Proposal and Plan for
Redress and Reparations for Slavery and Its Aftermath

Table of Contents

Introduction - See below

Purpose - See below

Redress and Reparations Movements - CLICK HERE

Special Field Order No. 15, January 16, 1865
Reparations by the Federal Republic of Germany for the Nazi Holocaust
South African Truth and Reconciliation
Japanese American Redress and Reparations, Civil Liberties Act of 1988
Mayor of London Apologizes for Role of London in Atlantic Slave Trade, March 21, 2007
British Prime Minister Apologizes for England’s Role in International Slave Trade
Apology to Australia’s Indigenous Peoples
Apology to Native Peoples on behalf of the United States

Proposal for Redress and Reparations for Slavery for African Americans - CLICK HERE

Plan for Redress
Historic Commemorative and Memorial Programs Related to the African American Slavery Experience
Proposed Health and Welfare Programs
Proposed Memorial and Commemorative Programs

Documentation on Reparations - CLICK HERE

History of Slavery - CLICK HERE

Fact Sheet on Slavery - CLICK HERE

Abolition and Anti-Slavery Timeline - CLICK HERE

Selected Quotes on Slavery, Abolition and Redress - CLICK HERE

For Further Reading - CLICK HERE

Appendix 1: H.R. 40 - CLICK HERE

Representative Conyers on H.R. 40
H.R. 40

Appendix 2: Congressional Apology - CLICK HERE

House of Representatives Apology
Senate Apology

Appendix 3: Reparations in the Popular Media - CLICK HERE

Appendix 4: H.R. 1242 – 400 Years of African American History Commission Act - CLICK HERE

About Us - CLICK HERE

The Center for Jubilee, Reconciliation and Healing
Committee Members

 Dedication

For those who suffered and endured more than 240 years of slavery.
For those who suffered and endured 150 years of oppression and “slavery by another name.”
For those who fought and contributed to the struggle for freedom and justice.
For those who continue the fight…

"Justice delayed is justice denied." 

 legal maxim meaning that if legal redress is available for a party that has suffered some injury, but is not forthcoming in a timely fashion, it is effectively the same as having no redress at all[i]

“If not now, when?”

 - Hillel the Elder (ca. 110 BCE – 10 CE), Jewish religious leader

Abolitionist David Barrow defined the term “slave”:

“When I use the word slave or slaves, I would be understood to mean such beings of the human race who are (without any crime committed by them, more than is common to all men) with their offspring to perpetual generations, considered legal property; compelled by superior force, unconditionally to obey the commands of their owners, to be bought and sold, to be given and received, to go and come, to marry or forbear, to be separated when married at pleasure, to eat, drink, sleep, wear, labour, and to be beaten at their owner’s discretion; and all this sanctioned by civil authority.”

“In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.”

- Declaration of Independence, signed July 4, 1776; referencing King George III of England’s failure to redress grievances listed in various colonial petitions.

 We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator, with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.

- Declaration of Independence, signed July 4, 1776. Drafted by Thomas Jefferson, who personally enslaved 200 individuals

And if thy brother, a Hebrew man, or a Hebrew woman, be sold unto thee, and serve thee six years; then in the seventh year thou shalt let him go free from thee. And when thou sendest him out free from thee, thou shalt not let him go away empty: thou shalt furnish him liberally out of thy flock, and out of thy floor, and out of thy winepress: of that wherewith the LORD thy God hath blessed thee thou shalt give unto him. And thou shalt remember that thou wast a bondman in the land of Egypt, and the LORD thy God redeemed thee: therefore I command thee this thing today.

- Deuteronomy 15:12-15

Besides the crime which consists in violating the law, and varying from the right rule of reason, whereby a man so far becomes degenerate, and declares himself to quit the principles of human nature, and to be a noxious creature, there is commonly injury done to some person or other, and some other man receives damage by his transgression: in which case he who hath received any damage, has, besides the  right of punishment common to him with other men, a particular right to seek reparation from him that has done it: and any other person, who finds it just, may also join with him that is injured, and assist him in recovering from the offender so much as may make satisfaction for the harm he has suffered.

John Locke, Second Treatise, Of Civil Government, Chapter II, Section 10, 1690

“Obama had been on the record as opposing reparations. But now, late in his presidency, he seemed more open to the idea—in theory, at least, if not in practice.

“‘Theoretically, you can make obviously a powerful argument that centuries of slavery, Jim Crow, discrimination are the primary cause for all those gaps,’ Obama said, referencing the gulf in education, wealth, and employment that separates black and white America. ‘That those were wrongs to the black community as a whole, and black families specifically, and that in order to close that gap, a society has a moral obligation to make a large, aggressive investment, even if it’s not in the form of individual reparations checks but in the form of a Marshall Plan.’”

- Ta-Nehisi Coates, in “My President was Black,” The Atlantic, 2016

Remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them, and them which suffer adversity, as being yourselves also in the body.

