Black Narrative

Barack Obama Accepts the Democratic Nomination for President of the United States

2008-08-30T17:51:00.003-04:00

It was very moving to me watching Barack Obama's acceptance speech, him being the first Black American to be nominated by a major party. What a great historical moment!

If you missed it, the video of the speech is below:

NYT: AIDS rate in Black America akin to Third World Countries

2008-07-30T16:26:00.002-04:00

If Black America were a country it would have one of highest HIV rates in the world according to a New York Times article today. And yet many of the money that has been put aside for fighting AIDS in the world by the Bush Administration will not reach African Americans. In fact, Black America has rates higher than 7 of 15 countries that receive funding through this initiative. To top it off, it appears that the Bush Administration is trying to hide these statistics when it neglected to report America's AIDS rate to the United Nations for inclusion of its biannual report.

NYT: FL Gov. Says He Would Consider Reparations

2008-03-31T09:26:00.003-04:00

I think this is the first US governor to go this far to say that he would consider reparations for slavery

New York Times
March 27, 2008

Florida Legislature Apologizes for State’s History of Slavery

By DAMIEN CAVE and CHRISTINE JORDAN SEXTON

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — The Florida Legislature formally apologized Wednesday for the state’s “shameful” history of slavery, joining five other states that have expressed public regret for what Senator Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential candidate, recently called America’s “original sin.”

The two-page resolution passed overwhelmingly in the Senate and then the House, bringing at least one lawmaker to tears. Gov. Charlie Crist, a Republican, called it a “significant step” toward reconciliation.

“All that is necessary for evil to prevail is for good people to do nothing,” Mr. Crist said in an interview, quoting the philosopher Edmund Burke. “I think we are reminded of that today because it takes courage to do the right thing, and it’s not always easy.”

Several black lawmakers, especially Senator Anthony C. Hill Sr., Democrat of Jacksonville, have been pushing for a public apology since last year. What eventually passed on Wednesday resembled statements issued by North Carolina, Alabama, Virginia, Maryland and New Jersey, the last state to apologize for slavery with a resolution in January.

The Florida resolution expressed “profound regret” for the state’s role “in sanctioning and perpetuating involuntary servitude upon generations of African slaves.” It did not use the word apology, but Mr. Hill said the statement’s intent was clear.

“At the end of the day we said three words: ‘I am sorry,’ ” he said. “I think now we can begin the healing process of reconciliation.”

Florida’s history with slavery is unusual. Its roots stretch back to the settlement of St. Augustine in 1565, and slaves here took part in a wide array of industries, including cattle ranching in central Florida and sugar cane harvests in Tampa.

“From 1845 to 1860, it was one of the fastest-growing slave states in the union,” said Larry E. Rivers, author of “Slavery in Florida” and president of Fort Valley State University in Georgia. “When things were slowing down in Virginia and still going in South Carolina and North Carolina, slavery in Florida was growing in leaps and bounds.”

The state’s first slave laws were enacted by the Territorial Legislative Council in 1822. Mirroring the laws of other Southern states, they included such punishments as nailing slaves’ ears to posts if they were caught stealing.

Some of this history was recounted before the Legislature, and was included in the resolution. It was enough to draw clear sobs from Senator Arthenia L. Joyner, Democrat of Tampa.

The governor said such emotions were understandable.

“I don’t think you could listen to some of the punishments that were meted out in the past before Florida became more enlightened without being moved by it,” Mr. Crist said.

Florida has made other efforts to address the consequences of institutional racism; in 1994, the state allocated $2.1 million to surviving victims of the Rosewood massacre, the 1923 attack on a black town in North Florida.

And on Wednesday, Mr. Crist said he was open to evaluating whether broader reparations for slavery would be worth pursuing. He warned, however, that this was not the year, given Florida’s looming $3 billion budget deficit.

Some black leaders said they hoped that the addition of another state’s resolution would lead Congress to offer an apology of its own — if only to document regrets expressed in speeches by President Bush and President Bill Clinton.

At the very least, they said, Florida’s statement is likely to continue the country’s amplified conversation about race, inspired in part by Mr. Obama’s candidacy.

“It’s a good time for the whole nation to address race in a different way,” said Carol M. Swain, a professor of political science and law at Vanderbilt University who supports a national apology for slavery. “We do need to have the conversation. And it’s a much broader conversation than Barack Obama was able to introduce in his speech.”

Damien Cave reported from Miami, and Christine Jordan Sexton from Tallahassee.

Shame on you, Pat Buchanan

2008-03-30T13:47:00.002-04:00

... for arguing that Black Americans should be thankful for being brought in chains to this country by listing the "benefits" we have received. He seems to have some kind of historical amnesia about the what the American system of slavery was all about. Africans were brought to this country. Stripped (not given) of their freedom, status and property. And then forced to work (and their children) for the rest of their lives for no money. Where are the "benefits" in that, Pat? And to say Section 8 and Christianity are the benefits of being forced into slavery? Shame on you, Pat!

A Brief for Whitey

by Patrick J. Buchanan (more by this author)

Posted 03/21/2008 ET
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=25634

How would he pull it off? I wondered.

How would Barack explain to his press groupies why he sat silent in a pew for 20 years as the Rev. Jeremiah Wright delivered racist rants against white America for our maligning of Fidel and Gadhafi, and inventing AIDS to infect and kill black people?

How would he justify not walking out as Wright spewed his venom about "the U.S. of K.K.K. America," and howled, "God damn America!"

My hunch was right. Barack would turn the tables.

Yes, Barack agreed, Wright's statements were "controversial," and "divisive," and "racially charged," reflecting a "distorted view of America."

But we must understand the man in full and the black experience out of which the Rev. Wright came: 350 years of slavery and segregation.

Barack then listed black grievances and informed us what white America must do to close the racial divide and heal the country.

The "white community," said Barack, must start "acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination -- and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past -- are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds ... ."

And what deeds must we perform to heal ourselves and our country?

The "white community" must invest more money in black schools and communities, enforce civil rights laws, ensure fairness in the criminal justice system and provide this generation of blacks with "ladders of opportunity" that were "unavailable" to Barack's and the Rev. Wright's generations.

What is wrong with Barack's prognosis and Barack's cure?

Only this. It is the same old con, the same old shakedown that black hustlers have been running since the Kerner Commission blamed the riots in Harlem, Watts, Newark, Detroit and a hundred other cities on, as Nixon put it, "everybody but the rioters themselves."

Was "white racism" really responsible for those black men looting auto dealerships and liquor stories, and burning down their own communities, as Otto Kerner said -- that liberal icon until the feds put him away for bribery.

Barack says we need to have a conversation about race in America.

Fair enough. But this time, it has to be a two-way conversation. White America needs to be heard from, not just lectured to.

This time, the Silent Majority needs to have its convictions, grievances and demands heard. And among them are these:

First, America has been the best country on earth for black folks. It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation, and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known.

Wright ought to go down on his knees and thank God he is an American.

Second, no people anywhere has done more to lift up blacks than white Americans. Untold trillions have been spent since the '60s on welfare, food stamps, rent supplements, Section 8 housing, Pell grants, student loans, legal services, Medicaid, Earned Income Tax Credits and poverty programs designed to bring the African-American community into the mainstream.

Governments, businesses and colleges have engaged in discrimination against white folks -- with affirmative action, contract set-asides and quotas -- to advance black applicants over white applicants.

Churches, foundations, civic groups, schools and individuals all over America have donated time and money to support soup kitchens, adult education, day care, retirement and nursing homes for blacks.

We hear the grievances. Where is the gratitude?

Barack talks about new "ladders of opportunity" for blacks.

Let him go to Altoona and Johnstown, and ask the white kids in Catholic schools how many were visited lately by Ivy League recruiters handing out scholarships for "deserving" white kids.

Is white America really responsible for the fact that the crime and incarceration rates for African-Americans are seven times those of white America? Is it really white America's fault that illegitimacy in the African-American community has hit 70 percent and the black dropout rate from high schools in some cities has reached 50 percent?

Is that the fault of white America or, first and foremost, a failure of the black community itself?

As for racism, its ugliest manifestation is in interracial crime, and especially interracial crimes of violence. Is Barack Obama aware that while white criminals choose black victims 3 percent of the time, black criminals choose white victims 45 percent of the time?

Is Barack aware that black-on-white rapes are 100 times more common than the reverse, that black-on-white robberies were 139 times as common in the first three years of this decade as the reverse?

We have all heard ad nauseam from the Rev. Al about Tawana Brawley, the Duke rape case and Jena. And all turned out to be hoaxes. But about the epidemic of black assaults on whites that are real, we hear nothing.

Sorry, Barack, some of us have heard it all before, about 40 years and 40 trillion tax dollars ago.

Florida apologizes for slavery

2008-03-30T12:52:00.001-04:00

Florida apologizes for slavery

Published Wednesday, March 26, 2008 at 7 a.m.

Following an emotional recounting of its enslavement of African Americans, Florida became the sixth state in the nation Wednesday to apologize for its role in slavery.

A Captiol historian read aloud in the House and Senate a 15-minute summary of the brutality of Florida's slavery-era laws and the ways the state's elected leaders at the time perpetutated the mistreatment of African Americans.

Legislators then approved a resolution expressing "profound regret" for "the shameful chapter in this state’s history." Gov. Charlie Crist commended lawmakers "for doing the right thing" and did not rule out considering reparations for Floridians whose ancestors were slaves.

Florida's black lawmakers said an apology is just the first step toward confronting the state’s racial disparities in health, education and the criminal justice system.

"An expression is just empty words without action," said Rep. Joe Gibbons, a Broward County and chairman of the legislative Black Caucus. "Yes, this is a historical step for the Florida Legislature, but the real test is what happens next."

A few black legislators wept as the curator of the Historic Capitol, John Phelps, read excerpts of a letter Florida’s governor wrote in 1861, where he described African Americans as "barbarians" that could only be "tamed and civilized by the discipline of slavery."

Lawmakers sat silent as Phelps described a slavery-era Florida law that said "any negro or other slave" convicted of robbery would have "his or her ears nailed to posts and there stand for one hour and receive 30 lashes on his or her bare back."

"Just listening to those words, let alone imagining an actual event of that horrific nature, it’s hard to fathom," said Sen. Arthenia Joyner, D-Tampa, who was moved to tears.

The other five states that have apologized for slavery – all since January 2007 – include Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, Alabama and New Jersey.

-- Carol Lee

Talking Points Memo Cafe: Apology to Native Americans

2008-03-15T14:20:00.001-04:00

Republican Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback Apologizes to Native Americans

By - March 2, 2008, 12:47PM

Recently, the Senate passed the "Native American Apology Amendment" led by Republican Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback. The Amendment was attached to the reauthorization of the "Indian Health Care Improvement Act" and it offered an official apology from the Federal Government to Native Americans. The measure measure passed successfully according to a press release issued by Brownback's office on Tuesday.

In an earlier press release, Brownback said:

Our nation's relationship with the Native peoples of this land is an issue that is very important to the health of the United States. For too much of our history, Federal-Tribal relations have been marked by broken treaties, mistreatment, and dishonorable dealings. We can acknowledge our past failures, express sincere regrets, and establish a brighter future for all Americans.

Given the historical record of holocaust, disenfranchisement, marginalization, and the concentration camp-like apartheid of Native Americans, the apology seems long overdue, but always nonetheless, better late than never. Still, apologies are seen by many as just words and words are not often synonymous with actions. Sam Hananel's story in the Associated Press speaks to this sentiment:

But it's one thing to just apologize and another thing to do something while you're apologizing," said Garcia, who is governor of the Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo in northern New Mexico. "You have to put words into action and the action is to improve the problems created by those ill-conceived policies."

Brownback's legislation is a major step toward reparations in the Native American community.

The resolution says the federal government forced Indians off tribal lands, stole tribal assets and is responsible for "official depredations, ill-conceived policies and the breaking of covenants" with tribes.

While apologies from the Federal Government are few and far between, official apologies have been made to groups in the past. In 1988, an apology was issued for the Japanese Internment Camps of World War II and in 1993, the federal government apologized to native Hawaiians for the wrongful and "unlawful overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom." In 2005, the Senate apologized for the lynchings of African-Americans

Some point out however, that absent among these official apologies is an apology to African-Americans for slavery and segregation. Notwithstanding historical broken promises of "40 acres and a mule", the "get over it" undertone that permeates much of the discourse on "racial beyondism" is ever present in the silent but implicit refusal of the Federal Government to issue a formal and official apology to African-Americans. Some would argue that apologizing to Native Americans for a haunting legacy of wrongful doings that date back to the arrival of Columbus (before the U.S. enslavement of African-Americans) means that time is never an excuse nor a validation for withholding apologies and reparation efforts.

Others would argue that the 15th Amendment, The Civil Rights Acts of 1871, 1875, 1957, 1960, and 1964 along with Affirmative Action were all apologies in disguise. A considerable number of Americans believe that it is unfair for them and their government officials to be expected to apologize for historic wrongs they feel they had no part in committing. Opponents of this simply point to the benefits and privileges afforded to generations that are a direct result of these historic wrongs.

The arguments surrounding this issue often prove to be endless. But many point to the apologies of the Federal Government as driving a separatist wedge between historically disadvantaged groups and undermining their respective struggles. Where there is an apology for one group, there is not an apology for another. But one cannot negate the racial and ethnic overlap with regard to experiences of struggle. One would need only to look at African-American Seminoles, Maroons, and even the Cherokee Freedmen to argue that an apology for one group can often mean an apology for another. Nevertheless, the powers of relativity, uniqueness, and specificity applies again and again.

...the Australian government issued a formal apology to Aborigines for decades of racist policies and abuse against that country's original inhabitants.

With what seems to be a new paradigm of race relations emerging, what does it mean for nations who continue to leave stones of inequality unturned in their history? For many African-Americans, an apology from the federal government shouldn't come from the disguise of legislation, the mere passage of policy, or the waning prejudice and changing paradigm of the decades. Like all sincere apologies, it should come from a place of empathy, remorse, and ownership. And while (according to some) apologies mean very little without supported actions, sometimes actions are obscured without supported words.

No one knows whether anymore apologies are in the political forecast of the Federal Government to historically disadvantaged groups, but one thing is for sure, electing an African-American or a woman as president will neither close the lid on this discourse nor rid America of its responsibility to reconcile with those living in its present effected by the wrongs of its past.

Reparations Play in Washington, D.C.

2008-03-08T15:33:00.001-05:00

'40 Acres' at Atlas

Playwright Robert Alexander's theatrical debate about the idea of the U.S. government paying reparations to descendants of slaves will receive staged readings Friday, Saturday and Sunday at the Atlas Performing Arts Center. Mary Hall Surface will direct. (Call 202-399-7993 or visit http://www.atlasarts.org.)

