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Slavery

A man representing the Freedman's Bureau stands between armed groups of Euro-Americans and Afro-Americans in this illustration from 1868.Alfred R. Waud, Harper's Weekly

The US Gave Slavers Their Land Back. What About Black Folks’ Reparations?

By Editors' Choice, Reparations

H.R. 40, the bill for a commission to study reparations, can help fulfill the promise of “40 acres and a mule.” By Taru Taylor, Truthout — The U.S. government was on the wrong side of history when they reneged their promise of “40 acres and a mule” to formerly enslaved Black Americans in 1865. Exactly 154 years later, let’s pass H.R. 40, the bill for a commission to study reparations, and…

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Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) sponsored HR 40, legislation to form a commission to study slavery reparations for African Americans.

Germany paid Holocaust reparations. Will the U.S. do the same for slavery?

By Commentaries/Opinions, HR 40 Congressional Hearing, Reparations

By Susan Neiman, Los Angeles Times — Born as a white girl in the segregated South, I’ve spent most of my adulthood as a Jewish woman in Berlin. This double perspective has fueled my resolve to explore America’s fraught relationship with its history. It is easy to point to the differences between the Holocaust and the enslavement and abuse of millions of Africans. When examining possible responses to these crimes,…

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Lawmakers on Wednesday held the first congressional hearing in more than a decade on reparations, spotlighting the debate over whether the United States should consider compensation for the descendants of slaves in the United States. (June 19) AP

‘Poison of America’: Bill on slavery reparations gains backing from Sen. Chuck Schumer

By HR 40 Congressional Hearing, News & Current Affairs, Reparations

By Nicholas Wu and Deborah Barfield Berry, USA Today — WASHINGTON – Calling racism the “poison of America,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer gave his support Tuesday to a bill to set up a commission to study reparations. “The disparities in race affect everything, not just the obvious things, but the non-obvious things” like pollution and climate change, Schumer explained. The bill, proposed by Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey and Texas…

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Cotton plants soak up the sun at a farm still operating in Limestone County.

In McConnell’s boyhood town where his family owned slaves, the reparations debate thrives

By News & Current Affairs, Reparations

By Sandy Mazza, USA Today — ATHENS, Ala. – Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was born about 40 miles from his great-great-grandfathers’ Alabama cotton farms, worked by slaves 100 years before. Like so many long-standing Southern white families, McConnell’s forebearers built their wealth with free slave labor and cheap land. Two of his great-great-grandfathers owned more than a dozen slaves, census records reviewed by the USA TODAY Network show. The…

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A statue of President James Monroe at Highland, his former plantation in Virginia.

James Monroe Enslaved Hundreds. Their Descendants Still Live Next Door.

By Editors' Choice, Reparations

A small African-American community has existed less than 10 miles from the president’s former plantation for generations. Only recently has the full extent of their relationship been revealed. By Audra D. S. Burch, The New York Times — CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — So many Monroes in rural Albemarle County remember the moment they asked a parent or grandparent if they were somehow connected to the nation’s fifth president, James Monroe. The…

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The bronze statue called "Raise Up" at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, a memorial to honor thousands of people killed in lynchings, on April 23, 2018, in Montgomery, Ala.

White supremacy must be undone — institution by institution

By Editors' Choice, Reparations

By Michael Gerson, The Washington Post — The national debate on race — which the president has made more angry and urgent with his racial demagoguery — is hindered by imprecise language. Most whites do not feel personally guilty for the United States’ long history of imposed white supremacy. A white man who has lost his job at the coal mine, or the daughter of a recent Ukrainian immigrant, probably…

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Toni Morrison

A Documentary That Shows Another Side of Toni Morrison

By Commentaries/Opinions, Reparations

This moving and profound portrait serves as a fitting biographical tribute as well as a piercing, often painful recount of African American history from slavery and the Civil War to the Jim Crow era, the Civil Rights movement and beyond. By Syreeta McFadden, The Atlantic — One of my white teachers in high school insisted that Toni Morrison would be confusing to me as a reader. So I approached the…

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