News/Opinion: Should Reparations Be Paid to the Descendents of Former Slaves?

Should blacks get reparations?, Allen C. Guelzo, Christian Science Monitor, July 16,2009.

"You wonder why we didn't do it 100 years ago," said Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, after the Senate voted June 18 to endorse a national apology for slavery. "It is important to have a collective response to a collective injustice." And considering the scale and brutality of slavery in American history, Senator Harkin could not be more right. Abraham Lincoln described slavery as "the one retrograde institution in America," and told a delegation of black leaders in 1862 that "your race are suffering, in my judgment, the greatest wrong inflicted on any people."

But one reason why we have waited so long has to do with what many advocates of the apology regard as the necessary next step – reparations to African-Americans by the federal government. Significantly, that's a step the Senate's apology resolution refused to take. "Nothing in this resolution," said Concurrent Resolution 26, "authorizes or supports any claim against the United States; or serves as a settlement of any claim against the United States."

That refusal will inject new acrimony into a slow-burning debate over reparations that has been going on for 40 years. "There are going to be African-Americans who think that [the apology] is not reparations, and it's not action," admitted Tennessee Rep. Stephen Cohen (D), who has been a longtime backer of the apology.

And indeed there are. Randall Robinson, whose book, The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks (2000), demanded "massive restitutions" to American blacks for slavery, insists that an apology is meaningless without reparations payments to African-Americans. "Much is owed, and it is very quantifiable," Mr. Robinson said after the Senate vote. "It is owed as one would owe for any labor that one has not paid for, and until steps are taken in that direction we haven't accomplished anything." Illinois Sen. Roland Burris (D) added: "I want to go on record making sure that that disclaimer in no way would eliminate future actions that may be brought before this body that may deal with reparations."

And on the surface, the case for reparations to African-Americans has all the legal simplicity of an ordinary tort. A wrong was committed; therefore, compensation is due to those who were wronged. But just below that surface is a nest of disturbing complications that undercut the ease with which Robinson, Mr. Burris, and other reparations activists have put their case.

1. Who was legally responsible for slavery? Not the federal government. Slavery was always a matter of individual state enactments, which is what made Lincoln's initial attempts to free the slaves so difficult. When it was written in 1787, the Constitution only obliquely recognized the existence of legalized slavery in the states, and only mentioned it directly when it provided for the termination of the transatlantic slave trade in 1808. Congress twice passed laws regulating the capture of fugitive slaves. But there was no federal slave code and no federal statute legalizing slavery.

Nor was slavery confined only to the 11 Southern states of the old Confederacy. It was legal in New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey as late as the 1820s. If reparations are what's in view after an apology, the real target has to be the states; and if reparations are demanded from Alabama, it will want to know why it's more guilty than other states.

2. Who should be paid? At first glance, the answer seems obvious: the slaves. But the victims of slavery are now long dead; it is the heirs of those victims who stand next in line for compensation. Still, the line is a shaky and complicated one, with the chief complication lurking in the genes of African-Americans themselves. Slavery was a system of bondage; it was also a system of forced rape and violent sexual exploitation across the old slave South. The mixed-race offspring of slavery were plain to see on every plantation.

And the long-term result is that the average African-American today has been estimated, in genetic terms, to be approximately 20 percent white – and much of that 20 percent includes the genes of the white slaveholders who originally owned his great-grandparents. By what logic do we pay reparations for slavery to those who, in all too many cases, are literally descendents of the actual slaveholders? And should reparations for slavery include the descendents of those blacks who – like President Obama – did not arrive in the US until after slavery was ended?

3. What about the Civil War? Slavery did not end by evaporation. It took a catastrophic civil war, which cost 620,000 dead – equivalent to nearly 7 million today; it cost $190 billion (in today's dollars) to wage and multiplied the national debt by 400 percent; and it inflicted a casualty rate of 27 percent on Southern white males between the ages of 17 and 45, the very people most likely to own slaves.

At that time, there was no shortage of racists in the North who insisted that the Civil War was being waged only to preserve the Union, not to abolish slavery. But Lincoln knew otherwise, and he charged both North and South with knowing it, too. Slavery "constituted a peculiar and powerful interest" in the South, Lincoln said in 1865, and "all knew that this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war." The war, Lincoln said, was God's instrument for the ultimate reparation – every drop of blood drawn with the lash had been paid for with blood drawn by the sword. The blood-price of the Civil War may not automatically silence the case for reparations on its own. But the case for reparations cannot ignore it, either.

