Skip to main content
Category

Reparations

Here you will find reparation news, articles and media posts

Slave sale, Charleston, South Carolina.

When Emancipation Finally Came, Slave Markets Took on a Redemptive Purpose

By Reparations

During the Civil War, the jails that held the enslaved imprisoned Confederate soldiers. After, they became rallying points for a newly empowered community By Jonathan W. White, Smithsonian — For decades before the Civil War, slave markets, pens and jails served as holding cells for enslaved African-Americans who were awaiting sale. These were sites of brutal treatment and unbearable sorrow, as callous and avaricious slave traders tore apart families, separating…

Read More
Participants in Soul Fire Farm's Black Latinx Farmers Immersion program prepare a bed for planting.

A Digital Map Leads to Reparations for Black and Indigenous Farmers

By Reparations

By Jean Willoughby — Last month, Dallas Robinson received an email from someone she didn’t know, asking if she would be open to receiving a large sum of money — with no strings attached. For once, it wasn’t spam. She hit reply. Robinson is a beginning farmer with experience in organic agriculture, and has had plans to establish the Harriet Tubman Freedom Farm on 10 acres of family land near her home in Rocky Mount, North Carolina. Located in an area where the poverty rate hovers at nearly 20 percent, according to census data, and where both food insecurity and obesity rates are even higher, the farm will focus on serving the needs of the surrounding community by producing vegetables, herbs, and mushrooms.

Read More
After the Sale: Slaves Going South from Richmond by Eyre Crowe, 1853 (Now hanging in the Chicago History Museum)

The Second Amendment was ratified to preserve slavery

By Commentaries/Opinions, Reparations

By Thom Hartmann, AlterNet — The real reason the Second Amendment was ratified, and why it says “State” instead of “Country” (the Framers knew the difference – see the 10th Amendment), was to preserve the slave patrol militias in the southern states, which was necessary to get Virginia’s vote. Founders Patrick Henry, George Mason, and James Madison were totally clear on that . . . and we all should be too.

Read More
Cotton weighing during harvest time in the Mississippi Delta

To Remake the World: Slavery, Racial Capitalism, and Justice — By Walter Johnson

By Editors' Choice, Reparations

By Walter Johnson — In Memory of Cedric Robinson (1940–2016) It is a commonplace to say that slavery “dehumanized” enslaved people, but to do so is misleading, harmful, and worth resisting. I hasten to add that there are, of course, plenty of right-minded reasons for adopting the notion of “dehumanization.” It is hard to square the idea of millions of people being bought and sold, of systematic sexual violation, natal…

Read More
The British Treasury’s tweet shows slavery is still misunderstood

The British Treasury’s tweet shows slavery is still misunderstood

By Commentaries/Opinions, Reparations

The modern equivalent of £17bn was paid out to compensate slave owners for the loss of their human property. Some people believe we should be proud. By David Olusoga — It is hard to imagine why somebody at the Treasury thought that the subject of slavery was fertile territory from which they might harvest their weekly “surprising #FridayFact”. Just after lunchtime on 9 February the department’s Twitter page presented its third of a million followers with its latest offering. “Millions of you helped end the slave trade through your taxes,” it trumpeted.

Read More