Black Americans step up fight for slavery redress
Top lawyers join wide-ranging action to force US government to pay
compensation at home and abroad for damage done by oppression
Duncan Campbell in Los Angeles
Monday February 12, 2001
The Guardian
A lawsuit against the US government by some of the country's top attorneys
and a daily mass lobby of Congress are two of the strategies now being
planned in the long-running battle for reparations to black Americans for
centuries of slavery.
Johnnie Cochrane, who defended OJ Simpson and is currently defending the
rapper and music producer Sean "Puff Daddy" Combs on a firearms charge in
New York, is a member of the legal team which is examining the possibility
of making the US government compensate the descendants of slaves.
The issue of reparations has been the subject of intermittent debate in the
US for nearly 150 years. But now proponents of the compensation scheme say
there is sufficient public support for action that would get the government
to acknowledge that much of the wealth of the country, and some of its most
admired educational institutions, were built on the back of slavery.
A spokesman for Trans-Africa, the organisation which has spearheaded a
movement to influence US policies towards Africa and the Caribbean, said
yesterday that a number of new initiatives were "in the works". Among them
are the legal action in which Mr Cochrane and other leading attorneys, such
as Charles Ogeltree and Alexander Pires, are working. Mr Pires won a $1bn
settlement in a class discrimination action on behalf of black farmers.
Randall Robinson, author of The Debt - What America Owes to Blacks, gave
details of the planned lawsuit. "Our government has been complicit in the
longest running crime against humanity in the world over the last 500
years - 246 years of slavery and a century of de jure discrimination based
on race that followed it," he said.
Mr Robinson, president and founder of Trans-Africa, said the result of
slavery was a gap which existed to this day between blacks and whites "in
income, in financial assets - in almost every social category, blacks still
lag the American mainstream. Whenever a government does something like this,
it is commonplace now in the world that the government is obliged to make
the victims whole. Under international law and precepts of common decency,
we are going to pursue this gap that separates blacks and whites."
Mr Robinson argues that even such hallowed American institutions as Harvard
law school, of which he is a graduate, and Georgetown University were
endowed through the sale of slaves, yet "the people who built the wealth
were never paid".
On the political front, Mr Robinson believes that the case can be pressed
politically by what he calls a "year of black presence". During it, every
black church, organisation and institution would choose one of the 130-odd
days that Congress is in session and bring on that day 1,000 African
Americans to walk the halls of Congress in support of compensation "to close
the economic and psychic gap between blacks and whites".
"Congress for one year would never stop seeing our faces, never stop hearing
our demands, never be relieved of our presence," he said.
A Trans-Africa spokesman said this was just one of many measures being
prepared. There is widespread resentment in black political circles at the
way in which President George Bush was elected and at what was seen as the
disenfranchisement of many black voters in Florida. It is believed that this
may help to fuel new forms of black political activity.
The movement has been encouraged by the introduction last month of a new law
in California which requires every insurance company to declare any "slave
insurance" policies it offered in the 19th century. Black Democrats
including Jesse Jackson Jr, a congressman from Chicago, have proposed
legislation to examine ways in which reparation could be made.
White and black critics of compensation claim that it is backward-looking,
reinforces a victim mentality and would be impossible to administer in any
meaningful way. But at least 10 cities, including Washington, Chicago and
Detroit, have passed resolutions calling for federal hearings on the lasting
effects of slavery.
Mr Robinson also believes that the US government has a debt to the countries
the slaves were taken from. Such recompense to African and Caribbean
countries should take the form of full debt relief, fair trade terms and
financial compensation, he says.
The issue has been complicated by schemes, many of them bogus, which offer
African Americans the chance to receive up to $500,000 in government
compensation if they pay a sum, usually $50, to register their claim. These
schemes have been attacked by black politicians because no money has yet
been offered and there is no real possibility of these people receiving
anything in the near future.
Path to reparations
1637 First American slave ship, the Desire, sets sail
1800 By beginning of 19th century up to 15m Africans had been transported as
slaves to the Americas
1865 Emancipation of slaves.
1866 Congressional move to compensate ex-slaves with 40 acres and a mule, as
promised by union army general William Sherman, vetoed by President Andrew
Johnson. Some blacks receive land under the Southern Homestead Act
1900 onwards Various bills in Congress to pay redress fail
1915 Cornelius Jones sues US treasury for $68m, arguing that government
benefited from tax on cotton produced by slaves. Appeals court ruled
government could not be sued without its consent.
1963 Martin Luther King calls for reparations with a 'bill of a rights for
disadvantaged'
1965 US government unsuccessfully sued for $500,000 for each descendant of a
slave
2000 California law requires insurance companies that offered slave
insurance policies to publicise the fact
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