Reparations are held up as a gesture of retroactive justice, righting the wrongs that were done to our great-grandparents and before. Yet there is a deep instinct in the American national psyche that bucks at the notion of defining the present by the definitions of the past, which is one reason why reparations lawsuits have so routinely failed. If it is racial justice we seek, the greater wisdom lies in addressing it directly, for this generation.

Allen C. Guelzo is the Henry R. Luce Professor of the Civil War Era at Gettysburg College, and the author of Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President.

Text Source: Christian Science Monitor, News.Yahoo.com
Top Image Source, Guelzo with John Stewart: Gettysburg College

Slave Descendant Takes Reparations Case to United States Supreme Court

On Tuesday, May 22, 2007, the Supreme Court of the United States docketed a petition filed by Deadria Farmer-Paellmann -- the descendant of Africans enslaved in South Carolina -- asking the Court to hear a case against 17 major financial institutions for their role in financing, underwriting and supporting slavery. At issue is whether statues of limitations should be tolled to permit slave descendants to bring actions for restitution against the corporations that allegedly earned profits enslaving Africans in violation of Northern antislavery laws. The case is entitled, Farmer-Paellmann v. Brown & Williamson, No. 06-1533. The defendants in the action include: FleetBoston Financial Corporation, Aetna Inc., JP Morgan Chase Manhattan Bank, New York Life Insurance Co., Lehman Bros, AIG, and Brown Brothers Harriman.

"It is a pivotal moment for African Americans and all people, and we believe the Court should hear the case, said Bruce Afran, counsel for Farmer-Paellmann. Co-counsel Carl Mayer added,"the issues presented are unique and are important in settling a long running injustice."

Farmer-Paellmann originally filed the landmark case on March 26, 2002. It was consolidated with 8 similar actions in the Northern District Federal Court in Chicago, IL in 2003. The consolidated action was dismissed with prejudice by judge Charles Norgle on July 6, 2005. Plaintiffs appealed the case in the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, one of the most pro-business circuits in the country, and secured an unprecedented victory. In the Decision, written by Judge Posner, the Appeals Court ruled in favor of half the case consisting of consumer fraud and fraud claims. It held that companies that lie about their role in slavery are guilty of fraud. However, they affirmed the lower Court ruling that former slaves should have brought their own claims against the companies and therefore, the plaintiffs are not the proper parties to bring the case.

"It was impossible for slaves or ex-slaves to bring this action. No one knew anything about these companies until 2000," said Farmer-Paellmann. It was in January of 2000 that Farmer-Paellmann initiated an effort to identify the names of specific companies that played a role in slavery and asked that they apologize and pay reparations. Prior to that time, books written on the history of slavery never identified any of the defendants as participants in slavery. However, the Appeals Court suggested that books written prior to the 2002 action should have been enough for former slaves to bring their own actions.

Adding to the absence of information identifying the defendants as slave profiteers is the fact that many of the defendants continue to deny that they played a role in slavery. Farmer-Paellmann argues in her petition, "most dastardly were the public false statements made by representatives of the JP Morgan Chase Bank denying, as late as March 5, 2004, that they were at all involved in slavery." Months later, after threat of loosing lucrative vending contracts with the City of Chicago, the bank filed a report admitting to their role in slavery.

"That we had a victory in the Appeals Court renewed my faith in the justice system. I am optimistic that the Supreme Court will hear our case and give us a chance to secure justice," said Farmer-Paellmann.

The court petition has been published to support the litigation by the non-profit Restitution Study Group with additional writings and can be purchased at: www.cafepress.com/rsgincorp.

