Eliza and Louis Eckford were born into a world that considered them property, but they died as property owners. They purchased land in Karnes County, a small, rural county roughly fifty miles southeast of San Antonio, in the early 1880s, after surviving slavery. The Eckfords’ 147.5-acre tract—set in a stretch of the state covered with oak and mesquite, tangled brush, wide grasslands and the slow drift of cattle—was purchased by a local white rancher, Fritz Korth, in 1939. Many decades would go by before landmen working to secure mineral rights on a sprawling ranch operated by the Korth family unearthed the Eckfords’ ties to the land. Though Eliza’s stake in the acreage had indeed been sold to the Korths, Louis had died without a will, meaning his share should have passed to the couple’s ni

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