Alexander has set "40 Acres: The Reparations Play" in a posh Hilton Head, S.C., retirement community, where an elderly African American couple have joined a class-action lawsuit against companies that profited from slavery. Their conservative 50-ish son thinks it is ridiculous; their college-age grandson is attracted to a more radical black nationalism.

"I think slavery is an issue a lot of Americans want to forget about," says Alexander ("The Last Orbit of Billy Mars," "I Ain't Yo' Uncle: The New Jack Revisionist Uncle Tom's Cabin"), who divides his time between the San Francisco area and Washington. He patterned the patriarch, a retired lawyer, in part on his father, a former NAACP attorney.

Alexander doubts reparations will be made: "I can honestly say today we'll probably see a black president before we see payments for reparations."

NYT: "Slavery’s Place in the Capitol"

2007-12-22T12:55:00.000-05:00

Slavery’s Place in the Capitol
NY Times Editorial
December 21, 2007

The Capitol’s mammoth new visitors’ center is a work in progress bedeviled by cost overruns and mounting delay. The $621 million project is not expected to be ready for tourists until next fall. But the House and Senate have set an encouraging standard, emphasizing the center’s educational mission by naming the main welcoming chamber Emancipation Hall. This honors long-forgotten African-American slaves forced to help build the original Capitol in the 18th and 19th centuries.

This is an overdue exercise of historical candor. Researchers found slaves were rented as Capitol labor by the federal government for $5 a month — the proceeds directly pocketed by local slave owners. “Negro hires” was the term used in the construction of what early on was called, no irony recorded, the “Temple of Liberty.” The slaves worked six days a week, 12 hours a day, quarrying stone, sawing timber and hauling supplies.

Until now, all they earned for this back-breaking labor was anonymity.

Emancipation Hall will be the main point of welcome for crowds of constituents in the 580,000-square-foot visitors’ center. It is expected to become a prime Washington destination, designed to handle greater throngs in a more secure, inspiring and informative setting. Amid all the towering patriotism depicted, exhibits are planned about the slaves’ lot of hardship and creativity in realizing the Capitol.

A slave named Philip Reid is credited with helping to cast the Statue of Freedom — the Capitol dome’s crowning decoration — after the original white craftsmen refused without a pay raise. Reid was ultimately made a free man by an act of Congress, the rare special-interest legislation that deserves to be cited in the new Emancipation Hall.

Globe and Mail: Rare John Brown Image Sold at Auction

2007-12-09T10:13:00.000-05:00

If I ever get a lot of money, this is what I want to spend it on. It breaks my heart that the descendants had to sell their family heritage to pay for medical bills.

Rare daguerreotype brings $97,750

TERRY KINNEY

Associated Press

December 7, 2007 at 12:46 PM EST

CINCINNATI — A rare daguerreotype of abolitionist John Brown was bought by an unidentified bidder by telephone for $97,750 on Friday, auctioneer Wes Cowan said.

The buyer declined to be identified or to talk about the purchase, Mr. Cowan said.

Experts say probably no more than a half dozen original daguerreotypes exist of the man best known for his ill-fated raid on a federal arsenal in Harpers Ferry, Va.

Brown was born in 1800 in Connecticut, lived in Ohio for a time and was a free-state activist in Kansas before the October 1859 raid that he hoped would inspire an anti-slavery rebellion.

He was wounded and captured, and was tried and hanged by the state of Virginia for treason two months later.

Although revered by some for his anti-slavery militancy, Abraham Lincoln called him a “misguided fanatic.”

A daguerreotype was an early form of photography popular in the 1840s and 1850s in which an image is formed on a chemically treated metal plate.

The method was named for Louis-Jacques-Mande Daguerre, the French painter who developed the process.

The photo auctioned Friday remained in Brown's family through five generations until descendants contacted Mr. Cowan, asking him to broker the sale to help them pay medical bills, he said.

“It's the most important photograph we've handled in our 13 years of existence,” said Mr. Cowan, an occasional appraiser on Antiques Roadshow and host of the PBS series History Detectives.

He had estimated a sale price of $60,000 to $80,000.

The previous daguerreotype of Brown that sold at auction went for $115,000 in 1997, Mr. Cowan said. It is displayed at the Smithsonian Institution's National Portrait Gallery.

“That one shows him holding a flag with one hand, and one hand raised as if taking an oath and has a lot of drama to it,” Kansas historian Karl Gridley said. “This one is more of straight-on shot.”

In it, Brown is wearing a jacket with several buttons – the same one or similar to the jacket in the National Gallery portrait – and has his arms crossed in front of him.

“This extremely rare and riveting portrait is doubly significant not only as one of the earliest daguerreotypes of the revolutionary abolitionist but also because the long-lost image was made by the remarkable African-American photographer Augustus Washington,” said Theresa Leininger-Miller, an art history professor at the University of Cincinnati.

Washington had been a teacher but turned to photography to pay off his college debts. He had one of the most successful daguerreotype studios in Hartford, Conn., before emigrating to Liberia, where he became a planter, politician and newspaper editor.

The auction catalogue described the portrait this way:

“A self-assured and clean-shaven Brown stares intently and directly at the viewer with steely, blue-grey eyes and the hint of a knowing smile as the left side of his mouth upturns slightly and puffs out the cheek near his hawk-like nose.”

Later, better-known portraits show Brown with a long, bushy beard.

Experts believe the National Gallery daguerreotype and the one offered Friday were made during the same sitting at Washington's Hartford studio in 1846 or 1847.

NY Sun: Apartheid Suit Puts Corporations on Notice

2007-11-15T07:36:00.000-05:00

Long article but very interesting and very good. Are there lessons to be learned by the reparations movement here?

The New York Sun
Apartheid Suit Puts Corporations on Notice

By JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN
Staff Reporter of the Sun
November 12, 2007

In giving the go-ahead to a historic class-action suit against businesses that sold to South Africa's apartheid regime, a federal appellate court here has put the world's largest companies on notice that they can be held liable for doing business with foreign regimes that commit human-rights abuses.

The decision last month by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan revives several class-action suits brought by South Africans against the arms suppliers, oil producers, and computer manufacturers that sold goods to the apartheid government during the second half of the 20th century.

The claims earlier had been dismissed by a lower court as being beyond the jurisdiction of American courts.

The 2–1 ruling, with Judges Peter Hall and Robert Katzmann in the majority, means that a Manhattan judge yet may oversee compensation of billions of dollars to South African blacks who lived under apartheid rule. That prospect raises profound questions about the role of American courts in providing a place of reckoning for the wrongs of foreign governments.

Previous court rulings by federal judges here had left it uncertain whether corporations can be sued in American courts for acting as accomplices to foreign governments committing atrocities. The effect of the decision is to "give courts the green light to hear suits against corporations for their connections to abusive regimes," a law professor at Duke University, Curtis Bradley, who served as counselor on international law at the State Department in 2004, said.

The 2nd Circuit now joins two other appellate courts in the West and Southeast in allowing American courts to impose accomplice liability on corporations for human-rights violations against international law. This emerging consensus has arisen without any nod of congressional approval since the First Congress adopted the Alien Torts Statute in 1789, which courts now use to assert jurisdiction in these cases. Still, the 2nd Circuit sets a relatively high bar for finding that a company is liable as an accomplice in apartheid, torture, or assassination.

Two of the three 2nd Circuit judges would require more proof than that the company simply knew it was assisting a foreign government to commit human-rights violations. Liability would require companies to share "a common purpose" with a foreign government or a subjective intent that a human-rights abuse occur, according to the 2nd Circuit's decision.

Even with this court victory, the plaintiffs still face several hurdles, the most significant of which is to show that the conduct of defendants such as Ford and amounted to "aiding and abetting" apartheid.

Another hurdle is the opposition voiced by the post-apartheid South African government, which argues that it — not America — should be dealing with apartheid's legacy. The South African government has asked that the suits be dismissed. Officials there have said apartheid-related claims belonged before that country's Truth and Reconciliation Commission for apartheid-era crimes.

The dissenting member of the 2nd Circuit's panel, Edward Korman, said the suits should have been dismissed.

South Africa, Judge Korman wrote, "has asserted the right to define and finalize issues related to reparations for apartheid-era offenses within its own legal framework — thus making this lawsuit an insult to the post-apartheid, black-majority government of a free people."

The State Department has joined South Africa, citing the foreign policy tensions these suits pose to American-South African relations.

The Alien Torts Statute, under which the apartheid suits are being brought, was passed 218 years ago because of anti-piracy concerns. It allows American courts to hear foreigners' suits involving egregious violations of international law and that occurred beyond America's borders. The law was largely ignored until about 30 years ago when it was used to sue a Paraguayan police official accused of torturing a man to death. While the Supreme Court in 2004 allowed foreigners to use the law to sue foreign officials, the court left open the question of whether the Alien Torts Statute gave courts jurisdiction over deep-pocketed corporate defendants for "aiding and abetting" violations.

In one landmark decision endorsing just such liability against Unocal, California's 9th Circuit allowed a suit by Burmese villagers who said the Burmese military used them for slave labor on a pipeline.

Only one Alien Torts Statute case with a corporate defendant has gone to trial: It resulted in a win for Alabama's Drummond Ltd., which had been accused of a role in the slaying by paramilitary forces of three labor union activists near a company mine in Colombia.

But never before had anybody brought a claim under the Alien Torts Statute for violations even approaching the scale of those committed by the apartheid regime.

"It's a matter of the scale and the tenuousness of the allegations and the diffuseness of the conduct here that will embolden other lawyers," a professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Anthony Sebok, said, of the apartheid suits. "Like the Holocaust litigation of the 1990s, this is going to be a signal event, and it's going to be shorthand to people about how you can push the envelope."

The plaintiffs, who include victims of apartheid violence, accuse corporations, ranging from New York banks to a Swiss artillery manufacturer, of propping up the apartheid regime for decades through providing military goods to the South African security forces, and computing equipment to bureaucrats, which were used to track apartheid's racial categories of whites, coloreds, and Asians.

The plaintiffs allege that the companies also played a direct role in apartheid violence. General Motors "recruited white employees to join a citizen commando force" involved in vigilante killings, plaintiffs claim in one court brief. And one South African mining concern, Implats, allegedly requested police to put down a 1986 mine strike.

Banks, the plaintiffs say, played a significant role in propping up an increasingly isolated South Africa. Following the Sharpeville Massacre in 1960, when police opened fire on a crowd of black protesters, Chase Manhattan "devised a package of loans" to South Africa, one group of plaintiffs claim, that was meant "to replace capital leaving the country because of police brutality." Another group of plaintiffs claim that bank loans by Credit Suisse and UBS "supported the government during the bloodiest period of apartheid in the late 1980s" before its collapse in the early 1990s.

Since last month's ruling, a lawyer for the defendants, Francis Barron of Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP, has said his clients will ask the Supreme Court this year to dismiss the suits on foreign policy considerations. The Supreme Court is no stranger to the case.

In a footnote to one decision on the Alien Torts Statute, the federal high court took the unusual step of singling out these lawsuits for mention.

Citing the potential impact of the apartheid litigation on American relations with South Africa, the court said: "There is a strong argument that federal courts should give serious weight to the Executive Branch's view of the case's impact on foreign policy."

Rawstory: Honoring the unpaird builders of the Capitol

2007-11-13T07:44:00.000-05:00

Congressional task force: Honor slaves that built the Capitol

Jason Rhyne
Published: Friday November 9, 2007

The slaves who helped to construct the US Capitol in Washington, DC, should be honored for their historic effort, reports a Congressional task force that recently completed a two-year examination of how African-American laborers contributed to the building's construction.

"The research turned up little-known facts about the role of slaves in building what was known in the 1800s as the 'Temple of Liberty,' reports Roll Call's's Emily Yehle. "Their tasks included hauling stone, laying brick and sawing timber in the hot sun -- all for $60 a year paid to their white owners."

Task force chairman Rep. John Lewis (D-GA), who led the group of House legislators and scholars involved in the effort, said it was vital that slaves' place in American history be appropriately commemorated.

"We look back today, not to open old wounds, but to ensure that we tell the story -- the complete story -- of those slaves so their toils are never forgotten," Lewis told Roll Call. "Slavery is a part of our nation’s history of which we are not proud. However, we should not run away or hide from it."

Proposed plans from the task force to honor that legacy include an exhibit in the Capitol about the experience of slaves in the 19th century, as well as online information resources and print materials. The group's next step will be to present its proposals to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA).

"We’re going to need a sizable appropriation to do the work that we want to do," Lewis told the paper, adding that specific plans were still being formulated.

"When we look at the building, it’s not your building, the majority, it's our building," Sarah Jean Davidson, a preservationist who participated in the project, told Roll Call. “Once they start feeling that we are connected, we are one."

An August story in USA Today detailed the work of Philip Reid, a slave who was significantly involved in the history of the Statue of Freedom, the bronze sculpture which sits atop the Capitol dome.

When an early plaster version of the statue proved difficult for workmen to separate -- which was required before the statue could be cast in bronze -- Reid, a skilled craftsman, had singlehandedly solved the problem.

"But the work of Reid and other slaves remains an all-but-untold story," the report continued. "The US Capitol Historical Society mentions it in a traveling exhibit about the history of African-Americans in the Capitol, but no permanent memorial exists in the building itself."

According to Roll Call, some recognition projects are already underway. A measure proposed by Reps. Zach Wamp (R-TN) and Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-IL), proposes to change the name of the Capitol Vistor Center's Great Hall to Emancipation Hall.

Book Review: "Reparations: Pro and Con"

2007-10-30T08:17:00.000-04:00

REPARATIONS: PRO AND CON, by Alfred L. Brophy. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. 312pp. Cloth $29.95/£17.99. ISBN: 9780195304084.

Reviewed by Marie J. Fritz, Department of Government and Politics, University of Maryland, College Park. Email: mfritz [at] gvpt.umd.edu.

In REPARATIONS: PRO AND CON, Alfred L. Brophy surveys the major arguments presented by those on both sides of the black reparations debate. Talk of reparations has increased in the past decade, but despite increased visibility in the press, on college campuses, and among the business sector, reparations advocates and opponents, Brophy points out, focus on different sides of the debate and fail to communicate with one another. The author admits that although “it is not possible to reach definitive conclusions about these issues, it is possible to identify the key arguments on either side and to suggest some of the ways that we can focus the debate and evaluate the utility of reparations” (p.xii). This vague central thesis offers the reader little insight on what to expect.