- Epistle of Paul to the Hebrews, 13:3

Introduction

Slavery was introduced to the North American continent in Jamestown, in the English colony of Virginia, in 1619. 

More than 400,000 enslaved individuals were brought to the North American colonies and to the United States before the African slave trade was outlawed on January 1, 1808.

Enslaved individuals were brought to the United States in what was called the “middle passage.”  Some historians claim that as many as two million Africans were killed or died in the passage.

In the first U.S. census, in 1790, there were 697,897 enslaved individuals living in the United States of America.

Between 1790 and the beginning of the Civil War, more than one million enslaved individuals were sold and moved to the deep south to work in the cotton fields. This was the largest forced migration in American history.  Countless generations of enslaved families were separated forever.  The breeding of enslaved individuals for labor and for sale became widespread.  During this period, more than 3.5 million people were born into slavery.  The only place in the world where there was a natural increase in the population of enslaved individuals was the United States.

In 1860, according to the U.S. census, there were 3,953,760 enslaved individuals in the United States of America.  The total population of the United States in that year was 31,443,321.  The total enslaved population of the United States was more than 13%.  The number of enslaved individuals in the United States represented a 23.39% increase between 1850 and 1860.  Eighty-nine percent of all African Americans living in the United States in 1860 were enslaved.

Slavery remained a legal institution in the United States for 246 years.

The United States’ economy developed due to the forced labor of more than five million enslaved individuals.  The total wealth of the United States during the period of slavery increased exponentially.  Enslaved individuals were responsible for the economic and political success of the new republic.

Historians and economists have estimated that the total wealth of slavery accumulated to the United States was in excess of seven trillion dollars.

The total value of enslaved individuals in the United States was worth more than the total industrial and agricultural output of the United States.  Enslaved individuals were more valuable than the combined value of all businesses, railroads, communications, shipping, etc.  The only thing more valuable was the value of the land itself.

The United States was one of the last Western countries in modern times to outlaw the institution of slavery.  It took a devastating Civil War, with more than 700,000 soldiers killed, to decide whether the United States would be a country bound by slavery or would live up to its Declaration of Independence and the principles of its Constitution.

Even after slavery was abolished, economic, legal, social, educational, and other oppression of African Americans continued.  From the end of the Civil War until the 1960s, African Americans were the poorest minority in America.  Even 150 years after the end of slavery, vast disparities remain in health, wealth, education, housing, and in numerous other areas.

The recent shootings of young African Americans, including in Ferguson, Missouri (2014), Baltimore (2015) and Falcon Heights, Minnesota (2016), and countless others, are a continuing legacy of racism.

These are the continuing legacies of slavery, Jim Crow, prejudice, etc. 

On January 8, 2018, Congress enacted a law to establish a commission to commemorate “400 Years of African American History” (H.R. 1242; See Appendix 6).  It establishes a program to commemorate the arrival of Africans in the English colonies in Virginia in 1619.  The program to launch a major lobbying campaign to support HR40 will be established to coincide with the 400th anniversary of the introduction of slavery to the British North American colonies.

Purpose

The purpose of this document is to provide a preliminary outline of programs with three express purposes.  They are:

1.     Provide for redress for 246 years of slavery and its aftermath in the United States of America.  It is recommended that the United States government create a national program that would pay monetary redress, collectively, to the African American community.  This would be in the form of a “Marshall Plan.”
2.     Create historic commemorative and memorial programs.  These would commemorate the history of slavery, its aftermath, and the continuing effect on the African American community.
3.     Improve race relations, education, health, welfare, income disparity for African Americans.

The Jubilee Center will do the initial preparation of a proposal document and will begin the lobbying process for redress.  The Jubilee Center was founded in Savannah, Georgia, in January 2015 as a nonprofit organization. 

We will lobby the following:

·       The President of the United States
·       The United States Congress
·       Community organizations
·       Community leaders
·       Clergymen
·       Educators
·       Students
·       Health professionals
·       Etc.

Footnotes

[i] Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justice_delayed_is_justice_denied [downloaded 1/6/2019].  The article further states: “As Chief Justice of the United States Warren E. Burger noted in an address to the American Bar Association in 1970: ‘A sense of confidence in the courts is essential to maintain the fabric of ordered liberty for a free people and three things could destroy that confidence and do incalculable damage to society: that people come to believe that inefficiency and delay will drain even a just judgment of its value; that people who have long been exploited in the smaller transactions of daily life come to believe that courts cannot vindicate their legal rights from fraud and over-reaching; that people come to believe the law – in the larger sense – cannot fulfill its primary function to protect them and their families in their homes, at their work, and on the public streets.’” [Burger, "What's Wrong With the Courts: The Chief Justice Speaks Out", U.S. News & World Report (vol. 69, No. 8, Aug. 24, 1970) 68, 71 (address to ABA meeting, Aug. 10, 1970).]