Reparations Resource Center

Aug 28 2019

L. Prang & Co. print of the painting Hancock at Gettysburg by Thure de Thulstrup, showing Pickett's Charge.

The Diaries Left Behind by Confederate Soldiers Reveal the True Role of Enslaved Labor at Gettysburg

By IBW21 Reparations

Even as some enslaved men escaped North, the retreat by the Army of Northern Virginia would have been disastrous without the support of its camp servants. By Kevin M. Levin, Smithsonian — Walking the Gettysburg battlefield today, it’s easy to imagine the Union and Confederate armies dueling for control of the Pennsylvania town and its surrounding picturesque fields and rocky hills for three days in July 1863. For many tourists,…

Aug 27 2019

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Moderator of the panel Dr. Hilary Brown and panelists at the discussion on reparatory justice.

Reparations Not Just About Money – CARIFESTA Symposium

By IBW21 Editors' Choice, Reparations

By CARICOM Today — As part of the CARIFESTA Symposium entitled “Journey Round Myself”, a panel discussion on CARICOM Reparatory Justice was hosted at the UWI, St. Augustine on Thursday August 22, 2019. Panelists for the discussion included Barbados’ Ambassador to CARICOM Mr, David Commissiong, who gave the feature address; Mr. Dorbrene O’Marde, Chairman of the Antigua and Barbuda Reparations Commission, Mr Ariyegoro Ome, Chairman of the Trinidad and Tobago National Committee on…

Aug 27 2019

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Details of horrific first voyages in transatlantic slave trade revealed

By IBW21 Editors' Choice, Reparations

As the world ignores the ignominious 500th anniversary of the buying and selling of slaves between Africa and the Americas, historians uncover its first horrific voyages. By David Keys, The Independent — Almost completely ignored by the modern world, this month marks the 500th anniversary of one of history’s most tragic and significant events – the birth of the Africa to America transatlantic slave trade. New discoveries are now revealing the…

Aug 26 2019

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Why Reparations from 1619 to Now

By IBW21 Commentaries/Opinions, Reparations

By Rev. Irene Monroe, LA Progressive — A year before the Mayflower arrived in 1620, the first group of enslaved Africans depicted as “20 and odd Negroes” arrived sometime during the final week of August to the Virginia colony of Jamestown. The fact that the exact date cannot be pinpointed assists in obfuscating the origins of slavery in the United States. What is incontrovertible is the fact that this month…

Aug 21 2019

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JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson and Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenberg speak during the Business Roundtable (BRT) CEO Innovation Summit in Washington, D.C., on December 6, 2018. Since its inception, BRT has been at the forefront of corporate resistance to pro-consumer, pro-union legislative efforts.

A Bunch of CEOs Want to Fix Capitalism. You Can’t Fix Anything Built on Slavery.

By IBW21 Commentaries/Opinions, Reparations

By William Rivers Pitt, Truthout — Anyone who cracked open the business pages of the major papers on Monday morning was confronted by an avalanche of self-congratulation from the CEO caste and its idolaters. The Business Roundtable (BRT) — a large cohort of massive businesses that has been bending the economy to its will since 1972 — announced that it is “rewriting how it views the purpose of a corporation,” according to The Washington…

Aug 21 2019

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Pete Buttigieg, mayor of South Bend, Ind., and a Democratic presidential candidate, greets people at Gibson’s Bookstore in Concord, N.H., on April 6

New Hampshire’s white liberals grapple with reparations

By IBW21 News & Current Affairs, Reparations

By Julie Zauzmer, The Washington Post — CONCORD, N.H. — Over the past two years, a series of racist incidents has shaken New Hampshire, a state that’s nearly 95 percent white. A biracial 8-year-old was pushed off a picnic table with a rope around his neck in Claremont, an assault authorities are investigating as a hate crime. Teens sang “Let’s kill all the blacks” during a high school history class in Dover. A burned Confederate flag was…

Aug 19 2019

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A plaque in Virginia commemorates the arrival of "twenty and odd" African in 1619

Bearing Human Cargo: 400 Years Since the Arrival of the First African Slaves in the American Colonies

By IBW21 Commentaries/Opinions, Reparations

By Albinko Hasic, History News Network — Scholars of the African diaspora speculate that between 1525 and 1866, more than 12.5 million people were stolen from the African continent and transported to the New World. Of those that traveled, only 10.7 million survived the treacherous and excruciating journey known as the Middle Passage. Spain and Portugal were the initial European powers to engage in the horrific yet profitable trade, but others soon…

Aug 19 2019

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Freddie Jenkins’ mother attended what is now the last standing African American schoolhouse in Mount Pleasant, S.C., in the 1930s.

Slavery’s descendants say a reparations check won’t make the pain go away

By IBW21 Editors' Choice, Reparations

By Tyrone Beason, Los Angeles Times — CHARLESTON, S.C. — Five years before the first shots of the Civil War rang out from the harbor here in 1861, alderman Thomas Ryan and a business partner opened Ryan’s Mart at No. 6 Chalmers St. Their merchandise was slaves: African men, women and children who were prodded, picked over and auctioned off to the highest bidders. The finest adult males could fetch…

Aug 19 2019

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How Slave Owners Dictated the Language of the 2nd Amendment

By IBW21 Commentaries/Opinions, Reparations

Southern aristocrats wanted armed militias mainly to control their slaves. So they wanted language in the new nation’s constitution protecting that right. By Nicolaus Mills, Daily Beast — Mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, have highlighted once again the importance of the Supreme Court’s 2008 landmark decision District of Columbia v. Heller declaring that the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to possess a gun. Writing for the Court’s…

Aug 19 2019

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What are Reparations, How Could They Happen, and Why Do They Matter?

By IBW21 Commentaries/Opinions, Reparations

Here’s what you need to know. By Jameelah Nasheed, Teen Vogue — For over 250 years, people of African descent were enslaved in the United States. Tricked and stolen from their homes, subjected to the brutal Middle Passage, and held in bondage for generations, emancipation was a welcome relief from slavery but didn’t fully undo the damage it causes, nor have the various hard-fought advances in civil rights that have…