pay all operation and maintenance costs, with the right to buy it for up to $20 million, according to news reports. There is no mention of compensation for loss of use for a century.

Still, it is a remarkable step in a history of land discrimination which began at least after President Andrew Johnson, on May 29, 1865, evicted newly freed enslaved African Americans from the 40 acres which Union Major General William Tecumseh Sherman gave to each of them just four months earlier.

Despite that setback, by 1910 one million African Americans owned and operated 14 percent of all farms in thecountry, Fair Farms Now reported. But, by 1997, they lost about 90 percent of it, partly through heirs’ property, in which descendants of landowners inherit land but have no legal proof of ownership. Overall, they lost land worth about $326 billion just in the 20th century, Bloomberg reported, citing U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) census data.

The federal government’s farm lending program also played a key role in the decline. The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights stated that there had been “unmistakable evidence … of racial discrimination” in the USDA’s lending practice since 1965, Nation magazine reported. It was a principal reason for the loss of millions of acres of land worth hundreds of billions of dollars, the Nation reported.

Homeownership has fared no better. Over the past 21 years alone, African American homeownership has dropped five percent compared to one percent for European Americans, The Washington Post reported, citing the Urban Institute. During the Great Recession, around 240,020 African Americans lost their homes to foreclosure between 2005 and 2008, according to The Center for Responsible Lending. Overall, current African American homeownership, at 43.4 percent, is lower than it was a decade ago and 30 percentage points below the 72.1 percent for European Americans, CNN reported.

Land and homes are a main source of wealth-creation so African Americans have been at a disadvantage ever since they were first brought to the country as slaves. This lack of wealth remains a chief cause for the low home-ownership rate, especially now when house prices have skyrocketed and prospective mortgage borrowers need a $100,000 average annual income to qualify. That shuts out four of every five African Americans from the housing market.

Student loans are another obstacle, with 41 percent of African Americans carrying an average debt of about $45,000, compared to 22 percent of European Americans with an average of $30,000. Rent is another problem, costing African Americans sometimes half or more of their income. They are also twice as likely as European Americans to tap into 401(k) or pension funds as a down payment, CNN reported, citing the National Association of Realtors (NAR).

Terrorism has also played a major role in suppressing African American homeownership. In 1912, for example, a racist mob forced more than 1,000 of them from their homes in Forsyth County, Georgia. Another mob laid waste to “The Black Wall Street” in Tulsa, Okla. in 1921 and another mob destroyed the town of Rosewood, Florida, two years later – part of a long list of atrocities around the country.

Discriminatory policies , meanwhile, have led to property taxes costing 13 percent more for African American families than for European Americans, The Washington Post reported, citing a report by economists Troup Howard and Carlos Avenancio-León; they studied a decade of tax assessment and sales data for 118 million homes throughout nationwide. In addition, highways were built through some African American communities, destroying homes, as happened when Interstate 95 was constructed through the Miami’s Overtown neighborhood. The racist bias still persists. The recently passed Inflation Reduction Act allocates $3.1 billion to the USDA for loan adjustments or payments to farmers who owe its Farm Service Agency (FSA), a lender of last resort, and $2.2 billion for farmers who suffered discrimination in the agency’s lending practices, Reuters reported. Despite the glaring racism in earlier lending practices, the program was watered down to include all farmers after European Americans complained.

Then there is redlining, as experienced by Nathan Connolly and his wife Shani Mott. The New York Times reported that they bought a home in an upscale Baltimore community in 2017 for $450,000 and spent another $40,000 on improvements. LoanDepot denied their refinancing application after 20/20 Valuations appraised their home at $472,000. Connolly is a professor of history at Johns Hopkins University and “an expert on redlining and the legacy of white supremacy in American cities, and much of his research focuses on the role of race in the housing market,” The Times said. He knew what was going on.

A few months later, the couple applied to Swift Home Loans and, in the interim, undertook a “whitewashing experiment” of their home. “They cleared their bookshelves of works by Black authors. They asked white friends to share family photos and placed them in picture frames around the house; on their walls, they hung art bought at Ikea that showed white people,” The Times reported. “An American flag that was presented to Dr. Mott 10 years ago after the death of her father, a Vietnam War veteran, was removed from storage, framed and placed on the mantle.” They also asked a European American colleague to be at the home during the new appraisal, while they stayed away. This time, the property was valued at $750,000. Connolly and Mott have sued, claiming racial discrimination.

Earlier, Tenisha Tate-Austin and Paul Austin, who live in California’s Bay Area, accused another appraiser of under-valuing their home by $500,000, The Times reported. They sued and their case is going to mediation. But it attracted the attention of the Department of Justice for possible violation of the Fair Housing Act of 1968. And President Joe Biden created the Interagency Task Force on Property Appraisal and Valuation Equity to look into the causes of discrimination by appraisers, more than 90 percent of whom are European American.

“Race has long played a role in housing policy in the United States and Black Americans are denied mortgages at disproportionate rates,” The Times reported. “The impact of redlining, a racist Depression-era housing policy, continues to drive down home values in Black neighborhoods and deprive resources for communities of color.”

That, in short, is the story of wealth in America.