Resources
Read our book:
The Reparations Project
A Story of Friendship and Repair Work by Linked Descendants of Enslavement
How can a Black man and white woman, linked by ancestries in enslavement, use their uniquely different pasts to create space for a common reparative path toward the future?
What Are Reparations?
At its heart, reparations refer to compensation, which might include a national apology, educational, housing, and healthcare programs, and financial redress from the U.S. government to African Americans for the harm of slavery and beyond. H.R. 40, which has not yet been passed by Congress, would establish a commission to study and develop national reparations proposals. Legislation that begins this process cannot be passed soon enough.
We believe that the process of truth telling, redress, and healing must also happen on a personal level in addition to a national level, and in fact that national reparations can be influenced in this way. Relationships between members of different descendant families, people who are descendants of the enslaved and of enslavers, and also beyond slavery, people who are members of the caste that has been systemically oppressed and also the caste that has been systematically privileged, are foundational if we really want to heal our national wounds and work toward closure.
Video Image: This video showcases The Reparations Project's first Spring Break immersive trip in Savannah and Hilton Head with the Quarterman Keller Scholars from Spelman and Clark Atlanta and the Quarterman family.
What do we mean by “harm” and “beyond”?
When 250 years of chattel slavery ended, the oppression of Black people did not.
America’s caste system was set. Discrimination continued in jobs, housing, education, and incarceration — barriers that have
contributed to the staggering economic inequality that persists in the country today.
White families have substantially more wealth than Black families
The median net worth of a white household is about
10 times the median net worth of black households
Note: Figures are for non-Hispanic whites and non-Hispanic blacks. Source: Federak Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances, 2018 Graphic: Curt Merrill, CNN
What is the Wealth Gap?
Today, the five largest landowners in America, all white, own more rural land than all of Black America combined. Black people make up about 13 percent of the population of America but own less than 1 percent of rural land. White people own more than 98 percent of the land in the country. In 1962, two years before civil-rights legislation and the Great Society program, the average wealth of white households was seven times greater than that of Black households. Today, it’s ten times greater. The median family wealth for white people is $171,000, compared with just $17,600 for Black people. It is worse on the margins. According to the Economic Policy Institute, 19 percent of Black households have zero or negative net worth. At every level of the wage distribution, median Black wages are 73.3 percent of white wages (“State of Working America Wages 2018,” Economic Policy Institute).
Reparations are not a new concept. Reparations programs include the U.S. government’s provision of reparations for Japanese Americans unjustly incarcerated (“interned”) during World War II, the German government’s provision of reparations for victims of the Nazi Holocaust, and the Canadian government’s provision of compensation to indigenous peoples who were removed forcibly from their families and confined to Christian, church-run, Indian residential schools. The U.S. government tried paying reparations for slavery once too.
America's Failed Attempt
When the Civil War ended in 1865, an attempt at reparations, commonly referred to as Sherman’s Field Order No. 15, was made to give at least forty acres of abandoned and confiscated land as well as a mule to each formerly enslaved family of four (or ten acres per person) so that they might begin to build generational wealth through land ownership. Land was distributed to African-American families and then rapidly reclaimed. Instead of working their own land, the Black Codes condemned many African-Americans to cheap or unpaid labor as sharecroppers and paved the way for the wealth gap today.
Reparations Readings
“The Case for Reparations” Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Atlantic, 2014
“From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty-First Century” William A. Darity featured on NPR
“H.R. 40 Is Not a Symbolic Act. It’s a Path to Restorative Justice.” Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee
“Germany confronted its racist legacy. Britain and the US must do the same.” Susan Neiman, author of the book: “Learning from the Germans: Race and the Memory of Evil”
“Reparations: How We White Relatives Must Try to Pay Back the Unpayable Debt.” Hilary Giovale, organizer and author of Good Relative
Reparations and Family History: Envisioning the Path to Repair
Lotte Lieb Dula, founder of reparations4slavery.com, walks partners of The Reparations Project through a powerful presentation that unpacks her family history and helps us unpack our own family histories to see how every American family is affected by white supremacy. This video is a powerful look at the gap in the genesis of White vs. African American wealth on a personal and systemic scale and considers how we might begin down the road toward personal and national repair.
Coming to the Table Reparations Guide
Coming to the Table is uniquely suited to address the issue of reparations in the United States. Its vision, mission, approach, and values are aligned with the initiative. Its slogan, “Taking America Beyond the Legacy of Enslavement (TABLE),” implies such action. Deeply rooted in history and communities across the color line, Coming to the Table is bringing people together for both communion and collaboration in racial healing and building a better future. This resulting guide to possible reparations for slavery and its legacies was created to inspire European Americans to act. However, we suggest that before acting, European Americans should take their cues from African Americans as to when and how to approach and implement reparations. African Americans may wish to engage in some of these activities so as to ensure that trust, healing, and true reparations of the harms are achieved.
Movement 4 Black Lives Reparations Guide
This toolkit explores the long history of struggles for reparations for Black people, lays out key facts, concepts, and international human rights law underlying reparations demands, and provides case studies of struggles for reparations at the institutional, local, state, and international levels. Our goal in creating this toolkit is to provide a foundational definition of what reparations are, to advance our argument that reparations for Black people in the United States are essential, to inform public discussion about reparations, and to support organizers seeking reparations at the local, national, and international level in order to advance our collective struggles for Black liberation.
NAARC 10-point Reparations Program
The National African American Reparations Commission (NAARC) demands that the government of this nation acknowledge the unspeakable crimes committed against African people through enslavement, the institution of chattel slavery, systems of de jure and de facto segregation and other processes of discrimination, denial and exclusion which have severely damaged Black people across generations. We further declare our intent to relentlessly pursue local and state governments and private institutions directly engaged with or complicit in these crimes.
N’COBRA’s 2020 National Convention Flipbook
The National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (N’COBRA) is the premiere mass-based coalition of organizations and individuals organized for the sole purpose of obtaining reparations for African descendants in the United States. N’COBRA is directed nationally by a board of directors. N’COBRA’s campaigns and work is organized through nine national commissions: Economic Development, Human Resources, Legal Strategies, Legislation, Information and Media, Membership and Organizational Development, International Affairs, Youth and Education and seven standing committees: Nomination , Executive, Conference, Fund Development, ASHE, National office and National Campaign(s). N’COBRA holds an annual national membership meeting and conference, usually held the fourth weekend in June, to conduct the business of the Coalition as well as to evaluate and introduce new campaigns and strategies. Read about HR-40 efforts and what the youth of today say about Reparations.