Black History Month — Working Toward Reparations for Slavery and Generational Trauma
Part Two
Central to the idea of the American Dream lies an assumption that we all have an equal opportunity to generate the kind of wealth that brings meaning to the words “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” boldly penned in the Declaration of Independence. The American Dream portends that with hard work, a person can own a home, start a business, and grow a nest egg for generations to draw upon. This belief, however, has been defied repeatedly by the United States government’s own decrees that denied wealth-building opportunities to Black Americans. — Brookings Institute, Why We Need Reparations for Black Americans
This is Part Two of our Black History Month series examining the fight for reparations in the United States. Part One touched on the “why” of reparations, summarized reparations proposals in Congress, and highlighted prominent figures in early reparations efforts. In Part Two we feature Black Americans and organizations who fought for reparations in the Civil Rights Era, recent state and local government initiatives, and resources for further study.
Broad Efforts Begin in the 1960’s
The civil rights movement spurred many actions to achieve reparations.
In the early 1960’s several people worked to found one of the earliest community land trusts, New Communities, in southwest Georgia. Robert Swann, considered the father of the American land reform movement, joined with Mrs. Shirley Sherrod and Rev. Charles Sherrod to purchase 5700 acres of land for Black farming. The community suffered from systemic discrimination by local residents and the federal government, experienced a severe draught, and lost the land to foreclosure. However, in 1997 Shirley Sherrod and other Black farmers won a settlement in a lawsuit against the Farmers Home Administration and she established a new farm, Resora.
Beginning in the early 1960’s the Nation of Islam included a call for land reparations in its ten point What the Muslims Want platform. The request called for establishment of a separate state or territory for descendants of slaves and ongoing support for 20 to 25 years. Later the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, founded in 1966, would adopt a platform with some similarities. Its call for reparations demanded payment in currency rather than land reparations.
In 1963, “Queen Mother” Audley Moore founded the Committee for Reparations for Descendants of U.S. Slaves, and The Republic of New Africa. Moore presented a petition to the United Nations in 1957 demanding land and money in reparations for people of African descent. According to Moore, reparations were necessary because the culture, heritage, and rights of Africans and their descendants were destroyed by slavery and Jim Crow laws, and the only remedy was through economic restitution. In 1963 she published the pamphlet Why Reparations?: “Reparations Is the Battle Cry for the Economic and Social Freedom of More Than 25 Million Descendants of American Slaves.”
James Forman presented the Black Manifesto during a Sunday sermon in 1969 at the Riverside Church in New York, where he demanded millions of dollars in reparations from White churches and synagogues. While religious organizations did not embrace the demands, some did expand community and social programs.
Rosewood and Tulsa
In more modern times, we have seen legal battles for reparations for specific acts of violence perpetrated on Black communities.
Arnett T Doctor led fellow descendants of Rosewood families in the pursuit of legal recourse against the state of Florida. Rosewood was a primarily Black community in Florida that was burned in 1923 by White vigilantes who also murdered six Black residents. A married White woman living nearby accused an unknown Black man of attacking her. Florida State Representative Al Lawson, spearheaded legislative efforts to pass the state’s 1994 claims bill to compensate victims and their families. The bill was never called reparations, but it awarded $2.1 million for cash payment to survivors and scholarships for their descendants.
In 2003 Dr. Olivia Juliette Hooker, a survivor of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, along with other survivors, filed suit against Tulsa and Oklahoma seeking reparations. The U.S. Supreme court declined to hear the case in 2005. Dr. Hooker was also the first African-American woman to join the U.S. Coast Guard Women’s Reserve in 1945.
Three other Tulsa Massacre survivors, Lessie Benningfield Randle (108), Viola Fletcher (108), and Hughes Van Ellis (102) are currently pursuing a lawsuit against the city of Tulsa.
Local Initiatives
Various state and local governments have commissioned studies, enacted plans, and taken action in recent years.
Former Alderman Robin Rue Simmons was the driving force behind the 2019 reparations initiative in Evanston, Illinois that has issued reparations payments to some residents. The Independent followed up with Evanston residents a year after the first payments and spoke to Simmons, reporting,
‘The total debt owed to Black America is immeasurable,’ says Robin Rue Simmons, a former council member, or alderperson, from Evanston, and the founder of the non-profit FirstRepair. ‘You can look at closing the wealth gap, you can look at other ways of repairing the harm. But the total harm is in every area of liveability of our lives. And so getting to a remedy, I think, is a challenge for many.’