Following the introduction is a chapter that explores the definition of reparations. Chapter Two traces reparations efforts from the late eighteenth century through the present. Brophy explains that various forms of reparations existed prior to the abolitionist period and the United States Civil War. As early as 1781 a person held as a slave in Massachusetts, who had been promised emancipation, sued his owner for assault and battery and won. The suit did not include a claim for unpaid labor, but subsequent judgments across the states occasionally granted former slaves payment for unpaid wages (p.20). The history of reparations becomes more complex during the Civil War and the Reconstruction period as Northern elites sought to break apart the Southern oligarchy. In 1862 President Lincoln signed the District of Columbia Compensated Emancipation Act, which immediately emancipated slaves in the city and provided compensation to former slave owners in Washington, DC who were loyal to the Union (p.25). Under this Act these former slaves were also promised monies to emigrate outside of the United States. Three years later, Congress established the Freedmen’s Bureau to resettle former slaves and adjudicate property claims, among other goals; however, attempts at land redistribution often proved futile as President Andrew Johnson revoked earlier land confiscation orders, Southern courts seized jurisdiction from the Bureau, and black farmers were often left with no other option than to sign labor contracts with extremely unfavorable terms and in many cases with former owners. Brophy asserts that, although the Freedmen’s Bureau did not intend to compensate for past unpaid labor, “the goal was forward-thinking, trying to make it possible for the freed slaves to be economically self-sufficient” (p.26). For a detailed and insightful exploration of the Freedmen’s Bureau, see Williams’ THE CONSTRAINTS OF RACE: [*794] LEGACIES OF WHITE SKIN PRIVLEGE IN AMERICA (2003).

Although the period of Reconstruction saw increased federal efforts at formal equality for blacks, these attempts existed alongside a growing social and political environment infused with extreme racial violence. After 1877 there were periodic attempts at reparations for former slaves, but for decades attention focused primarily on addressing unequal treatment formalized by the Jim Crow system (p.34). In 1969, James Forman called for white churches and synagogues – which he viewed as constitutive of American capitalism – to pay reparations to blacks, marking the start of the modern reparations movement (p.37). Soon after, law professor Boris Bittker added another layer to the reparations debate by moving away from unpaid labor and a contributions-based approach towards promoting a harm-based analysis of entitlement (p.39). Black reparations activism remained anemic through the 1970s and 1980s. Meanwhile, some American Indian communities and Japanese American internment camp survivors received limited reparations from the federal government (p.40).

Brophy explores the contemporary black reparations movement in Chapter Three. He asks why the issue has received renewed scholarly and popular attention in recent years, and cites the confluence of bleak economic and social indicators for black Americans, the decline in support of affirmative action programs, and the development of critical race theory (CRT) as the intellectual foundation for black reparations proponents. In addition, he states, “Awareness of past tragedies and their impact on the present has led to a renewed focus on tragedies” (p.57). Brophy points to a series of law review articles by critical race legal scholars that were crucial in shaping the current reparations debate. Central to most of these arguments are the following: American jurisprudence has not been responsive to the needs of minorities, so we should look to the least advantaged groups for political and legal insights; color-blind approaches to legal remedies are shortsighted and overlook profound, internalized racism; and finally, group remedies are required to address group-based harms. These themes were subsequently popularized by reparations proponents outside of academia and the proposed remedies, Brophy explains, range from seeking distributive justice to establishing separate states for African Americans (p.74).

In Chapter Four, Brophy turns to arguments opposing reparations for blacks. He groups the arguments into four categories: lack of legal liability, compensation has been paid through social welfare provisions, compensation is not politically viable, and reparations are divisive. The most popular argument against reparations is that general, societal liability does not exist, so citizens today cannot be responsible for something over which they had no control (p.77). Another common criticism of reparations is that Great Society programs, including anti-poverty measures and affirmative action, and contemporary public benefits, such as cash assistance and subsidized housing, are forms of reparations payments (p.82). The author rightly points out that public assistance programs are not race-based; therefore, such programs should not be considered “payment” for past [*795] injustices. Some commentators opposed to black reparations present arguments that run the spectrum from the absurd (despite slavery, blacks are better off in the United States than if they had remained in Africa) (p.82) to the macabre (the Civil War as atonement for slavery) (p.85). Here, Brophy responds to even the most peculiar anti-reparationist arguments judiciously. Although he clearly sympathizes with efforts by black reparationists to find ways to address adequately years of brutalization and inequality, Brophy agrees that reparations payments are likely lead to more divisiveness. Ultimately, the author concedes, “This may be yet another instance in which African Americans will have to be content with not what is just but with the knowledge that they have contributed yet again to the enrichment of American society, though they have not received adequate compensation for their labor” (p.94).

The final section of the book, which Brophy describes as “reparations in practice” and includes discussions of reparations lawsuits and legislative reparations, is the most concise of the volume. Brophy seems most comfortable evaluating case law and legal doctrine. However, by focusing on reparations litigation and other pro-reparations strategies, the section seems out of step with the theme of the book.

In the concluding chapter, Brophy summarizes the volume by identifying four models of reparations, but without a comprehensive discussion of the political and legal feasibility of such proposals, the section reads like a textbook, with numerous rhetorical questions and hypothetical possibilities that are more nebulous than instructive. In fact, in relation to the reparations options he outlines, Brophy instructs the reader as follows: “See which ones, if any, you like – and how much you think they will accomplish” (p.169).

As a technical issue, the book could have benefited from sharper editing. For example, in a discussion of the numerous futile apologies former President Bill Clinton made with respect to the Rwandan genocide that occurred while he was in office, Brophy states that the genocide “left something like a million people dead” – an oddly casual reference given the topic (p.48). Brophy provides a sufficient summary of the debate surrounding reparations for blacks in the United States; however, political scientists and legal historians may find the volume lacking in analytical depth. While the author makes some valuable points, unfortunately, the volume fails to add to the debate.

REFERENCES:

Williams, Linda Faye. 2003. THE CONSTRAINTS OF RACE: LEGACIES OF WHITE SKIN PRIVLEGE IN AMERICA. State College, PA: The Pennsylvania State Press.

NYT: "James Watson Retires After Racial Comments"

2007-10-25T10:53:00.000-04:00

Not reparations related but whenever people tell me that African Americans should just get over slavery and decades of post slavery apartheid, I point to stories like this where even now the most eminent scientists are practicing eugenics and racism. We battle this every day of our lives even in the year 2007. I think I'm owed for the bills I have from my therapist dealing with this crap!

James Watson Retires After Racial Comments
NY TIMES
By CORNELIA DEAN
Published: October 25, 2007
James D. Watson, the eminent biologist who ignited an uproar last week with remarks about the intelligence of people of African descent, retired today as chancellor of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island and from its board.
In a statement, he noted that, at 79, he is “overdue” to surrender leadership positions at the lab, which he joined as director in 1968 and served as president until 2003. But he said the circumstances of his resignation “are not those which I could ever have anticipated or desired.”
Dr. Watson, who shared the 1962 Nobel Prize for describing the double-helix structure of DNA, and later headed the American government’s part in the international Human Genome Project, was quoted in The Times of London last week as suggesting that, overall, people of African descent are not as intelligent as people of European descent. In the ensuing uproar, he issued a statement apologizing “unreservedly” for the comments, adding “there is no scientific basis for such a belief.”
But Dr. Watson, who has a reputation for making sometimes incendiary off-the-cuff remarks, did not say he had been misquoted.
Within days, the Cold Spring board had relieved him of the administrative responsibilities of the chancellor’s job. In that position, a spokesman for the laboratory said, he was most involved with educational efforts and fund-raising.
In his statement announcing his resignation, he said he would remain at the laboratory, working particularly on cancer research. “Final victory is within our grasp,” he said. “I wish to be among those at the victory line.”
In the years after he left Harvard to direct the laboratory, Dr. Watson transformed it from a small facility into a world-class institution prominent in research on cancer, plant biology, neuroscience and computational biology, the board said in announcing his retirement. Bruce Stillman, who succeeded him as president, said today that he had created an “unparalleled” research environment at the laboratory.
In his statement, Dr. Watson said the work of the Human Genome Project, an international effort which deciphered the chemical contents of human genes, had opened the door to work on many diseases, particularly illnesses such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, ailments he said have afflicted members of his family.
He also referred to his Scots and Irish forebears, saying their lives were guided by faith in reason and social justice, “especially the need for those on top to help care for the less fortunate.”

Here's a link to the London Sunday Times article. Here's another article that highlights other comments he had about dark skinned people. He really should be a ashamed of himself.

NAACP Demands Reparations for 1898 Race Riot

2007-10-24T10:25:00.000-04:00

HISTORY IS MADE: DEMAND 1898 RACE RIOT REPARATIONS, SAYS NC NAACP, WEEK OF OCTOBER 18-24, 2007

by CASH MICHAELS
The Wilmington Journal
Originally posted 10/22/2007

The NC General Assembly must enact pending legislation that compensates descendants of black victims from the 1898 Wilmington race massacre for losses suffered historically by their families, and makes reparations to Wilmington’s African-American community, or else the state should prepare to be sued, declares the president of the NC NAACP.

That sentiment was shared by hundreds of delegates and attendees during a national NAACP “Symposium on the 1898 Wilmington Terrorist Attack,” held Oct. 12 as part of the 64th Annual NC NAACP State Convention at the Wilmington Hilton Riverside Hotel.

The symposium, hosted by NC NAACP Pres. Rev. William Barber and the New Hanover County NAACP, featured surviving descendants of 1898 victims; a panel of experts, including three members of the state’s 1898 Wilmington Race Riot Commission, addressing the reasons why there should be reparations and compensation; and a videotaped address from noted historian Dr. John Hope Franklin, professor emeritus of Duke University, discussing why he feels justice is warranted for the 1898 descendants.

“What are we doing…asking for apologies; offering apologies; seeking apologies?” Dr. Franklin asked rhetorically. “I want us to stop and think about what this has done to a vast number of people who are still crawling on the ground trying to get up. They really need help, and the need for help can be traced right back to the slave period, and the period after slavery [like 1898] which in many ways was worse.”

“We need to make amends for that, “Dr. Franklin added.

Beyond compensation for the descendants, Dr. Franklin said reparations should be given in the form of scholarships, affordable housing, and funding efforts to rebuild the black community.

The symposium was historic, not only because for the first time 12 descendants were brought together to tell how the tragic, racist events of over a century ago, still reverberate in their families today, but because a major commitment was being formulated to do something about it.

There were descendants of wealthy black businessman Thomas A. Miller, who was known for being so industrious, it was said that he loaned money to both blacks and whites, which was rare then.

Miller’s descendants wanted to know, “Where did his money and property go after 1898?”

One of the most prominent descendants was Dr. Levin Manly, Jr., grandson of black publisher Alexander Manly, who was forced to flee for his life from the state after a racist white mob burned his black newspaper, the Daily Record during the 1898 massacre.

Dr. Manly said he and other descendants of those who were victimized then are entitled to due compensation from the state for what was lost, taken or destroyed.

“As far as I am concerned, there is no statute of limitation on the need to compensate the descendants [for] their loss in 1898,” Dr. Manly said during a visit to Wilmington earlier this year. “Stolen from Alex Manly was his most important possession – his dream…and dreams are priceless.”

As the 13-member 1898 Wilmington Race Riot Commission recounted in its report to the NC General Assembly last year, the Democratic Party of North Carolina in the late 1890s conspired to do away with a coalition “Fusionist” party of blacks and Republicans who ran Wilmington city government, and threatened to keep power.

Blacks in parts of North Carolina at that time were doing well not only in business, but in politics, being elected to both local offices and the Legislature. Black men were able to vote as part of Reconstruction after the Civil War.

Wilmington, the state’s largest city then, was considered a shining example of black power, with numerous businesses and property owners, as well as elected officials in city government. Blacks outnumbered whites, and controlled what went on.

“The overthrow or coup d’ tat took place within the context of an ongoing statewide political campaign based on white supremacy,” the commission’s report, six years in the making, said. “An armed overthrow of the legitimately elected municipal government.”

Powerful elite white racists, including Josephus Daniels, editor of the Raleigh News and Observer at the time, plotted to overthrow Wilmington government, and take the port city back from Black hands.

Other major white newspapers across the state, including the Charlotte Observer and Wilmington Messenger and Morning Star, also fanned the flames of white insurrection and conspiracy against blacks.

On Nov. 10, 1898 after the elections, a white mob of “Red Shirts” fanned out across the city with weapons, murdering untold numbers of black citizens, forcing others to flee for their lives, never to return to their homes and businesses.

“Unknown numbers of Blacks were killed in the conspiracy designed to end black political power and the progressive government in Wilmington and establish white supremacy and a control by a new government,” a summary of the commission report says. “…Blacks lost positions in government, in professional arenas and as skilled artisans. Black businesses and workers suffered economic decline…”

The report adds, “Organizers of the coup instituted a banishment campaign, targeting political opponents, black and white, leading to the expulsion from the city of over twenty targeted individuals and a mass exodus of over 2,100 others. Consequently, the Republican power base in Wilmington was destroyed.”

“One result of the Wilmington diaspora (the departure of African Americans from the Port City, voluntary or otherwise) was a decline in economic opportunity for Black citizens,” the commission’s report notes. ‘Analysis of statistical data indicates that Wilmington’s Black businesses and workers suffered losses after 1898 in terms of job status, income, and access to capital.”

“After 1898, Black-owned businesses suffered economic decline as some businesses closed or moved from the city’s business district to traditionally black neighborhoods.”

Ever since then, Black economic and political power, along with the population in Wilmington and New Hanover County, has steadily eroded.

“[The white mob was] goaded into a riot by the atmosphere that was created …artificially by the white leadership of the state,” said Dr. Franklin via videotape at the NAACP symposium, adding that white supremacists, jealous of the achievements and enterprise of “black manhood” in Wilmington, couldn’t let it continue.

“[The 1898 Wilmington terrorist attack] provided a model and framework for white supremacy across the nation,” Carolyn Coleman, national NAACP Board member, said in prepared remarks.

“What we do here today, and what we do in Wilmington after we leave from here, will show the nation whether we are serious in dealing with our past, and making our present and future better.”

The 1898 commission made 15 recommendations to the General Assembly on how best to repair the damage from 1898, including setting up an authority to promote small black business growth in the area; making sure the story of the 1898 massacre is included in North Carolina public school history curriculums; and including New Hanover County in the current forty NC counties covered by the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

Rep. Thomas Wright [D-New Hanover] filed at least a dozen bills last session based on the commission’s recommendations, but only one of them ever reached the floor of both houses, and was ratified.

After it was significantly watered down in the state Senate, the measure, which was signed into law,expressed “profound regret” for the 1898 riot instigated by “political leaders” (as opposed to the original language, “white elite”).

