Part III: From Hosting Development to Controlling Leverage
In Part I, we established how the promise of 40 acres and a mule was not simply broken — it was structurally reversed.
In Part II, we showed how that reversal severed Black economic continuity, leaving modern federal economic policy feeling distant, technical, and alien.
Now comes the necessary pivot.
Part III is not about diagnosis. It’s about positioning.
If land was the original base asset denied to Black people, then today’s federal tax tools — Opportunity Zones, New Markets Tax Credits, Historic Tax Credits, CDFIs, and CDEs — function as the modern equivalent of land.
Not emotionally.
Structurally.
Land never disappeared — it changed form
In the 19th century, land was power because it produced food, wealth, and political independence.
In the 21st century, leverage plays that role.
Tax policy now determines:
Where capital flows
Which neighborhoods are “investable”
Who controls development timelines
Who extracts long-term value
Opportunity Zones and NMTCs are not community programs.
They are capital-routing mechanisms.
Whoever understands them — and controls them — controls the outcome.
Why hosting development is not the same as owning leverage
Many Black communities are told they are “winning” because development is happening nearby.
But hosting development is not ownership.
Ownership means:
Controlling deal structure
Sitting on the sponsor side, not just the beneficiary side
Influencing timelines, exits, and refinancing
Holding equity when the project stabilizes
Without leverage, communities become scenery — not decision-makers.
This is how value is created around Black neighborhoods but rarely by them.
Opportunity Zones as modern land grants
Opportunity Zones were sold as a way to attract long-term investment into undercapitalized areas.
But in practice, they do something more specific:
They reward patient capital
They incentivize long holds
They convert unrealized gains into appreciating assets
That is not charity.
That is ownership logic.
The tragedy is not that Opportunity Zones exist.
The tragedy is that Black communities were rarely positioned to own the upside.
NMTCs: the quiet power most people miss
New Markets Tax Credits are often misunderstood as complicated financing tools.
In reality, they are one of the few federal programs that:
Subsidize equity
Reduce investor risk
Encourage development in places traditional capital avoids
NMTCs are not about buildings.
They are about who gets trusted with complexity.
Communities that master NMTCs gain more than financing.
They gain credibility, repeat access, and negotiating power.
Why CDEs matter more than projects
Projects come and go.
Entities endure.
Community Development Entities (CDEs) are not just administrative structures. They are gatekeepers of capital flow. They decide:
Which deals move forward
Which sponsors are credible
Which communities receive investment
When Black-led organizations are absent from this layer, they are permanently downstream — no matter how many ribbon cuttings occur.
Owning a CDE is closer to owning land than owning a single building ever will be.
The real shift: from participation to positioning
For decades, Black leaders were trained to ask:
“How do we qualify?”
“How do we access?”
“How do we get included?”
Those are participation questions.
Leverage asks different ones:
“Who controls the structure?”
“Who sets the terms?”
“Who benefits after stabilization?”
This shift is uncomfortable — because it requires moving from gratitude to governance.
Why this moment is different
Unlike Reconstruction, today’s tools already exist.
No new promise is required.
What’s required is:
Intentional education
Black-led intermediaries
Patient capital aligned with community goals
A willingness to sit at the investor table — not just the listening session
This moment will not announce itself as historic.
It will look technical.
Bureaucratic.
Quiet.
That’s how leverage works.
The risk of not claiming it
If Black communities fail to control these tools:
Development will continue without equity
Wealth will be generated without ownership
Knowledge will remain centralized elsewhere
History will not repeat with chains.
It will repeat with term sheets.
The closing truth of this series
40 acres and a mule was never just about land.
It was about position.
Opportunity Zones, NMTCs, and related policies represent a second chance — not to be included, but to be embedded in the capital stack.
This is not about nostalgia.
It is about strategy.
The question now is not whether the tools exist.
It’s whether Black communities will finally control the leverage behind them.
A practical next step
Understanding this landscape is not intuitive — and it was never meant to be.
That is why CEO 360, Inc. exists.
CEO 360, Inc. works with community-based organizations, developers, nonprofits, and emerging sponsors to navigate federal tax credit programs, capital stacks, and policy-driven investment tools — not as spectators, but as positioned participants.
Our role is not to sell theory.
It is to help organizations:
Translate policy into leverage
Structure deals intentionally
Build internal fluency and long-term control
Move from hosting development to owning position
For those ready to move beyond awareness and into execution, this work requires guidance, infrastructure, and sustained engagement.
That is the work we do.