Chicago, IL. ---- Rep. Bobby Rush (D-1st) and law students in Illinois and universities throughout the South are on a mission to get land and monies back for Chicago families claiming theft by family members or the judicial system.

They are recommending a congressional investigation into how and why land was taken and the impact it has had on African Americans as part of the Reclamation of Southern Assets project, which Rush spearheaded about a year ago.

The 10 students - from DePaul University, Texas Southern University, the University of Miami, Northern Illinois University, Florida Coastal School of Law and Southern University -  presented their findings to members of many of the 90 families involved in the project during a news conference at Rush's South Side office Thursday. 

Summer McElroy, at microphone, presents recommendations for resolving land claim disputes for about 90 families in the Chicago area as part of the Reclamation of Southern Assets program. McElroy, a law student at Texas Southern University, and nine students from DePaul University and three Southern universities are part of ROSA.  The program is headed by Rep. Bobby Rush (D-1st) and DePaul law school professor Ray Waters. The students presented their findings at a news conference at Rush's Chicago office Thursday.
Defender/Karen E. Pride
 
Rush was unable to attend, but he issued a statement about why he initiated the project.

"The African American community has been plagued by the lack of a land-based economy throughout history," he said.  "This stems from not only the failure of the government to keep its promise of 40 acres and a mule, but the treacherous theft of African American-owned land during the Jim Crow era of Southern segregation and aristocracy."

The ROSA project was designed to address and rectify those past crimes, said Rush.

Waters, who worked with Rush's Rebirth of Englewood "Ten Months to Home Ownership" program, said the project is huge.

"The people in the program made me realize that property acquisition is important and these (ROSA) cases are like starting over," he told the Chicago Defender. "Our ancestral land, land we bought and worked so we could raise our families, has been taken away.  My grandmother, these people here, are starting over. And an amazing fact is in over half these cases, it's family members who have taken the land away."

Raymond Howell has joined up with ROSA and wants to get back some land in Texas that he said his 80-year-old mother, Bertha, owned.

He made allegations to the Defender that Bertha Howell's cousin, Jim Ed Snow, took the 34 acres she had inherited and paid taxes for.

Now Bertha Howell can only lay claim to eight acres of that land.

"My mother found out in 1988 that he had secretly bought off other family members without her knowledge," said Howell, a lieutenant and 27-year veteran with the Cook County Sheriff's Department.  "When she found out what he (Snow) had done, she went down there to fight him.  But the county is governed by one judge down there; it's been an uphill battle."

Snow, reached at his Dallas home, told the Defender he did buy "everyone out but her, it was six of 'em " but he did so legally, and said he, not Howell, had been paying taxes on the property for years.

The 80-year-old Snow and his wife, Alice, operate Snow Excavation, Inc.

Alice Howell said the Howell's are "off the wall" and that her husband had done nothing illegal or immoral.

"He bought the land through a title company and everything was on the up and up," she said.

Still, the Howell's feel they have a case the ROSA project might help them with.

Another hopeful participant is Elsie Cavens, whose Southern family members declared her and other Northern family dead in order to get their royalty checks for oil discovered on property in Wiggins, Miss.

"We might be owed in the millions of dollars," the 77-year-old Cavens told the Defender.

For Al Bailey, a second-year DePaul law student and one of the 10 students working with Waters, working on this project is not your typical legal assignment.

"We listen to the stories the people have to tell and look for the legal angle," said Bailey, 22.  "A lot of people are angry about what's happened.  Then we have to do the legal work to find out about the property laws in different states."

In addition to the legal sleuthing, travel is also in store for some of the students.

"Next month, I'm going to Mrs. Cavens' family reunion in Atlanta to interview people for her claim," said Bailey.

Doria Dee Johnson, whose great-great grandfather, Anthony Crawford's property was taken as a result of being lynched, told the Defender the project was on track to regain what was supposedly stolen from Black families.

"We know the states won't help individual families, so it's going to take legislation," she said.  "Grandpa Crawford owned 427 acres of land in Abbeyville, S.C.  We would like to get our property back and be compensated for the 89 years we didn't have it."