All of the other Wright-sponsored 1898 bills were stalled in House committees, especially after the state Board of Elections found alleged campaign funding violations, and referred Wright’s case to the Wake District Attorney for possible indictments.

NC NAACP Pres. Rev Barber says the General Assembly must revisit those 1898 bills next session, or else face litigation.

Rep. Thomas Wright, who cochaired the 1898 Commission after the man who originally conceived it, Sen. Luther Jordan, passed, related how angry his fellow lawmakers were at him for introducing the legislation.

For instance Wright’s House Bill 1558, the 1898 Wilmington Riot Reconciliation Act of 2007 effectively says if the General Assembly officially acknowledges the unjust impact on the African-American community not only in Wilmington, but throughout North Carolina, then it is compelled to make amends.

“Based on …the findings of the Wilmington Race Riot Commission, the purposes of this act, with respect to victims of the November 10, 1898, Wilmington coup d’etat, are to provide redress for the victims by providing a special statute of limitations, of two years from its enactment, that will allow the estates of persons injured, killed, or that otherwise suffered personal or property losses resulting from the November 10, 1898, Wilmington coup d’etat, to file legal claims.”

That language mirrors the remarks made by the 1898 Commission leadership when their report was issued a year ago.

But the prospect of the state actually being held liable for injustices over a century old clearly frightened many lawmakers.

Rep. Dan Blue (D-Wake), the chair of the House Judiciary II Committee, reportedly confirmed to colleagues that language contained in the pending measures, “…would open the field to lawsuits by the descendants of those who were killed, injured or forced to leave town,” according to one published report.

Both the 1898 descendants and the NCNAACP promise that that will happen unless the General Assembly does more than simply express “profound regret” about the state of North Carolina allowing the massacre to proceed, and people to be killed or chased away.

Inez Campbell-Eason, a descendant of black businessman Isham Quick Sr., talked about the tremendous research she employed to find out more about her great, great grandfather and the assets he left behind.

The fact that the massacre of 1898 took Quick’s legacy from her family, she said, is deeply hurtful.

Mary Alice Thatch, editor of the Wilmington Journal and great granddaughter of Henry Clay McNeill, who eventually left the city, said the impact of 1898 on the black community in and beyond the port city has been devastating and long lasting.

McNeill’s son, William, was forced to leave the city “within 24 hours”.

“As I think about it now, it brings tears to my eyes,” Ms. Thatch, daughter of Wilmington Journal founder, the late Thomas Jervay Sr., said. “I think about what happened on that night, and I visualize how my great uncle answered that door…I’ll be honest with you, it makes me angry.”

The impact of 1898 has also been devastating to black newspapers like The Journal, Ms. Thatch added, which are still struggling to stay alive because adversaries have learned to target the advertising in lieu of tepid community support, instead of burning down the building.

There were other family descendants there as well. All expressed pain upon first learning the truth about what happened during 1898 to African-Americans, and specifically to their ancestors, and what was taken from their families and never returned.

Many of them said despite the civil rights advances for black people since 1898, they feel that the yoke of racial oppression is still present in Wilmington, and they will have to stand up and demand justice for their ancestors and their families.

“We want to do more than say it was bad,” Rev. Barber told the convention audience, “We want to say, “We’re going to take you to court, North Carolina.

Now you have two choices – you can do it through the General Assembly…, or we’re going to build a case.”

Political Event: Obama speaking in Newark TODAY!

2007-10-22T10:23:00.001-04:00

Presidential Candidate Barack Obama is speaking in Brick City, NJ TODAY at 4pm. He will be at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC). Tickets are $25.

Boston Globe: Sen. Brownback wants Congress to Apologize

2007-10-17T07:50:00.001-04:00

Republican Senator and presidential hopeful, Sam Brownback of Kansas, plans to offer a resolution in Congress this week for an apology for US government's involvement in slavery and segregation.

Brownback to pitch proposal apologizing for slavery
Says he expects a fight, won't call for reparations
By Jenn Abelson, Globe Staff | October 16, 2007

Senator Sam Brownback, a Republican trying to inject new life into his beleaguered presidential campaign, plans to offer a resolution this week for Congress to apologize for slavery and segregation.

Brownback, of Kansas, told The Boston Globe's editorial board yesterday he will join an unnamed Democrat in sponsoring the proposal. He said he expects a tough fight on the resolution, even though it will not include any call for reparations.

"They were federal policies," he said. "They were wrong. The only way for us to move forward . . . is at the end of day acknowledging those, taking ownership for it, and asking for forgiveness."

Brownback, in a wide-ranging interview yesterday, conceded that his campaign has languished since finishing a disappointing third in August in the Ames straw poll in Iowa. The 51-year-old Kansas senator remains in the trailing group of Republicans in the polls and in fund-raising, and says he will drop out of the race unless he places in the top four in the first-in-the-nation caucuses in Iowa.

"We're trying some different plays," Brownback said.

He divulged his plan for a bipartisan slavery apology just days after reaching across the political aisle to join a Democratic presidential hopeful, Senator Joe Biden of Delaware, in pushing a proposal for a federal system in Iraq - with strong Kurdish, Sunni, and Shia regional governments - as a way to end the bloodshed and allow US troops to withdraw from combat patrols.

"This is a system that can work," Brownback said. "You devolve power out in order to keep the country together. I fundamentally believe this will be the final status politically of Iraq."

Brownback, an outspoken opponent of abortion, embryonic stem-cell research, and same-sex marriage, has tried to court the social conservative base of the Republican Party. But conservatives have yet to unite behind a candidate, and some evangelical leaders have suggested supporting a third-party candidate.

Brownback's bipartisan gambit may be a way to attract some Democrats and independents, said Blease Graham, a political science professor at the University of South Carolina.

"This softer approach may make a Republican candidate more attractive," Graham said. "But in a partisan political world, I'm not sure how much resonance these issues are going to have among a Republican constituency."

In Iowa, people can register as a member of the party whose caucus they plan to vote in on the day of the vote. In New Hampshire, independents can vote in the first-in-the-nation Republican primary.

Mychal Massie, chairman of the National Leadership Network of Black Conservatives-Project 21, a think tank in Washington D.C., criticized Brownback's plans for a slavery apology resolution as "absurd and ridiculous." Project 21 does not endorse presidential candidates, but Massie said he personally is backing Republican presidential hopeful Duncan Hunter.

"Brownback finds himself in a failing campaign with no hope under the sun of being elected and he is reaching out and exploiting blacks and using them to try and get a few votes," Massie said. "It's not going to work."

Brownback's visit to Boston included a speech Sunday to members of the Catholic Lawyers Guild on abortion and the need for a more expansive view of life. Last night, he addressed Boston University students on US-Africa relations and its effect on America's security interests. The United States needs to do more to stop the spread of Islamic governments friendly to Al Qaeda that could provide havens for terrorists, he said.

Brownback also praised Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, for helping lead the push for the immigration bill.

"It's been very hard," he said. "I have never been beat on so much in my entire life as during this immigration debate."

Jenn Abelson can be reached at abelson@globe.com.

Meeting Thursday: N'COBRA in Washington, DC

2007-10-17T07:47:00.000-04:00

Posted on the N'COBRA Listsev:

Greetings Reparations Activists and Supporters

This Thursday nite, October 18, 2007 at 7:00 PM in the Reeves Center 2nd Floor Conference Room, at 14th and U Streets NW, NCOBRA's monthly meeting will take place. There is only one week before the Coalition's 20th anniversary commemoration of its coming into being here in Washington, DC.

We neede your help with conducting a phone tree during the meeting to collectively initiate calls to our supporters to urge maximum participation during this important weekend. Bring your cell phones and lets get to work! Also flyers will be available for you to assist with blanketing the area with our literature.

WE NEED YOUr HELP AND YOUR ENERGY.

Kibibi Tyehimba

202.486.5092

Event: Performance Art/Protest

2007-10-09T16:08:00.000-04:00

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Multiracial Mix of 65 People In 21 States and 3 Countries

Scheduled to Panhandle for Reparations

Date: Wednesday, October 10, 2007

What: National Day of Panhandling for Reparations

Contact: damali ayo, performance coordinator: reparations@damaliayo.com, 503.516.4650 (cel)

More info: http://reparationsday.com, http://damaliayo.com/pages/reparationsday.html

Register to Participate: http://reparationsday.com, http://damaliayo.com/pages/reparationsday.html

OCTOBER 10, 2007, NATIONWIDE. People of all races across the United States will collect reparations from white Americans for the enslavement of Africans and African Americans. This money will be immediately paid out to black passersby. Both parties will be offered a receipt.

The numbers are in!

As of Monday October 8: 65 People In 21 States and 3 Countries

Participants include people who are: black, white, asian american, latino, biracial, jewish, gay, lesbian, and transgendered. Truly, America is participating!

Performers

(Participants are still being added daily.)

UNITED STATES

ARIZONA

Matthew Kucera, Glendale, AZ

TC Tolbert, Tucson AZ

Lena Rothman, Tucson AZ

CALIFORNIA

Sky, Los Angeles, CA

Meta Valentic, Los Angeles, CA

Erika Padilla-Morales, Oakland, CA

Shawn Taylor, Author of the forthcoming book _Big Black Penis_,Oakland, CA

Anh-Thu Nguyen, San Francisco, CA

Kalil Cohen, Venice, CA

COLORADO

Shay Gonzales, Denver, CO

CONNECTICUT

Mike Bolds, Middletown, CT

Ruby-Beth Buitekant, Middletown, CT

Angelica Sgouros, New London, CT

Heather Day, New London, CT

FLORIDA

Trilla Allen, FL

Al Letson, FL

ILLINOIS

Kenisha Jamison, Chicago, IL

Nancy Lu Rosenheim, Chicago, IL

Tricia, Chicago, IL

INDIANA

Dwight W. Hayes, Indianapolis, IN

IOWA

Ben Basan, Iowa City, IA

Susan Junis, Iowa City, IA

MARYLAND

Fred, Baltimore, MD

MASSACHUSETTS

Iris, Amherst, MA

Alex Vara, Amherst, MA

Jasmine Stine, Amherst, MA

Ana Gordon-Loebl, Amherst, MA

Emerson Brisbon, Amherst, MA

Cyreé Johnson, Amherst, MA

Amelia Carter, Amherst, MA

Cassie Taylor, Greenfield, MA

MICHIGAN

Kim L. Smith, Ypsilanti, MI

Davy Rothbart, Creator of FOUND Magazine, from MI, on tour somewhere in the US

MINNESOTA

Anya Galli, Northfield, MN

MISSOURI

Nikki Spencer, Columbia MO

Airel Green, Springfield,MO

NEW YORK

Jennifer McZier, New York, NY

Sandra de Helen, New York, NY

Kym Platt, New York, NY

Kim Weild, New York, NY

Khadija Mehte, Syracuse, NY

NORTH CAROLINA

Janeria Dunlap, Durham NC

Serena Sebring, Durham, NC

Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Durham NC

Grover Wehman, Durham, NC

Edwanda E. Brown, Wilmington, NC

OREGON

Kimmy Kunkle, Portland, OR

Al Bradbury, Portland, OR

Nancy Yuill, Portland, OR

FrancesM, Portland, OR

Annin Barrett, Portland, OR

Amber Boydston, Tualatin, OR

damali ayo, Portland, OR

PENNSYLVANIA

Catherine Farman, Bryn Mawr, PA

Damali Flowers, Lancaster, Pa

Amira Damali Rahim, Pittsburgh, PA

Noah Lewis, Pittsburgh, PA

Tim Wise, author of _White Like Me_, from TN on tour in PA

TEXAS

Natalie Mears, Austin, TX

Dago Garcia, Austin, TX

Joe Pinney, Houston, TX

WASHINGTON STATE

Kelly Hogaboom, Hoquiam, WA

Alexis Pierre-Louis, Seattle, WA

WASHINGTON, DC

Ruby McZier, Washington, DC

Roxanne Lawson, Washington, DC

GREAT BRITAN

Sokari Elkine, London, UK

NEW ZEALAND

Cailey McDermott, Wellington, New Zealand

This work began in 2003 as a street performance by artist damali ayo. In Living Flag: Panhandling for Reparations damali panhandled for reparations on the streets of various cities across the United States. In each of her locations she engaged a steady flow of reparations received and paid. October 10, 2007 marks the first annual National Day of Panhandling for Reparations where others join damali in this performance.

Why panhandling? African Americans have tried several means to recoup reparations for the enslavement of our relatives, with little progress. Panhandling shows the last resort of African Americans after our government has ignored or denied all previous requests for reparations. Panhandling is an immediate means of exacting reparations. We offer ordinary citizens the opportunity to support payment of the reparations our government has denied us, or to walk past our presence on the street and continue to ignore our collective history.

REGISTER now to participate in the NATIONAL DAY OF PANHANDLING FOR REPARATIONS at http://reparationsday.com Record your support for reparations at (971) 285-4820.

Contact: damali ayo, performance coordinator: reparations@damaliayo.com, 503.516.4650 (cel) [press only]

More info: http://reparationsday.com, http://damaliayo.com/pages/reparationsday.html

# # #

Event NYC: African Burial Ground Commemoration

2007-10-05T12:16:00.000-04:00

Today, New York City is commemorating the opening of the African Burial Ground Memorial site. This archaeological site of a burial ground of enslaved and free Africans was first discovered 16 years ago. There is an estimate 15,000 to 20,000 who were interred. This is an extremely important scientific and historical site because it tells us how Africans were living and dying between 1600s to the 1700s.

There will be more ceremonies starting with the official opening of the memorial at 1pm as well 6pm vigil and march to the site from Battery Park.

News stories:
AP
NY1- which had a live feed of the ceremony
NY Times

Reparations Events

2007-10-04T06:40:00.000-04:00

Two events related to African American reparations have been posted on the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (N'COBRA) listserv.

From N'COBRA...

September 30, 2007

Dear Reparations Activists and Supporters:

October 26-27, 2007, you are invited to be a part of N'COBRA's 20th
Anniversary commemoration in Washington, DC. On October 26, 2007, there
will be a "Divest from Wachovia Bank" campaign, and press conference,
followed by a National Reparations Rally with Reparations leaders, activists
and scholars. Then on Saturday, October 27, N'COBRA will host a mass
people's assembly so that your voice can be heard, and your recommendations
can be included. All voices will be heard. Because we are expecting a
large turnout, we encourage you to take the time to write out your
suggestions to ensure they are included.

