Fifty years ago, African-American activists in Albany, Georgia extended their political fight for civil rights into the economic realm by creating New Communities Inc. They had come to believe that owning land was essential to securing greater independence for their people. But landownership was out-of-reach for most African-Americans in the Deep South of the 1960s and too easily lost if they did acquire a small farm, a plot of land, or a house in town. The visionary founders of New Communities concluded, therefore, that community ownership would be a more secure form of tenure. Community-owned land could be combined, moreover, with the individual ownership of newly built houses, offering low-income people an opportunity to become homeowners. Community-owned land could also provide a platform for the cooperative organization of various enterprises, offering low-income people a chance for economic prosperity.
 
This ingenious hybrid, blending multiple owners and uses under the watchful eye of a community-controlled, nonprofit organization, was the prototype for what eventually became, after some fine-tuning in subsequent years, the "community land trust" (CLT).