Heir Property: A Constraint for Planners, an Opportunity for Communities—The Legacy of Steve Larkin

Abstract

Not much is known about Steve Larkin. He left South Carolina as a freed slave and migrated to Cuba, Alabama, where over time he accumulated upwards of 900 acres of the fertile Black Belt where Cuba is situated, just across the border from Meridian, Mississippi. He married and apparently had one child, Bryant. While hundreds of his living heirs know little of him, they today bear witness to the tangled legal ownership that land causes today. Steve Larkin's family heritage and continuing story will serve as a real-life framework for planners to better understand the constraints of heir property in their work, as well as the opportunity it presents to strengthen communities.