Twenty years ago, shortly after the US awarded reparations to Japanese
Americans interned during WWII, Dr. Imari Obadele issued a call to Black
organizations, leaders, activists, and scholars to discuss the need for
organizing and mobilizing African descendants to demand reparations for the
holocaust of enslavement. This important meeting took place in Washington,
DC. During those initial meetings there was a resounding agreement that
this morally just demand should be pursued. As a result the National
Coalition Of Blacks for Reparations in America (N'COBRA) came into being for
the sole purpose of seeking Reparations for African descendants in America.
We feel strongly that we must celebrate these victories if we are to stay
the course, in light of a national effort to push African descendant issues
to the back burner, and re-focus our energies on issues that are more
important to our oppressors. We are calling on you now, to join our 20th
anniversary commemoration and be counted once again as we chart the course
to victory.

We look forward to your presence. We are certain that the sacrifices we
make to achieve Reparations honor our ancestors and uplifts current and
future generations.

In Struggle,

______________________________ ______________________________

Kibibi Tyehimba, National Co-chair James Rodgers III, National
Co-chair

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APRIL 4,2007 [probably 2008]
National Reparations Convention
Harold Washington Cultural Center
4701 S. King Drive
773.373.3228 for more information

Hear Dorothy Wright Tillman on WVON 1690am or www.wvon.com Saturday
mornings 6 to 8 for more information regarding the convention.

Update on Landmark Reparations Court Case

2007-10-03T07:50:00.000-04:00

The same day that Clarence Thomas's rant, I mean, memoir was released to bookstores, the reparations legal team received the news that the Supreme Court will not take up their petition to hear their case. Here's a letter from chief plaintiff Deadria Farmer-Paellmann that was posted on the N'COBRA listserv yesterday.

Dear All,

We just learned that on October 1, 2007, the Supreme Court of the United States denied our petition to hear arguments in the reparations case filed against corporations. The part of the case presented to them related to our historical arguments. In particular, we were requesting a hearing to determine the earliest date information about corporations complicit in slavery was available to former slaves and their progeny. This information is needed to determine the proper deadline for filing the lawsuit (the statute of limitations).

The Supreme Court denial does not end this aspect of the case. We are free to file actions in state court and will begin that effort in the near future. At that time, we will move forward with requests for this hearing again.

Other aspects of this case are still being battled in Federal Court and Appeals court. In the coming months we will learn their outcomes.

We thank you all for your ongoing support and particular appreciation is extended to Caucasians United for Reparations and Emancipation (CURE) for their true dedication to slavery justice exemplified in many ways, but most recently by filing an Amicus Brief with the Supreme Court to support descendants of enslaved Africans.

Our consumer fraud victory from December 2006 against slave-money corporations still stands. Those who believe they were victimized by corporations lying about their role in slavery may pursue claims utilizing this precedence. To learn more about that decision and for a link to purchase a copy of the Supreme Court petition, please visit our website at: www.rsgincorp.com.

We are developing new cases to continue educating and chipping away at the massive injustice of slavery, and will keep you informed of this critical work.

Thank you all.

Be well,
Deadria Farmer-Paellmann, J.D., M.A.
Executive Director
Restitution Study Group
917-365-3007

Reparations Related Film: Banished

2007-10-02T10:30:00.000-04:00

Banished
Directed by Marco Williams
2007
Film Forum
Through October 9, 2007

I just watched Banished, a documentary by Marco Williams, at the Film Forum in New York City last weekend. This excellent documentary is really the first film I know of to explore the issue of African American reparations on a concrete level. This documentary looks at three African American families whose ancestors were expelled from their communities in the early 20th century all because they were black. It explores how each family deals with uncovering the truth and their attempt at some kind of closure or reconciliation. It is also about the communities where these expulsions occurred. This is a compelling film that anyone who is interested in African American reparations must see and that any American who do not know this history should see.

It will be at the Film Forum for the next two weeks, in selected cities around the country and will be on PBS in 2008. Check it out!

African American history in the news wrap up

2007-10-01T10:00:00.000-04:00

African American history in the news wrap up.

CNN: IBM and Smithsonian Open the National Museum of African American History and Culture -- Virtually

The Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture has opened an online interactive website. President Bush approved a bill in 2003 authorizing the building of a new and improve museum about African American culture and history on the National Mall by 2015. This website is in advance of this opening.

The Smithsonian's African American museum in Anacostia, which I used to go to when I was a child, is literally relegated to the ghetto (and if you have ever visited Anacostia Park in late 1990, you will know what I am talking about). This museum will finally receive parity with other cultural museums such as the Native American, American History and Holocaust museum which are located in the heart of Washington D.C., on the Mall.

One special feature of the website worth noting is the ability to share your memories.

The Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture

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Voice of America reported on September 26, 2007, a special event at George Washington's estate in Mount Vernon. A reconstructed slave cabin was dedicated in a ceremony. It will now become part of the education tours at Mount Vernon.

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AM New York: Slavery stands trial in 'Margaret Garner

Toni Morrison writing opera? It was only a matter of time. Margaret Garner, loosely based on Morrison's novel, is now playing at New York's Lincoln Center. It is a story of a documented escaped African American slave woman who stood trial for killing her own children instead of returning them back to slavery.

Event Tomorrow in DC on Reparations

2007-09-27T12:19:00.000-04:00

Beyond 40 Acres and a Mule:
Addressing Yesterday’s Atrocities
Through Today’s Legislation
Judiciary Chairman John Conyers, Jr.
Friday, September 28, 2007, 9:00 a.m. – 10:30 a.m.
Room 209c of the Convention Center

Panelists
Moderator: Mr. Joe Madison, Radio Personality, The Black Eagle
Dr. Lonnie Bunch, Director, Natnl. Museum of African American History &
Culture
Dr. Ron Daniels, Executive Director, Center for Constitutional Rights
Dr. Howard Dodson, Director, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
Dr. Michael Eric Dyson, Professor, University of Pennsylvania
Mr. Tom Joyner, Radio Personality, The Tom Joyner Show
Dr. Ron Walters, Director, African American Leadership Institute
Legislative Discussion Points and Invited Members
H.R. 40, Commission to Study Reparations Proposals for African-Americans Act

Representative John Conyers, Jr. (MI-14)
H.R. 1995, Tulsa-Greenwood Race Riot Claims Accountability Act
Representative John Conyers, Jr. (MI-14)
H.R. 2030, 1901 Missouri African American Expulsion Commission Act
Representative William Lacy Clay (MO-1)
H.R. 3432, 200th Anniversary Commemoration Commission of the Abolition of
the Transatlantic Slave Trade
Representative Donald Payne (NJ-10)
H. Res. 194, Apologizing for the Enslavement and Racial Segregation of
African Americans
Representative Steve Cohen (TN-9)
H.R. 1455, African Burial Ground International Memorial and Educational
Center Act
Representative Jerrold Nadler (NY-8)
H. Con. Res. 24, Expressing the Sense of the Congress that the President
Should Pardon Marcus Mosiah Garvey
Representative Charles Rangel (NY-15)
To RSVP or if you have questions, please contact Kanya Bennett at
_kanya.bennett@mail.house.gov _ (mailto:kanya.bennett@mail.house.gov ) or (202)
226-1978.

Interview with writer Mary Frances Berry

2007-09-14T18:21:00.000-04:00

I love Mary Frances Berry's book about the first African American slavery reparations activist, Callie House, called My Face is Black is True. But in this interview, she doesn't talk about her book but she does comment on, among other things, affirmative action and Don Imus. She takes a very interesting position on both.

Five Minutes With:
Interviews with top names in arts and politics.
Mary Frances Berry

By Ben Adler
September 4, 2007

Lawyer and historian, civil rights activist and radio executive, Mary Frances Berry has had a long and varied career. Currently a professor of American social thought and history at the University of Pennsylvania, Berry achieved fame and notoriety as President Jimmy Carter’s assistant secretary for education in the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare and as a long-time member of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission (and its chairwoman under President Bill Clinton). She served a term as chairwoman of the board at Pacifica Radio and is the author of eight books, most recently My Face Is Black Is True: Callie House and the Struggle for Ex-Slave Reparations. Campus Progress caught up with Prof. Berry by phone to ask her about her areas of expertise in civil rights, radio, and the nexus between the two.

Campus Progress: To a lot of young people, civil rights seems like an issue that happened in the past rather than something that’s very much still a contentious issue today. Do you have any thoughts on what the most pressing civil rights issues are today and how they can be made relevant for young people?

MFB: I think probably the most pressing issue is trying to make sure that everyone has an equal opportunity to a quality education. That’s the most pressing civil rights issue of all. What that involves is making sure that at the K-12 level every child has the opportunity to learn. We have things like No Child Left Behind, which is being reauthorized. [NCLB] has the goal of making sure that everybody is able to learn, but it doesn’t have the resources and it doesn’t have enough support of teachers. It has an overemphasis on testing people to make sure that we can tell what they don’t know rather than figuring out how to make them know what they should know. And we have all kinds of proposals for different types of K-12 schools alongside the public schools, but we really haven’t done all the things that the experts say we need to do to make sure that kids, especially when they come from homes where they don’t get the kind of support that they need with their homework, or the kind of environment in which they can learn or whatever happens in their daily lives. So we haven’t figured out quite how to make sure that everyone has a quality education.

And disproportionately, children of color—whether they are Latino or African American, and poor white students also—are the ones who are being left behind despite the fact that we say we don’t want them being left behind. We have high drop-out rates: Latinos higher than Blacks, Blacks very high, so these are problems. In higher education we also have an equal opportunity issue because we still don’t have enough African Americans and Latinos who are getting college degrees who are staying in school and are retained in higher education. And these issues are important not just for people who are interested in civil rights. It is a major civil rights issue, but it’s important to everyone because I think everyone agrees that you can’t have a productive economy in terms of the nation’s future and our place in the world if we don’t educate the students that we do have.

Affirmative action lost in Michigan this past year. How can progressives support affirmative action in a way that is likely to make it more popular and more likely to win at the polls? Do you have ideas about how it should be framed and do you also have thoughts on how the policies themselves should be changed?

The first thing to understand is that the conservatives and the right undertook an assault on affirmative action that has gone on since it first started in the 1960s and has never ended. Of the public relations to date, when they succeeded in characterizing affirmative action as preferential treatment for unqualified or less qualified people, they succeeded. I wouldn’t even argue that they didn’t succeed, they did! And it was easy to do because affirmative action in a zero-sum game—especially in higher education where someone else is admitted and someone else isn’t admitted. In elite institutions it’s easy for people to want the seats to argue that other people shouldn’t have them. It’s not that it was that hard to do, but they were very smart and very crafty in framing the issue as reverse discrimination—preferential treatment, something for somebody who doesn’t merit it, taking something away from other people—and they won that rhetorical battle. And since they won the rhetorical battle, they won the policy battle.

There’s nothing wrong in concept with affirmative action as the idea that you make up for discrimination that has taken place by reaching out to people. And in some cases where you have equal qualified people taking the people with less. We’re able to do it when it comes to women, inclusion of women in opportunities, and the Supreme Court has even upheld that without any difficulty. It’s on the race question that we have fallen short. I think that what we need to do is to re-label affirmative action as something else. Maybe call it banana something, orange, or something like that and then start over again with trying to explain to people what it is that we’re trying to do.

One idea is to base the whole thing on class, which I don’t have any objection to. I’ve always supported affirmative action based on class, although I don’t think we should call it affirmative action. I think we should call it banana based on class or orange based on class, whatever. Because we have an increased emphasis on higher education in all the Ivies—Penn, Harvard, all the rest—I’m trying to make sure that we have kids that are from poor families.

How can radio stations diversify their audiences?

Make sure that you have voices on the air that come from different communities of color who can talk about those communities and who are rooted in it, so that when other people hear them they feel some empathy and that person is somehow, you know, in their space. And they may want to listen to what they have to say and what their views are. And there’s a lot of work that needs to be done; NPR is trying, but they need to do more of that. The community radio stations especially should have the goal of doing that and I think it’s very important.

One of the big media issues this year has been the controversy surrounding Don Imus. Do you think broadcasters saying racist things on the air is a problem?

The CATO Institute asked me a couple of years ago to come and debate some guy about conflicts between free speech and employers hiring who they wanted to hire and having them say what they wanted. They assumed I was going to take the side against free speech and so I told them I didn’t want to come because they didn’t understand that when it comes to the First Amendment I’m a purist. And I didn’t go.

I was very conflicted about the Imus thing. I was asked to come on several television shows to discuss it and I didn’t go because they assumed that I was going to come and attack Imus. I thought that what Imus said was awful. I think what a lot of people say is awful. But I think that if they want to say it and the radio and the television do not have to give them a forum to let them say it. And there is a lot of worse stuff on the Internet, though freely disseminated without anybody interfering with it or stopping it, and some of the stuff is pretty bad. I think that I don’t believe in prior restraint in terms of messages because people think what they think whether you can try to keep them from saying that. And there are a lot of people who agree with them so you might as well get it out there and talk about it. There has to be an opportunity for other people to say things and respond in many different messages.

But I also think something else that the kind of language that he was using and the whole hip-hop thing now and the rap music issue has been raised too. I think C. Dolores Tucker was right when she was alive, of course she’s dead now, when she was trying to lead the campaign to get the rap musicians to clean up their lyrics. So I think that rap music ought to clean up its act. Eighty percent of the people that listen to it are white and not Black. And some get their only idea of what they should be like, or what Black people are really like, or what’s really cool by doing that. So I don’t like some of the messages, but I think it’s more threatening to have a guy like Trent Lott who said that statement about Strom Thurmond. That he wished we had an America back like when Strom Thurmond should have been president or something, and have him be the whip in the Senate now, that’s really some powerful messages.

NPR: Author Chronicles Black Senator's Socialite Past

2007-09-10T18:45:00.000-04:00

Can I tell you that I love NPR. And I really like Michel Martin's reporting. Here's a story about a newly released book about one of America's first African American Senator, Blanche Kelso Bruce. It is amazing how quickly a country can change for the better. And then, just as quickly, for the worse. During that magical period of Reconstruction, this African American tax collector was able to run for the Senate from the grand ol' state of Mississippi and win. But by the end of Reconstruction, the right to vote for African Americans was suppressed. America would not see another African American Senator until 1967 when Edward Brooke of Massachusetts was elected. And now, 30 years later, Sen. Barack Obama has positioned himself as the first African America to be a serious contender for the president of the United States.

Listen to NPR Story about Senator Bruce.
Read: The Senator and the Socialite by Lawrence Otis Graham

Richmond Times -Dispatch: "Kaine Issues Pardon in Slave Revolt"

2007-09-02T08:32:00.000-04:00

Kaine issues pardon in slave revolt

Though Gabriel's plot failed, governor praises his devotion to liberty

Friday, Aug 31, 2007 - 12:08 AM Updated: 09:41 AM

By JEFF E. SCHAPIRO

TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine is informally pardoning the slave Gabriel, hanged for leading a failed slave revolt in Virginia more than 200 years ago this week.

