Gee’s Bend is a unique aspect of Alabama history. It’s a settlement situated on what was once a plantation, and the people who live there are direct descendants of former slaves; after the war officially ended in 1865, former slaves stayed on the land and worked as sharecroppers and tenant farmers, but when the the economic instability of the 1930s hit, the federal government purchased ten thousand acres of the plantation and created loan programs for these black families to acquire land ownership.
