I am a longtime advocate of reparations for African Americans. However, I think the current push for reparations may be problematic.
During the Black Power era in the late 1960s, I was involved in the reparations movement. I was once privileged to accompany Audley Moore (better known as Queen Mother Moore) to a meeting in a Manhattan hotel with two leaders of the Republic of New Africa (RNA), a recently formed group that was pushing reparations and asking that blacks be given several southern states in an argument similar to the Nation of Islam. Betty Shabazz, Malcolm X’s widow, was one of the officers in RNA.
The thrust of the reparations movement this year is to push candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination to get on board with reparations. On its face, this should be a good thing as it provides more attention to the idea than we have had since Reconstruction.
The idea of reparations has been around since the end of slavery. After emancipation, General William T. Sherman ordered that a half-million acres of land in South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida be given to former slaves in 40-acre lots with mules, horses, and other provisions.
In Congress, a bill in 1867 by Rep. Thaddeus Stevens and Sen. Charles Sumner set aside 3 million acres of land to be assigned to the former slaves in 40-acre parcels. The bill passed in Congress, but was vetoed by President Andrew Johnson, who also canceled Gen. Sherman’s field order. Thus, the promise of 40 acres and a mule went unfulfilled and has remained so. If for no other reason reparations should be pursued.
The politicians are taking the safe route by pledging support for the House reparations bill which would form a commission to study whether African Africans should receive reparations for slavery, not to do anything.
The emphasis seems to be on reparations for slavery. As such, the current political approach might be feasible. However, slavery should not be the only reparations issue.
There is another period which calls for reparations: it is the 100 years of racial apartheid in America between the end of slavery in 1865 and the Voting Rights Act in 1965. This period should not be omitted. Nor should it be grouped with the slavery reparations argument.
The case for reparations for racial apartheid might be stronger than the legitimate case against slavery. Therefore it should be separated from the reparations-for-slavery argument.
Slavery may not have been illegal, but Jim Crow was unlawful according to the 1954 Brown v. Board ruling which said it was unconstitutional. Furthermore, harm to individuals and families can be quantified for the racial apartheid or Jim Crow period.