In restoring Gabriel's "good name," Kaine said the slave, put to death in 1800 with 34 other African-Americans, was motivated by "his devotion to the ideals of the American revolution -- it was worth risking death to secure liberty."

Gabriel, the property of a Henrico planter named Prosser, envisioned an uprising by thousands of slaves that would include the "wholesale massacre" of whites in Richmond and other slave-holding areas, according to journalist-historian Virginius Dabney in "Richmond: The Story of a City."

Unfolding 31 years before the better-known Nat Turner insurrection in Southampton County, the Gabriel-led revolt began in Richmond on Aug. 30, 1800. The plot was thwarted after two slaves confessed to a white plantation owner, who immediately alerted Gov. James Monroe, a future president.

A powerful rainstorm forced a delay in the rebellion, giving the militia time to round up Gabriel and others. Tried and condemned to death, many of the slaves were hanged near what is now Broad and 15th streets, according to Dabney.

"Gabriel's cause -- the end of slavery and the furtherance of equality of all people -- has prevailed in the light of history," Kaine said in a recent letter to Linda Thomas, president of the Virginia chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Thomas sought the pardon.

"It is important to acknowledge that history favorably regards Gabriel's cause while consigning legions who sought to keep him and others in chains to be forgotten," Kaine wrote.

In a statement released yesterday by King Salim Khalfani, Virginia State Conference executive director, the NAACP welcomed Kaine's decree, saying, "Gabriel and his colleagues were freedom fighters and deserve their rightful place in history as women and men of integrity who fought for freedom."

The civil-rights organization continued, "In the capital of the Confederacy, where monuments to the traitors of the Union are maintained with tax dollars, this is a momentous occasion."

Kaine's decision comes nearly seven months after the General Assembly went on record expressing "profound regret" for slavery, a foundation of Virginia's economy for more than 200 years. Virginia was the first state to apologize for slavery.

Kaine press secretary Kevin Hall said the governor did not issue a formal pardon for Gabriel because that is "usually for a living person, not a person who has died." Further, Hall said, official records of Gabriel's alleged crimes are not complete.

Hall said that Kaine, as he did last year in clearing the name of accused 18th century witch, Grace Sherwood of Virginia Beach, acted under broad clemency powers extended to a governor by the Virginia Constitution.

England: "Apologise for Slave trade, Jesse Jackson Says"

2007-08-28T11:15:00.000-04:00

Apologise for slave trade, Jesse Jackson tells Brum

Aug 27 2007

By Emma Pinch

Civil rights campaigners have called on Birmingham to apologise for its role in the slave trade.

Former American presidential candidate the Rev Jesse Jackson said the city should apologise, a call supported yesterday by a leading black churchman who said an apology should be followed by reparation.

Mr Jackson's comment came at a private meeting during his visit to Handsworth last week when he called for black people to use their spending power to boycott services and products where they were not represented.

He was in Birmingham launching a new pressure group designed to bring economic equality to Britain's black communities.

Addressing more than 600 people at Canon Street Baptist Church in Handsworth, Mr Jackson insisted that "the line of slavery" had not been broken.

After slavery, colonialism and apartheid came institutionalised racism, he said, which meant there was continuing poverty for many Afro-Caribbeans.

He demanded that Birmingham - which manufactured chains for the slave trade - apologise for slavery.

Earlier that day London Mayor Ken Livingstone had said sorry for London's role in the transatlantic trade of African people.

Bishop Joe Aldred, the Birmingham-based chairman of the Council of Black-led Churches, yesterday went further by calling for a fund for the descendants of slaves, and a bank holiday to acknowledge the past.

This year marks the 200th anniversary of the abolition of slavery, in 1807. Bishop Aldred said the Christian concept of apology meant it went hand-in-hand with forgiveness and repentance, and genuine repentance meant reparation.

"Repentance is not cheap, it demands action. It should be backed by a tangible action which seeks to address the wrongs being apologised for," he said. "Given that Birmingham is one of the centres which benefited from the slave trade and slavery, a tangible form of reparation would be to set up a fund that bears in mind slave traders and owners were recompensed to the tune of £20 million.

"I'm not suggesting every black person gets a pound, but I think a bursary could be set up for the descendants of slaves to get to university or set up a business."

He also suggested a bank holiday on August 23, similar to the UN's World Liberation Day, and forging better trade links with Africa and the Caribbean, in recognition of the prosperity those countries had forged for Britain.

Bishop Aldred, who came to Britain from Jamaica aged 14, said the negative legacy of slavery was etched into black British psyche, making it very much a "live" issue.

"The reason I'm in this country is because of slavery," he said. "I'm here because Europeans went into Africa and took my forefathers and mothers and transported them to the Caribbean.

"The Caribbean suffered so much over so many years - in levels of family breakdowns and deprivation and psychological drift.

"I argue that the high number of people from the Caribbean experiencing mental illness, under-achievement and an inability to catch up, has its roots in the life that was lived as enslaved people. Slavery is very much a live issue."

No-one from the city council was available for comment last night.

The latest calls echo comments by the Archbishop of York and former Bishop for Birmingham, the Rt Rev John Sentamu, who earlier this year urged the then Prime Minister Tony Blair to issue an apology.

Mr Blair had expressed regret for Britain's role in slavery, but did not make a formal apology.

Dr Sentamu said Britain, and the Church, had been involved in a "very, very terrible trade" and added: "It is really important that we own up to what was collectively done."

As well as being a centre of manufacturing for chains and shackles used in the slave trade, Birmingham's 18th century commerce also involved supplying weaponry to West African rulers, with guns being exchanged for enslaved Africans.

However, Birmingham also had some of the leading anti-slavery campaigners, with the Lunar Society - which met regularly in the city - including among its members abolitionists Thomas Day and Josiah Wedgwood.

Newsday NYC:" Could Hillary Clinton also be a 'black' leader?"

2007-08-24T11:01:00.000-04:00

Another Les Payne article. This one fields the question: Is Hillary Clinton "black enough"? A very tongue and cheek question but one that makes a good point. You don't have to be African American to support the issues that affect the African American community. We see the exact opposite of this with Clarence Thomas and Condoleezza Rice.

One thing to note from this article is Hillary Clinton is not for reparations. This was asked of her at the National Black Journalists conference in Las Vegas. So my follow-up question would be for her and all the presidential candidates: if Congress passes a bill for some kind for reparations for the descendants of slaves, would they sign it?

Newsday.com
Could Hillary Clinton also be a 'black' leader?
Les Payne
August 12, 2007
Senator Clinton, are you black enough?

The question usually aimed at her darker opponent from Chicago triggered a burst of laughter from Hillary Rodham Clinton. She recovered from the barb and proceeded by not answering it.

This campaign moment occurred Thursday before the Las Vegas convention crowd of the National Association of Black Journalists. CNN White House correspondent Suzanne Malveaux pinned back the former First Lady to explain how she could "sustain black support " while running against an African-American. Ironically, thanks to Sen. Barack Obama's mixed white and Kenyan parentage and campaign mischief, it is he who usually gets to field the "black enough" question.

Although Clinton moon-walked away from Malveaux's direct question, she came before the 2,700-member journalist group with her designer set of promises. As president she said she would "call for a national response" to the crisis of neglect facing young black men. As part of her Youth Opportunity Agenda, she says the initiative flows from her belief that "it takes a [white] village to raise a child."

The national crisis with African-Americans, she said, concerned the "1.4 million young men of color between the ages of 16 and 24 who are out of school, and out of work and too often out of hope. It includes nearly one out of every three young African-American men. They're not earning legal wages or learning marketable skills; many grow up without fathers, locked up in prisons, or end up losing their lives, or taking lives, due to guns and violence."

Clinton said the problem is not a "moral crisis but an economic crisis," rejecting the "broad-brush" notion that paints the young black male "as a threat, as a headache or as a lost cause. I reject it as a string of disappointments, failures and casualties of a broken system. That's not who they are and that's not who they can be." She would call for expanding Headstart programs, increasing funding for schools and rehabilitation projects and tackling the excesses of the criminal justice system that tracks many of these young men into prisons.

"We have to keep talking about race," she said, "because race is a very significant issue for our country, for who we are as a country, for our role in the world." President Bill Clinton's 1995 Race Initiative, she said, was "either ignored or derided as being unnecessary, irrelevant ... I'm encouraged that more people are willing to have that conversation now."

With Obama appearing before the convention the next day, Clinton, not unexpectedly, talked more than usual about race before the 32-year-old organization. She sharply contrasted the diversity of the Democratic candidates with the all-white-male Republican candidates.

"I am really thrilled to be running at a time in our history when, on a stage, you can see an African-American man, a Hispanic man and a woman."

In a smaller meeting with a group of columnists, Clinton said she doesn't "believe in [slavery] reparations," but sees a need to "repair the breach that has left too many of our citizens behind." She was asked about the breach left by the 1995 Federal Communications Commission bill her husband signed that sharply reduced black ownership of radio and TV stations when tax incentives were removed. While admitting to "harsh" Clinton administration compromises with unfortunate consequences during the reign of the Newt Gingrich-dominated, GOP congress, the junior senator from New York said she didn't know what she would do about the resulting "media consolidation," were she elected president.

In a moment of levity with the black columnists, Clinton joked about how, as a flat-toned midwesterner, she sometimes lapses into a drawl in the South and tends to drop her "g's" more around black audiences. In a snide reference to author Toni Morrison's comment that her husband was the "first black president," she mused:

"I do find myself dropping g's. I lived all those years in Arkansas, and, you know, I'm in this interracial marriage."

Newsday: "Who would qualify for reparations"

2007-08-21T23:04:00.000-04:00

This is a good and funny article written by Les Payne.

"Who would qualify for slavery reparations?"
By Les Payne
Newsday.com
August 5, 2007

Will Tiger Woods get reparations for slavery? What about Justice Clarence Thomas? Mariah Carey? Chuck D? Will the children of Abner Louima or Amadou Diallo get shares?

No, you've not missed the memo on U.S. reparations.

A blizzard of e-mail responses to last week's column has enlivened the debate over my view that slavery was a crime against humanity for which America must account and be assessed damages. Mixed-race Tiger Woods gets hauled onto the fairway because inquiring readers want to know who exactly would be eligible for reparations. This puts the cart before the horse, as farmers say, but I yield to questions from the floor.

A mixed-race reader from San Francisco, with half of her family white, questions using "one drop of [black] blood" as a criterion for determining eligibility. This standard was once used to increase family slave holdings in states like Louisiana. Later, it determined who got white privileges. Those living as whites with their "one drop" during and after slavery would not be eligible for reparations, since, as the San Franciscan points out, they "have not suffered discrimination."

As for golfer Woods, his mother is from Thailand, and his father's ancestry is African and indigenous American. As a twofer, Woods might claim ancestral tribal lands, but his slave roots are in Kansas. The white blood in Woods' family didn't keep his forebears out of slavery or reserve white privilege for the golf wizard.

During kindergarten in California, Woods has recalled, white sixth-graders tied him to a tree and threw rocks at him after spray-painting on him "Nigger," a word the prodigy would hear at various golf links. Woods was the only nonwhite at that elementary school, and the little darlings struck a blow against only that part of him that descended from slaves. That same blood had kept his father, Earl, from rooming in hotels with his white basketball teammates when Kansas State played on the road.

So the agony behind the stigma of slavery - even for overachievers such as Woods, Justice Thomas, Romare Bearden, Adam Powell, Chuck D., etc. - is visited upon citizens whose only distinguishing characteristic is that they descended from slaves; this condition is almost synonymous with being black in America.

Mere appearance is sometimes enough to bring on the hurt.

Amadou Diallo, 23, was mistaken for a descendant of slaves when, in 1999, New York City cops cut him down in a hail of 41 bullets. The unarmed victim was instead an immigrant from Guinea, a West African country formerly colonized by the French, who likely owe reparations for misappropriating land, human resources and mineral wealth. Though Diallo was due no compensation from American slavery, his parents got a $3-million settlement from the city for misidentifying their son as a fellow descendant.

Cops similarly mistreated Abner Louima, a Haitian immigrant they brutalized in a precinct bathroom two years earlier. He, too, was not eligible for reparations. However, in the largest brutality settlement in city history, his civil suit reaped some $8.75 million. Other black immigrants ineligible for reparations have sued municipalities and won big for being subjected to treatment earmarked for the dark-skinned descendants of slaves.

As for who gets reparations - when the time comes - a full share, I submit, should go to those whose forebears endured slavery on these shores, and who suffered the inherited agony themselves. The case charges that slavery and attending U.S. atrocities, some of which are ongoing, have no statute of limitations and must be brought to book and punished before this republic can enjoy any lasting reconciliation between the races.

Of those names opening this discussion, I would exclude only Mariah Carey, whose mother is Irish and father a brown-skinned citizen from Venezuela. Thomas would likely opt out of reparations for himself.

Another loyal, black American, a classy writer and social critic of impeccable taste, accepts the prescribed bill of particulars on reparations. He opts out of reparations nonetheless, offering his share to those building the case.

Should a fair share reach a million dollars, however, he wants in.

Youtube Debate: A Month Old (I know!)

2007-08-20T12:52:00.000-04:00

So who loves Kucinich? I do!! He said in the Youtube debate: "Yes I am for reparations," quoting the Bible in fact. That is a very clear answer and one I didn't expect. I am sad that Obama "dipped" and "dodged" the issue. I am sad that no other candidate jump in when Anderson Cooper asked does anyone support reparations, except Kucinich.

Of course Kucinich can't win. I mean how could he since he's for equal rights for all.

Ignored African American Cemetary Gets New Caretakers

2007-07-19T15:17:00.001-04:00

History slipping though our fingers. It is important to maintain these historical sites such as this 130 year old cemetery from disappearing forever.

AP Texas News
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/tx/4956651.html

July 10, 2007
Group takes charge of small ignored cemetery in Temple

By DESIREE JOHNSON Killeen Daily Herald

TEMPLE, Texas — For years the Seven Star Cemetery was ignored, unclaimed by anyone until a small group of people decided to take responsibility for a place that holds forgotten souls and lost history.

Bishop J.A. Tolbert, a pastor at Eagles Wings Ministries in Temple, has been working with the Central Texas Juneteenth Committee to save the narrow stretch of land that lies along 14th Street.

Before he began, the plot of land was overgrown with tall grass, abandoned for years. Now cut and clean, the Seven Star Cemetery showcases graves that whisper stories from history that otherwise would have been lost.

Getting to this point has been a struggle for Tolbert and the Juneteenth Committee. First, the group needed to figure out who owned the property, a question that remains unanswered.

