When Michigan Rep. John Conyers (1929–2019) introduced HR 40 in 1988, the Commission to Study Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act, reparations gained perhaps its most significant public recognition.
This was by no means, however, the first time the idea of retribution for formerly enslaved African Americans had been proposed or demanded. Belinda Royall, also known as Belinda Sutton, proposed the first recorded case of reparations in the U.S. in 1783 as a pension payment. She was enslaved by the Royalls in Massachusetts when she petitioned for three years of back pension. The petition was granted, although it has been disputed as a legitimate challenge to bondage.
A little over a century later, in 1894, another Black woman, Callie House, along with the Rev. Isaiah Dickerson and other associates, began organizing the National Ex-Slave Mutual Relief, Bounty and Pension Association, which was formally established by 1897. Her inspiration for reparations partly came from the failed promise of “Forty Acres and a Mule” at the close of the Civil War and from reading a pamphlet entitled “Freedmen’s Pension Bill: A Plea for American Freedmen,” then circulating in Black communities.
She and Dickerson traveled across the ex-slave states, announcing their plan for restitution for former Black captives whose labor had been stolen from them, and recruiting followers. “We are organizing ourselves as a race of people who feel they have been wronged,” House declared upon co-founding the organization. “The association collected dues to help finance the lobbying effort and a lawsuit that was filed on behalf of those once held in slavery,” Johnita Scott-Obadele wrote in “Race and Resistance: African Americans in the 21st Century.”
“Instead of addressing in even a token way the past and ongoing injustices and crimes against Black people,” Scott-Obadele continued, “the various governmental entities spent about twenty years observing and investigating, finding that the leaders had committed no crime. In 1916, mail fraud charges were brought against Mrs. House, and she was convicted and sent to jail.”
A year before she was convicted, the first known reparations lawsuit, Johnson v. MacAdoo, was filed, according to Charles Ogletree (1952–2023) in his book “All Deliberate Speed.” “In Johnson, the plaintiff, Cornelius J. Johnson, sued the U.S. Department of Treasury, claiming the government’s taxation of raw cotton produced by slave labor constituted an unjust enrichment from the labor of African Americans. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against him, concluding that the government was immune from suit on sovereign immunity grounds.”
In 1963, the indomitable Audley “Queen Mother” Moore (1898–1997) proposed reparations to members of the National Emancipation Proclamation Centennial Observance Committee (NEPCOC) conference in Philadelphia. She called on her audience to “demand reparations for the injuries inflicted upon them by the dominant white nation.” As Ogletree noted, “She was able to gather over one million signatures from citizens supporting this demand; even more remarkably, she managed to present the signatures to President Kennedy, along with the demand.” She would continue to promote the crusade for reparations at the Black National Convention in Gary, Indiana, in 1972.
A dramatic event in the reparations movement occurred on May 4, 1969, when James Forman (1928–2005), former chair of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), interrupted worship at New York City’s Riverside Church with a largely white congregation and presented the Black Manifesto, demanding $500 million from U.S. churches and synagogues for reparations. He said the money would support a southern land bank, four television networks, and a university. Many of the components of the manifesto had been determined weeks earlier in Detroit at the National Black Economic Development Conference (NBEDC).
“Actually, BEDC received less than $300,000 in reparations by the summer of 1970,” Forman wrote in his book “The Making of Black Revolutionaries.” He said most of the money was funneled to other organizations, and “most of the funds they retained…were invested in a revolutionary publishing house called Black Star Publications.”
During the late 1960s, there was a proliferation of Black Nationalist formations, including the National Black United Front, Republic of New Afrika, and Black Workers Congress, each espousing some form of reparations. Several of the more prominent and militant organizations were founded in Detroit, where there was a coterie of passionate activists advocating for reparations: The Rev. JoAnn Watson (1951–2023) and Detroit activist Ray Jenkins (aka “Reparations Ray”) are among the most vocal leaders. It was often suggested that they created the groundswell that put reparations high on Conyers’s agenda. Of course, by the time the Michigan politician became involved, other influences were at play, particularly the passing of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 in support of Japanese Americans who were forced to live in internment camps.