Source: http://www.rsgincorp.com and e-mail:: rsgincorp@yahoo.com

News: 21st Century Cherokee Nation Expells Descendents of Slaves

Cherokees accused of racist plot as sons of slaves are cast out
Tim Reid, Times OnlineMarch 3, 2007

Cherokees voted yesterday to expel descendants of black slaves they once owned, a move that has exposed the unsavoury role played by some Native Americans during the Civil War and renewed accusations of racism against the tribe.
Members of the Cherokee Nation, the second largest Native American tribe, voted by 77 per cent to 23 in a special election to amend their constitution and limit citizenship to those listed as “Cherokee by blood”.
The move stripped tribal membership from freedmen – those descended from slaves – and blacks who were married to Cherokees. They have enjoyed full citizenship rights for 141 years.
Opponents of the vote denounced it as a racist plot to deny tribal revenue – which includes $22 billion a year from casino takings for all US tribes – to those not deemed full-blood Cherokee, and to block them from claiming a slice of the tribal pie.

Supporters say that it was a long-overdue move by Cherokees to determine their own tribal make-up. Freedmen were granted full tribal membership under an 1866 treaty that the tribe was essentially forced to sign with the US Government after the Civil War ended.
The vote has reopened a lesser-known chapter in Native American history – the fact that some of the country’s largest tribes sided with the Confederacy during the Civil War – and the intra-tribal racial tensions that have persisted since Emancipation.
Cherokees, Choctaws, Chicksaws, Creeks and Seminoles were known as the Five Civilised Tribes because they adopted many of the ways of the Confederate South, including the ownership of black slaves. The election has also high-lighted the massive gambling revenues many tribes now enjoy because, as “sovereign nations”, they are free to build casinos on tribal lands in a country where gambling is largely illegal.

The vote limits citizenship to those who can trace their heritage to a “Cherokee by blood” list, part of the Dawes Rolls census created by Congress in 1906. Under that census, anybody with a trace of African-American blood – even if they were half Cherokee – was placed on the freedmen roll. Those with full Cherokee or mixed white and Cherokee ancestry – even if seventh eighths white – were put on the “Cherokee by blood” roll.
Today about 25,000 of the 270,000 Cherokees are descendants of freedmen, but the tribe is growing rapidly with new citizens enrolling each month. Members are entitled to a share of the $350 million annual budget from federal and tribal revenue, housing and medical support.
Those who want to expel the freedmen have said that, without the vote, thousands more descendants would seek to cash in on the tribe’s revenue and welfare network. “Don’t get taken advantage of by these people. They will suck you dry,” wrote Darren Buzzard in a widely circulated e-mail last year. “Don’t let black freedmen back you into a corner. Protect Cherokee culture for our children.”

Chad Smith, the tribe’s principal chief, said that about 8,700 people had voted in the special election, more than the turnout for the Cherokee constitution vote four years ago. “Their voice is clear as to who should be citizens of the Cherokee Nation. No one else has the right to make that determination.” But Taylor Keen, a tribal council member, said: “This is a sad chapter in Cherokee history. This is not my Cherokee Nation. My Cherokee Nation is one that honours all parts of her past.”

Marilyn Vann, president of the Oklahoma City-based Descendants of Freedmen of Five Civilised Tribes, said: “I’m very disappointed that people bought into a lot of rhetoric and falsehoods by tribal leaders.” Although most tribal issues are dealt with by Cherokee courts, the freedmen have vowed to challenge the vote in federal courts. They have precedent on their side.
In 2000 the Seminole Nation expelled freedmen. But the federal Government, through the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and federal courts, refused to recognise the Seminoles as a sovereign nation. Faced with such a loss of status, they took the freedmen back.
The petition drive for the Cherokee ballot measure followed a ruling by the Cherokee Nation Supreme Court last March confirming that the 1866 treaty assured citizenship to freedmen descendants. Since then, more than 2,000 freedmen descendants have enrolled as citizens of the tribe. Members of the tribe received many election mailings attacking “nonIndians” as thieves who would create queues in health clinics and welfare centres.
But the vote means that, like the Seminole, the Cherokee risk losing their tribal sovereignty, Jon Velie, a lawyer for Seminole and Cherokee freedmen, told the New York Times. “There is a racial schism in Indian Country that is growing and getting worse.”

On the money
— Casinos run by Native Americans have exploded from a $200 million (£102 million) industry in 1988 to a $18 billion one in 2005
— Of 562 federally recognised tribes, 224 have gambling operations
— Between 1990 and 2000, real per capita incomes of Indian communities increased 36 per cent on gambling reservations and 21 per cent on nongambling reservations
— There are 197,000 firms owned by Native Americans
— 2.4 million Americans claim pure Native American descent, 4.3 million claim partial descent

Source: US Government