"The Hillcrest Cemetery had all the information on the land and a map of the graves and everything, but they refused to claim it," Tolbert said. "We think it was once owned by the Mississippi/Kansas/Texas railroad commission, but they've given it up, too. The city of Temple didn't want it either."

Tolbert has not been able to find the deed to the land.

Since no one was willing to claim the land, the Juneteenth committee decided to seek legal ownership.

"It's been a real struggle. The city has said it's ours, but we really want a paper trail," Tolbert said. "The city is hesitant to give it to a volunteer group because of a lack of permanency. They want the land linked through a committee that has no chance of going away."

After getting unofficial rights to the land, the group volunteered its time to cleaning up the area, repainting old graves and figuring out where old grave markers belonged.

"We needed a lot of help clearing out the grass and brush that we had cut down, and we requested some equipment from the city for help," Tolbert said. "The city refused to pick up debris because they said there was no water meter on the property.

"Of course, once we finished everything, everyone wanted to be there. The mayor, City Council members all sorts of important people were here at the unveiling of the new memorabilia marker."

While cleaning up, the committee discovered many untold stories that came with the cemetery.

Among the distinguishable graves lie multiple rows of unknown graves, each marked with a cement block. Because of the dates on the graves surrounding these — the oldest having a birth date of 1870 — the group can make educated guesses about the history behind the unmarked graves.

Because Texas slaves weren't freed by the Emancipation Proclamation because of the slow rate of news travel until around 1865, it's safe to assume that some of the unmarked graves were former slaves, Tolbert said.

Some of the unknown graves also are assumed to be former railroad workers, since that stretch of railroad would have been laid down around the same time as some of the corresponding marked graves.

"African-American slaves and African-Americans were buried next to railroad tracks before they could be buried in cemeteries," Tolbert said.

The marked graves have their own stories to tell.

"There are a few family plots that have children buried close by. Most children died because people back then didn't know about diets, diseases, et cetera," Tolbert said. "The children who survived had to be physically strong.

"The houses had no proper ventilation, too. They were built to keep the cold out, but what they didn't realize was that they were keeping the bacteria in."

One of the graves that stands out to passers-by is that of a black soldier.

"It's surprising because black soldiers were not awarded the same honors as white soldiers back then — it was not important that they died," Tolbert said. "This soldier must have done something truly amazing to have his body sent back home. There are so few black heroes of war simply because their stories are not recorded."

Since most of the bodies buried were either slaves or direct descendants of slaves having their first taste of freedom, the cemetery has become a testament to the black struggle for freedom in America.

"It's different for us today because we were born free, and we'll fight for that freedom, but back then slavery is just how they saw themselves," Tolbert said. "God must have put the desire to be free and the idea into their minds, since the entire world was telling them they were slaves, and they had to fight for it.

"It's like the quote from revolutionary leader Emiliano Zapata that said, 'I would rather die on my feet, than live on my knees.'"

This is part of the reason the land is named Seven Star Cemetery.

"The star stands for the seven points of freedom on the Underground Railroad," Tolbert said. "The North Star was the principle star, and we think the last star stands for the ultimate freedom. When slaves would travel on the Underground, they at least knew what direction to go next, based on the placement of the constellations."

While the Seven Star Cemetery holds a plethora of information waiting to be discovered, the struggle for the respect of the piece of land is ongoing for the Juneteenth committee.

Each time Tolbert tours the area, he said something is out of place, and the cemetery has been vandalized many times.

"Sometimes, kids come by and move some of the old tin markers with important information on them to the unknown graves," Tolbert said. "We had to paint the name of the cemetery on the bricks because people kept coming by and tearing off the plastic ones we put up."

Despite the struggle, the importance of preserving history and the need to respect the bodies that lie there keep those dedicated to the cemetery working on the project.

"At the dedication, we had a flag donated to us that flew on the State Capitol and another that flew on the U.S. Capitol on Juneteenth (June 19)," Tolbert said.

"Having those is a way to bring these souls to a place I'm sure they never thought they would come. We're saying to them, 'We deem you citizens, you are no longer cattle.'

"It's more than just reclaiming the land and cutting the grass. Our history is inexorably tied to our present. If we don't know the yesterday, how are we going to find tomorrow?"

Essence: The Assault on Black Women

2007-07-08T09:37:00.000-04:00

A very good article in this month's Essence Magazine by Michael Eric Dyson. It seems that even today Black women still suffer from the vestiges of slavery by negative stereotyping.

BULL'S-EYE
Michael Eric Dyson.

Long before Don Imus's callous attack on Rutgers University's female basketball players, calling them "nappy-headed hos," Black women's flesh was the court on which the nation played out its sexual, racial and gender anxieties. During slavery, Black women were either the oversexed Jezebel or the asexual and nurturing Mammy. Since that time, a few more stereotypes have been thrown into the mix: the smothering Black Matriarch, the lazy Welfare Queen and the conniving Baby Mama.

Imus isn't the first to use Black women negatively to get a laugh or appeal to conservative factions. Last year, radio host Neal Boortz said that Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney looked like "a ghetto slut" because her hair resembled "an explosion in a Brillo pad factory," conjuring the image of "Tina Turner peeing on an electric fence." And in 2006, the Republican group America's PAC ran an anti-Democratic-Party ad aimed at Black voters that seemingly portrayed certain Black women as promiscuous bimbos of misogynist men. "If you make a little mistake with one of your hos, you'll want to dispose of that problem tout suite, no questions asked," a Black man says in the ad. "That's too cold. I don't snuff my own seed," a second Black man replies. "Maybe you do have a reason to vote Republican," the first man says.

While Black women's images have been assaulted by outside forces, perhaps the biggest blow of all is the swollen stream of insult that flows from the mouths of Black men. When Bill Cosby went off on the Black poor in 2004, Black women were the scapegoats for his bigoted tirade: "Five or six children, same woman.... Pretty soon you're going to have to have DNA cards so you can tell who you're making love to You don't know who this is; might be your grandmother."

Hip-hop's hateful harangues also come painfully to mind. Young Black males have invented cruelly ingenious ways to call women out of their names: hood rat, chickenhead, skeezer. Hip-hop has also vigorously adopted a decades-old practice of slanderbonics--the ebonicized expression of insult that condenses words like "whore" into "ho," or expands "bitch" into "beyaatch."

Why are Black women such easy targets of assault from all quarters of the culture? A large part of the answer is that they're among the most vulnerable citizens in the nation. Many possess little social standing and warrant little positive notice from politicians and public policy makers. Sure, greater numbers of Black women than ever before are steadily climbing the economic ladder into better careers with higher pay. But millions of their sisters lag behind in economic misery, with stagnant jobs, poor education and even poorer health.

These sisters, for better and worse, are the face of Black women to a nation that is only too willing to stereotype them as lazy and undeserving of social support and political care. The constant stream of conservative commentary that damns Black women as welfare recipients who drain taxpayer dollars--combined with rap rhetoric that paints poor Black women as heartless gold diggers--makes it quite easy for powerful Black and White men to feel justified in attacking them.

Even rich and powerful Black women aren't exempt from assault, often from international sources. Condoleezza Rice was called "girl" by Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, who insinuated that Rice's opposition to him grew from sexual frustration. "It appears she's dreaming of me," Chavez reportedly said. "I could invite her on a date to see what happens between us."

Because most Black women are socially unprotected, there is hardly any penalty for insulting them. Imus's case may be the exception to the rule. While Black women and their allies waged a valiant struggle to remove Imus from the air after his senseless diatribe, it may have been the confluence of big business (several major sponsors pulled the plug on both his radio and television shows), the social outrage of Black employees at MSNBC and CBS, and social protest by Black journalists, leaders and intellectuals that ended Imus's free ride as an occasional bully and bigot. Before Imus, very few figures faced sanctions for verbally beating up on Black women.

After Imus, there is potential for change if we avoid simplistic reasoning and easy targets. We've got to take the profit out of bigotry toward women. That's far more difficult than banning "bitch" and "ho" from the airwaves or from rapper's vocabularies. It means confronting the sexism and misogyny that make the culture sick. That also means we have to stop making a scapegoat of hip-hop while ignoring an elephant in the Black cultural room: the Black church. If a Black woman is told by her clergyman that she is a second-class citizen because God and the Bible want it that way, is it any less offensive than a rapper hurling an epithet? Leading marches against record companies will matter little if Black leaders don't also march against pastors who preach the subordination of women to men.

When we have the courage to confront our most cherished institutions and deeply entrenched prejudices, we will make the world better for Black women to live in. If we change the culture that reinforces the logic and supplies the benefit of sexism, we can alter the future of little girls and boys who we want to grow up as female-affirming and self-loving creatures.

GRAPHIC: Picture 1, The Rutgers Women's basketball team found themselves in the crosshairs of an ugly battle. RUTGERS TEAM, CHRIS HONDROS/GETTY IMAGE NEWS.
Picture 2, Don Imus. IMUS, CHIP EAST/REUTERS/CORBIS.
Picture 3, Bill Cosby has lashed out at poor women. COSBY, AP PHOTO/ALEX BRANDON.
Picture 4, Al Sharpton speaks to the media about Imus's remarks. SHARPTON, CHRIS HONDROS/GETTY IMAGES NEWS.
Picture 5, Hip-hop impresario Russell Simmons has responded to criticism of record lyrics. SIMMONS, ARNOLD TURNER/WIREIMAGE.

President James Madison's Only Family?

2007-06-12T07:47:00.000-04:00

Interesting story. We see more and more evidence that reparations are due, not just monetary but repairing history as well.

James Madison's Black Son?

Orange County, VA

Posted: 7:18 PM Jun 9, 2007
Last Updated: 11:09 PM Jun 9, 2007

Reporter: James Jackson

Email Address: james.jackson@whsv.com

More than 100 descendants of african american slaves gathered this weekend to honor the legacy of those who came before them.

"This was a beginning of a journey to finding my family's history," says Mrs. Colman, a slave descedant.

At Montpelier the estate of former President James Madison, there have been many historical discoveries.

Dr. Bettye kearse came all the way from Massachusetts, bringing with her a deep, dark Madison family secret.

"One of his slaves who's name was Corrine was one of the cooks for the Madisons and the result of that relationship was a son."

Dr. Kearse who calims to be a madison descendant is working with Dr. Bruce Jackson, the director of the african american DNA roots project.

They hope to scientifically prove the existence of another "James Madison," the product of a slave and founding fathers.

"James Madison was the fourth president of the United States. It appears if we could make this connection that is only decedents are of African Origin and that's quite and Irony given slavery," comments Dr. Jackson.

"As I was saying to someone earlier it really makes it clear that I belong not just here at Montpelier but in this country," Kearse adds.

By using DNA technology, Dr. Jackson may change american history forever.

In part 2 of this Special Report, find out they'r eusing DNA technology to find the truth.

Reparations and Archaeology.

2007-06-05T17:54:00.000-04:00

Two of my favorite things...

Archaeological dig exposes racist U.S. history

By Betsey Piette
Philadelphia

Published May 31, 2007 10:09 PM

Hidden below the modern skyscrapers lay the ruins of Philadelphia’s history—the foundation of a city, and a nation, built and maintained by the labor of enslaved Africans.

to keep Africans enslaved. " border="0">

George Washington used a loophole
to keep Africans enslaved.

WW photos: Joe Piette

An excavation near the cracked Liberty Bell is laying bare the history of the first “White House,” where George Washington resided in the 1790s and kept nine enslaved Africans: Oney Judge, Moll, Austin, Hercules, Giles, Paris, Richmond, Christopher Sheels and Joe. It is also providing strong evidence to support the movement for reparations.

The excavation was planned to clear the site in order to lay the foundations for a memorial pavilion to the presidential house and its occupants, including the enslaved Africans. Intended to be completed in time for Philadelphia’s upcoming annual July 4 extravaganza, reaction to the dig may result in a change of plans as many people echo comments of an African-American visitor who murmured, “They should leave this. The truth is finally there to see.”

The first weekend the archaeological dig opened in mid-May, it drew over 1,000 visitors, stunning Park Service officials. A steady stream of visitors gathered on a small elevated viewing platform for the opportunity to see the building outlines and hear archaeologists explain what they were seeing. The tone was almost solemn, the discussions serious about just what role slavery played in the founding of the U.S.

The floor of the kitchen where Washington’s enslaved African chef Hercules toiled is visible. The dig has uncovered new evidence that the kitchen had a cellar and that an underground passageway connected it to the main house.

The outline of a curving neoclassical window that would inspire the current White House Blue Room and Oval Office lies close to the viewing platform. The “important” visitors Washington received in front of this window, however, could not look out onto the quarters of the enslaved Africans. Archaeologists have uncovered the foundation of a wall they believe was built to hide the slaves from public view. Washington was violating a Pennsylvania law that entitled enslaved Africans to freedom after a six-month residency.

One of Philadelphia’s premier tourist attractions, Independence Hall, is visible behind the dig. Other enslaved Africans, who were never compensated for their labor, built Independence Hall.

That Washington and other early U.S. presidents kept slaves in Virginia has never been denied. But when it was discovered about 30 years ago that he also kept enslaved Africans in Philadelphia, the National Park Service buried the discovery. To keep slaves in a free state, Washington exploited a loophole, by periodically swapping his Philadelphia slaves with some of the 316 he kept in Virginia. When some managed to escape, Washington relentlessly hunted them down.

Historical archaeologist Cheryl Janifer LaRoche commented that the dig is offering an opportunity to touch a past that’s been buried and walled away. LaRoche explained the role played by influential financier Robert Morris Jr., who moved from his mansion so it could be used as Washington’s residence. Morris, a key delegate to the 1775 Constitutional Convention, was a major slave merchant for 40 years as a partner in the Philadelphia mercantile shipping firm Willing & Morris.

LaRoche, like many others, does not want to see this site covered over when the Liberty Bell memorial is constructed. Michael Coard agreed with LaRouche. “It would be a crime and a sin to bury this,” stated Coard, a member of the memorial oversight committee and founder of Avenging the Ancestors Coalition (ATAC).

Coard was recently honored by the Philadelphia City Council for his work that compelled Independence National Historical Park to acknowledge the enslaved Africans who lived and worked at this site. Coard is an activist lawyer who also teaches a course on hip-hop culture at Temple University. He had launched a letter-writing campaign and petition drive that evolved into ATAC, which organized a 500-person demonstration on July 3, 2002, to demand that the Park Service acknowledge Washington’s Philadelphia slaves.

Understanding past U.S. history is more critical than ever today, as the crisis of capitalism is creating a new era of super-exploitation of labor around the world. Billions of workers around the world receive less than $1 per day. Millions at home are forced into a twenty-first century variety of slavery behind prison walls. The fight for reparations necessitates digging up this rotten system to the roots and burying it once and for all.