Each surviving Japanese American internee was awarded $20,000 in compensation, with payments beginning in 1990. According to the legislation, their internment was based on “race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership” as opposed to legitimate security reasons; more than 82,000 received redress checks.
The success of Japanese Americans was a source of inspiration for many in the African American reparations movement, believing they were next in line for restitution. Around the time Japanese Americans were celebrating their achievement, the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparation in America (N’COBRA) was formed and held its first town meeting in Washington, D.C., by 1989.
“Members of the organization discussed a draft bill calling for reparations, prepared by Congressman John Conyers, with the congressman’s staff,” Scott-Obadele wrote. “The bill, titled ‘A Commission to Study Reparations Proposals for African Americans Act’ and assigned the number H.R. 3745, was first introduced in the House of Representatives in the 101st Congress, November 2, 1989.” It should be noted that this particular bill did not call for reparations. This is the bill that Conyears would issue and see tabled each year until his death.
By the 21st century, the reparations movement was hardly noticed, given the scourge of police brutality against Black Americans. But among the stalwarts joining Conyers would be Randall Robinson (1941–2023) and his cohort at the TransAfrica Forum, most notably Danny Glover and Bill Fletcher. Robinson’s book “The Debt” gave the reparations movement the treatise it required to open up a new century of struggle and impetus. All it needed now was a living plaintiff to provide the ballast demanded by the court.
Once more, Ogletree was equal to the task, along with Johnnie Cochran (1937–2005). The Tulsa Massacre of 1921 would be the gambit, especially with two elderly witnesses and victims of the incident ready to testify. As Ogletree put it in his book, “Despite compelling evidence that Black Tulsa residents were entitled to receive reparations for their loss of life and property, their claims were largely ignored. All we needed were clients.”
Ogletree’s team found 60 survivors of the Tulsa Massacre who were willing to sign onto a lawsuit. They all agreed that the incident could advance the case for Jim Crow reparations. Buttressing the team was attorney Michael Hausfeld, who successfully represented Holocaust victims in lawsuits against Germany and other European nations.
Assembling a cadre of clients, forging a support committee of outstanding scholars and activists, and an incomparable legal team were to no avail. Judge James Ellison of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Oklahoma denied the plaintiffs’ claim, even as he validated the appropriateness of the lawsuit.
“What can we say about courts that admit that the state of Oklahoma and the city of Tulsa helped to destroy an entire community and kill its citizenry but announce that the survivors cannot seek legal redress?” Ogletree asked at the close of his chapter on reparations. “What can we say about laws that would enable the perpetrators of atrocities to escape liability by destroying evidence and denying legal remedies? Is it possible that we still have two standards of justice in America: one for victims of domestic terror perpetrated by individuals and one for victims of domestic terror perpetrated by the state? Is it possible that we still have different standards of justice depending on the race of the victims? If there can be no justice for the victims of the Tulsa Race Riot, there may be little hope for justice in America.”
The Oklahoma lawsuit disappointed Ogletree and his team, but other cities and states have waged campaigns on reparations and restorative compensation. No matter the dismal outcome in Tulsa, Ogletree envisioned a promising new development in the struggle for reparations, citing the dedication of Chicago Alderwoman Dorothy Tillman. She worked closely with former Mayor Harold Washington and, by 2005, had introduced an ordinance ensuring that corporations that do business in Chicago disclose their prior connection to slavery. Almost immediately, her ordinance began to bear fruit when JPMorgan was forced to admit that two banks affiliated with them had served as banks to plantations and thereby helped facilitate the slave trade.
Over the last several years, there have been some astonishing breakthroughs. In the fight for reparations and in part two of our series, we will explore the modern-day struggle to turn the dream of reparations into a reality.