The issue of reparations for African people throughout the world has become a widely discussed topic that is manifesting itself into a variety of action plans and strate-gies. Some of which surfaced in the Reparations Corporate Lawsuit Federal Appeals hearing recently held in Chicago.
In my travels around the country, the issue of reparations appears to have penetrated the spirit and interest of African people in America in all walks of life. For those of us who have been organizing and advocating reparations since the 1960s for African people in America, specifically, and for African people throughout the world, the question becomes what does this current phase of the Reparations Movement mean for the just cause of the redemption and salvation of African people?
When we talk about reparations we are talking about the damages, compensation and redress of those wrongs, so that the countries and people that suffered will enjoy full freedom to continue their own development on more equal terms.
When we discuss reparations for African people in the United States we are talking about "slave labor, humanity, culture, legacies, names and language that were taken outside of the law and natural process by forceful demand of white captive slaveowners."
In this regard, the current phase of the Reparations Movement for African people in America is connected to the leadership of Sister Callie House who founded The National Ex-Slave Mutual Relief Bounty and Pension Association in the 1890s. According to the research of Mary Berry, Sister House organized a Black mass movement demanding reparations during the period of the 1890s to 1915. Berry reveals that, "working through meetings, literature and traveling agents, the organization successfully developed membership across the South as well as...Oklahoma, Kansas, Indiana, Ohio and New York."
Further, Berry's research reveals the objective was to organize a demand throughput the Black nation which would force the United States to provide the needed and well-deserved pensions they sought for the aging persons formerly held in slavery, their surviving spouses, care-givers and heirs."
In the recently published book, Eight Women Leaders of the Reparations Movement U. S. A., by Linda Allen Eustace and Dr. Imari Obadele, "The movement's successful organizing - coupled with the ubiquitous white supremacist values of whites, generally, and especially United States officials, which disposed them in those days, as today, the attempt to defeat any significant self-help efforts among Black people resulted in a ten-year postal investigation."
Eustace and Obadele point out, "after finding no evidence of federal violations, U. S. officials indicted Ms. House and a number of other members at Nashville for fraud and for using the mail to distribute one of the Association's carefully drawn leaflets. She was found guilty and sentenced to a year and a day in the federal prison at Jefferson City."
The spirit and organizing work carried on through the Garvey Movement and again resurfaced through the leadership of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X in the 1960s making the reparations demand through Muhammad Speaks. The Nation of Islam, under the leadership of the Honorable Louis Farrakhan, remains an advocate of the reparations demand. The Republic of New Africa made a reparations demand in 1968 demanding payment of $400 billion in slavery damages.
In this context, James Forman, director of International Affairs of the Student NonViolent Coordinating Committee, interrupted church service at New York's Riverside Church to deliver his Black Manifesto demanding $500 million in reparations from white synagogues and churches.
The National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (N'COBRA) was organized in 1987 following in the tradition of Sister Callie House.
Since 1989, Congressman John Conyers has introduced legislation calling for the U. S. government to hold a probing study of reparations. The December 12th Movement, the Uhuru Movement, The Lost and Found Nation of Islam, the Republic of New Africa and the National Black United Front have been some examples of organizations that continue to organize around the demand for reparations since the late 1980s.
The Tulsa Race Riot Commission, under the leadership of Representative Donn Ross, Attorney Deadria Farmer-Paellmann's research on insurance companies that held slave policies in the 185Os, added to the reparations discussion over the last several years. This research exposing the involvement of these corporations in the slave trade and slavery led to the filing of major reparations corporate lawsuits. The major lawsuit is now under appeal in the 7th Circuit Court.
Finally, Alderman Dorothy Tillman's Chicago City Council legislation initiative has had a great impact and aided in the current interest African people in America have on reparations. The following publications: Randall Robinson's book, The Debt, Dr. Raymond Winbush's, Should America Pay? and Dr. Mary Frances Berry's book, My Face Is Black Is True, have all helped provide fuel to the reparations discussion.
African people have not lost our memory of the historical atrocities inflicted on us, and we will never forget what has happened to us and continues today. The demand for reparations must be intensified through serious organization and activism, no matter how many white and Black people are opposed. Contrary to some, we must never forget what happened to us and how it continues to impact us today. REPARATIONS NOW!
[Author Affiliation]
by Dr. Conrad W. Worrill
[Author Affiliation]
Conrad Worrill is National Chairman of the National Black United Front (NBUF).
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