The destruction of Black property, combined with policies designed to keep Black Americans behind their white counterparts, resulted in the racial wealth gap this country is still facing today, says William Darity, a professor of public policy, African and African American studies and economics, and director of the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity at Duke University. For a period of about 80 years, a series of white massacres took place across the U.S. that “destroyed Black lives, destroyed Black property and in many instances resulted in the appropriation of Black property by white Americans who engaged in mob violence,” he says.