California Secretary of State Shirley Weber was the lead author of the California bill passed in 2020 to establish a Task Force to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans, the first statewide effort to examine reparations.
Local actions are also taking place in San Francisco, Providence, Boston, Asheville and other cities. Universities and religious organizations are also examining their role in providing reparations. An excellent source for tracking reparations in the United States is An Historical Timeline of Reparations Payments Made From 1783 through 2023 by the United States Government, States, Cities, Religious Institutions, Universities, Corporations, and Communities hosted by the University of Massachusetts.
Locally, the Washington State Minority and Justice Commission held a symposium on Reparations for African Americans in 2022. Recently, MLK Seattle hosted a workshop on Building a Reparations Movement in Seattle. Clyde Ford, author of Of Blood and Sweat: Black Lives and the Making of White Power and Wealth recently submitted an op-ed to the Seattle Times arguing for Washington to create a reparations task force similar to California’s saying,
When it comes to reparations for Black Americans, what many do not recognize is that it doesn’t matter whether your family’s forefathers held enslaved people, or came here after slavery was abolished. If you have ever opened a bank account, used a credit card, purchased a car or the insurance required for it; if you’ve ever bought a home and had a mortgage, or invested in the stock market, then you have directly benefitted from institutions created by the labor, and sometimes the bodies, of enslaved men and women.
Resources
Articles and Reports
They Received Reparations in 2022. Did it Really Change Their Lives? — The Independent (UK)
Why We Need Reparations for Black Americans — Brookings Institute
Still Running Up the Down Escalator: How Narratives Shape our Understanding of Racial Wealth Inequality — Insight Center for Community Economic Development and the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity at Duke University
Reparations for Slavery: A Road Map — Seattle Times
The Case for Reparations, Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Atlantic, June 2014.
What We Get Wrong About Closing the Racial Wealth Gap — Insight Center for Community Economic Development
Reckoning with the Slave Ship Clotilda — The New Yorker
Here’s How to Offer Reparations in a Free Society — Rachel Ferguson, Ph.D., Concordia University Chicago
Reparations — Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity, Volume 11, Issue 1 (December 2022) — This volume devotes its discussion to reparations for historical injustices and how their impact remains evident in the inequities of the present.
Reparations for African Americans, Minority and Justice Commission, 2022 Washington Supreme Court Symposium
Books
Say It Loud!: On Race, Law, History, and Culture (chapters address the broader influences of the Nation of Islam and the Black Power Movement) — Randall Kennedy
How We Can Win: Race, History and Changing the Money Game That’s Rigged — Kimberly Jones
Atonement and Forgiveness: A New Model of Black Reparations — Roy L. Brooks
Collective Courage A History of African American Cooperative Economic Thought and Practice — Jessica Gordon Nembhard
The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks — Randall Robinson
From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty-First Century, Second Edition by William Darity Jr. and A. Kirsten Mullen
Repair: Redeeming the Promise of Abolition — Katherine M. Franke
Organizations
Racial Redress and Reparations Lab — Northeastern University School of Law
Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project (CRRJ) — Northeastern University School of Law
National African American Reparations Commission
National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America
Media
Reparations Could Heal America podcast — Vox
Workshop: Building a Reparations Movement in Seattle video — MLK Seattle
Workshop: Reparations: A Community Conversation video — MLK Seattle
How Can We Win video (educator’s cut) — Kimberly Jones, David Jones Media
The History of Redlining in Seattle video — KCTS9
Websites
400 Years of Inequality Timeline — Reparations4Slavery
An Historical Timeline of Reparations Payments Made From 1783 through 2023 by the United States Government, States, Cities, Religious Institutions, Universities, Corporations, and Communities — University of Massachusetts LibGuide
History of Slavery and Institutional Racism by Region — Reparations4Slavery
Black Commons, Community Land Trusts, and Reparations — Resilience
Segregated Seattle — Seattle Civil Rights & Labor History Project (University of Washington)
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