New Book about the Reparations Movement

2007-06-04T10:12:00.000-04:00

A couple of things are happening with the reparations movement. First they are having their annual conference in Philadelphia June 21-24, 2007. Also, a petition was filed on May 22, 2007 to the Supreme Court of the United States by Deadria Farmer-Paellmann asking the court to hear her reparations lawsuit. Farmer also published a book about the court case. See below.

NEW SLAVERY REPARATIONS BOOK: Farmer-Paellmann v. Brown & Williamson..

by Deadria Farmer-Paellmann, M.A., J.D.
Genre: Government & Law
Paperback: 216 pages
Description: LAW/AFRICAN AMERICAN STUDIES

Synopsis:

On December 13, 2006, the slavery reparations movement experienced an unprecedented success. The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals held that corporations that lie about their role in slavery are guilty of fraud. Although this was an outcome to celebrate, half of the case was lost.

In an effort to secure full justice from corporations that exploited slave labor, Deadria Farmer-Paellmann -- an African American lawyer whose ancestors were enslaved in South Carolina -- filed the petition entitled, "Farmer-Paellmann v. Brown & Williamson," Case No. 06-1533, with the Supreme Court of the United States on May 14, 2007. It is published here for public review.

Also included in this edition are excerpts from "BLACK GOLD", a slavery reparations screenplay based on the true story behind the effort to expose companies that enslaved African Americans, and "BLACK EXODUS", a collection of original materials from the earliest mass movement for slavery reparations.

All proceeds will benefit the corporate restitution litigation effort.

Book Details:

· Paperback: 216 pages
· Binding: Perfect-Bound
· Publisher: RSG (May 2007)
· Product Number: 134486223

BUY online at: www.cafepress.com/rsgincorp

e-mail:: rsgincorp@yahoo.com homepage:: http://www.cafepress.com/rsgincorp phone:: 917-365-3007

Give us reparations, not apologies - Politics

2007-05-30T10:31:00.000-04:00

Give us reparations, not apologies - Politics

KOTV: "Victims of 1921 Race Riots Remembered"

2007-05-29T07:39:00.000-04:00

Victims Of 1921 Race Riots Remembered

KOTV - 5/27/2007 9:38 PM - Updated 5/27/2007 10:34 PM

It's been 86 years since part of a North Tulsa community was destroyed. News On 6 anchor Latoya Silmon reports on Sunday dozens honored those lost in the 1921 Tulsa Race Riots, and vowed not to forget them, or let their deaths go unpunished.

It was May 31, 1921, a day before the Tulsa Race Riot began, and a black man was accused of sexual attacking a white woman who operated an elevator. But many say he only stepped on her foot, none the less, some whites came to what was known as Black Wall Street seeking revenge.

"One of the most prosperous African American communities in the world was destroyed in a matter of 12 hours. Forty square blocks burned down, 2,000 people homeless," said attorney and Greenwood scholar Damario Solomon Simmons.

Decades later the pain is still real. With song, dance and reverent prayer dozens gathered in Tulsa to honor those who died.

"This memorial is very special to me because we come to honor what happened in 1921. We honor the ancestors, those who perished,” said Solomon.

"They went through a horrific event in their lives. They were killed. They were murdered,” memorial organizer said.

The group says hatred was the motivation behind their senseless deaths. They vow to never forget, so they march on, still fighting the ignorance that caused so much bled shed.

The African Study Group of Tulsa organized Sunday’s tribute. The annual memorial is in its 7th year. Meanwhile, the legal fight over the riot continues, a Tulsa law firm and a group of national attorneys hope to get reparations for survivors and their descendants.

Watch the video: Race Riot Remembrance

ABC 7 Chicago: Last Day for Alderman Dorothy Tillman

2007-05-10T16:16:00.000-04:00

Chicago public official, Dorothy Tillman, who is a supporter of reparations and helped to galvanized the modern reparation movement, leaves office, hats and all.

The Guardian; "Annan Calls for Investment to Heal Wounds of Slavery"

2007-05-09T16:07:00.001-04:00

Annan calls for investment to heal wounds of slavery
Press Association
Tuesday May 8, 2007
Guardian Unlimited

Former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan addresses both Houses of Parliament to commemorate the bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade. Photograph: John Stillwell/PA

Former United Nations secretary-general Kofi Annan called today for a "bold investment" in poverty relief in Africa to heal the past wounds of slavery.
In a rare address to both houses of parliament to mark the bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade, Mr Annan said slavery was a "stain on human history" from which hardly any part of the world was exempt.

"The trade whose abolition we commemorate today was an abominable practice taken to its most abominable extreme," he said.

"And today we should ask ourselves not only why Britain abolished it 200 years ago, but why it was tolerated for so long."
Mr Annan said many Africans believed that history had still not repaired the past wounds for slavery, driving a demand for reparations.

But he said that, at a time when Africa might be the only region of the world which would not achieve the majority of the UN's millennium development goals by 2015, the issue was best dealt with through investment in poverty relief.

"In order to build on our common rights and values, we must be conscious of our intertwined fate," he said.

"A bold investment in addressing poverty in Africa, as promised by the G8 in Gleneagles, would be the best way to heal the wounds of the past and turn the page."

Mr Annan said that with thousands of women and children around the world being sold and exploited every day, slavery has still not been consigned to history.

"Despite international labour standards and a UN protocol against human trafficking, millions of victims, particularly children - made vulnerable by poverty and exploited by criminals - are working in mines, sweatshops, brothels and plantations, trapped by debt and violence," he said.

"In a perverse commercialisation of humanity, they are used like products and then thrown away.

"Slavery cannot be relegated to the annals of history so long as men, women and children are still being coerced, drugged, tricked, and sold to do dangerous and degrading work against their will."

Mr Annan said the success of the abolitionists such as William Wilberforce and Thomas Clarkson in exposing the cruelty and suffering of the slave trade showed how public opinion could be mobilised to change policy.

"The abolitionists of 18th century Britain represented a moral truth that seemed remote from the ways of the world, a moral passion that must at first have seemed utterly impracticable," he said.

"Yet by persistence, by resolve, by eloquence, and by imagination, they changed history. They showed that moral persuasion could prevail over narrow self-interest. They demonstrated that public opinion could change the law.

"In the half-century following the Slave Trade Act, the Royal Navy freed almost 150,000 beings. Ideals that once seemed quixotic were backed with battleships. And so we revisit the history of the slave trade not only with horror but with hope."

Addressing the joint Houses of Parliament is considered a major honour which has previously been bestowed on only 31 world leaders since 1939.

The list includes Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama and former US presidents Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan.

In an opening speech, the deputy prime minister, John Prescott, said that, in the 34 years Mr Annan had spent in the service of the United Nations, the world had "transformed incredibly".

He said it had gone from "the old cold war to the new hot planet".

"Vicious local wars and acts of terrorism have supplanted the stand-off of the global superpowers.

"And the massive global movement of capital and labour has been accompanied by new forms of modern day slavery.

"In an era of bewildering change, in which we need collective action more than ever before, there was a growing loss of confidence (and credibility) in many of our multinational institutions."

Paying tribute to Mr Annan, Mr Prescott said: "Of course huge challenges remain, but Kofi, in the last 10 years, you have played a major part in reforming the United Nations - so that it can reconnect with the people of the world and respond to issues like climate change which demand global solutions to global problems.

"Kofi, you may recall, when we met in New York last November we reflected on the consequences for African growth and African countries of the slavery of the past - which remains a matter of sorrow and deep regret for us all, a crime that shames us all.

"I met a group of children in Ghana who said, in a dramatic re-enactment of the slave chain, and I quote - 'Not every black man was innocent. Not every white man was guilty.'

"An accurate and powerful statement on that evil trade from the mouths of schoolchildren.

"We looked forward to this year's commemoration of the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade. But we also spoke of the suffering which remains today, in the form of modern-day slavery - human trafficking, child conscription, bonded labour and other appalling acts of inhumanity in our world today.

"In this historic anniversary year, we are delighted that you have accepted our invitation to speak on this special occasion, in which we commemorate William Wilberforce MP, the former slave Equiano and the thousands of other people who campaigned for an end to the evil slave trade.

"We express our appreciation for your efforts to secure a safer and more sustainable world, in which the inhumanity of modern day slavery can finally be purged from the world."

Proposed Slavery Apology and Reparations Legislation

2007-05-07T09:56:00.000-04:00

NY City Council debate 2 proposed bill related to NYC history in American slavery. Excerpt from Gotham Gazette article.

Apologizing for Slavery

Councilmembers John Liu, Larry Seabrook and Robert Jackson introduced Resolution 824 that expresses “profound regret for slavery and historic wrongs rooted in racial and cultural bias.”

Though in the North, New York City had a long history of not only participating in the slave trade and profiting from slave labor, but also of having been reluctant to emancipate slaves.

An inclusive declaration, the resolution states, “African American, Hispanic-American, Asian American and Native American communities continue to suffer from financial and social inequities, patterns of housing segregation, deficiencies in educational resources, and de facto remnants of formerly codified racism.”

In discussing the resolution, Jackson emphasized the lingering impacts of slavery on African American New Yorkers, such as high incarceration rates and a lack of access to quality healthcare and education.

Councilmember Albert Vann cited the fact that freed slaves, “never received the 40 acres and a mule that was planned,” and added, “I think the least of what we can do is to apologize.”

The New York State Legislature also is considering a bill apologizing for slavery. These city and state apologies are relatively uncontroversial, but Assemblymember Hakeem Jeffries admits that winning passage of his bill to create a reparations commission would be “tough.”

In April, the University of Virginia board passed a resolution apologizing for its use of slave labor. The states of Virginia, North Carolina and Maryland have made similar apologies, and Alabama and Florida are considering such resolutions.

News-Ledger: Time to pay reparation

2007-05-07T07:35:00.000-04:00

Editorial by a white American conservative for reparations.

Time to pay reparation

By David Shipp

Many states are considering granting an apology to African-Americans for the role the slave states played in having their ancestors brought to America and used as slaves. It is time to go beyond an apology, and make reparations to all Americans whose ancestors came here as part of the slave trade, a very dark mark on our history.

If each African-American family were given $20,000 to make up for the bondage their relatives endured, this would just be a drop in the bucket when you are talking about human life and suffering. However, it would be a nice gesture, and that money could be used to stimulate the economy for all Americans — to start a college fund, to open a business, or to put the down payment on a house or car ($20,000 is what was paid to the families those interned in Japanese concentration camps on the West Coast during the Second World War; Congress and President Reagan both agreed to this in 1988).

This would be money well spent, and might ease our collective conscience. The average American still lives with slavery in their psyche just like the average German still lives with the Holocaust in their psyche. African-Americans spent more than two centuries in slavery in the U.S., not to mention another 100 years fighting segregation.

If we can waste money fighting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, then we can find the money to pay these reparations. America, as a whole, would feel so much better if this were done. An apology is a nice gesture, but without the money it is sort of an empty apology.

Incidentally, I am a white American and an independent minded conservative, not some flaming liberal socialist. I believe in what's right, and I believe there is just one race — the human race. God created us all equally and loves us all equally and we should all love one another. And we should never be afraid to admit when we are wrong, as with the slavery issue.

UVA Apologizes for Using Enslaved African Americans

2007-04-30T22:44:00.000-04:00

I got into UVA when I was applying for Ungrad and received a full scholarship. I, ironically, decided to go to Rutgers instead. So I could have benefited directly from the free labor of my ancestors. Had I known that UVA was built on their backs I might have chosen a different school. And yet being a Rutgers Alum has recently and regrettably given me the opportunity to speak out against racism in a real, personal way.

U.Va. Board Apologizes for 1800s Slavery

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: April 25, 2007

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (AP) -- The University of Virginia's board marked founder Thomas Jefferson's birthday with an apology for the school's use of slave labor between 1819 and 1865.

The board of visitors unanimously passed an apology resolution on April 13, the 264th anniversary of Jefferson's birth, but did not announce the action until Tuesday.

The measure was inspired by the Virginia Legislature, which passed a resolution in February expressing its ''profound regret'' for the state's role in slavery. Legislatures in Maryland and North Carolina approved similar slavery apologies this year, and another measure is under consideration in Alabama.

Slaves in Virginia helped build some of the first buildings at U.Va., which opened in 1825, and the university continued to use slave labor for four decades after that.

''The board expresses its particular regret for the employment of enslaved persons in these years,'' the resolution reads. It says ''the notion of involuntary servitude is repugnant and incompatible with the ideals upon which this university was founded.''

The resolution declares that the board is recommitting itself to the principle of equality.

''It is very important to us ... not just to look back but recognize the commitment of the administration that all types of people are treated fairly for now and in the future,'' said university Rector Thomas F. Farrell II.

Nine percent of the university's undergraduate students are black, according to university spokeswoman Carol Wood.

"African American Lives" Wants You!

2007-04-29T22:29:00.000-04:00

"African American Lives" show producers want you to apply for the chance to have your family roots explored. Hosted by Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., this critically acclaimed PBS series uncovered the family histories of famous African Americans including Oprah Winfrey, Whoopi Goldberg and Chris Tucker. Now PBS wants to give regular folks the chance to explore their roots. So apply but don't wait long! The deadline is May 4th.

New York Considering an Apology

2007-04-27T08:24:00.000-04:00

Both the New York City Council and the New York State Legislature are considering their own apologies for their role in slavery. New York City's relationship is as deep as some of the deeper parts of the south. If you are visiting New York City visit the African Burial Ground in lower Manhattan, one of the largest burial grounds in the country of people of African descent. Also visit the the slavery exhibit at the New York Historical Society.

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Council Weighing slavery apology

Daily News

Tuesday, April 24th 2007,

A resolution calling on the City Council to "express profound regret for slavery" was introduced yesterday by a group of Council members.

The group of largely African-American Council members said an apology is long overdue for "the very key role" the city played in the slave trade.

"[We] never received the 40 acres and a mule that was planned," noted Councilman Albert Vann (D-Brooklyn), who said no reparations or other remedies were ever enacted in America.

"And so, I think the least of what we can do is to apologize," he added.

A more controversial measure calling for money reparations to relatives of former slaves has long been pending in the Council, where it had one hearing and no other action.

Several states, such as Virginia, North Carolina and Maryland, have already approved similar apologies, and others, like Alabama and Florida, are considering it.

A similar measure has been introduced in New York's Legislature.

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Albany Mulls an Apology for Slavery
Reparations Study Is Being Sought

The New York Sun
BY GARY SHAPIRO - Staff Reporter of the Sun
April 12, 2007

The New York State Legislature is considering one bill that would have the state formally apologize for its role in slavery and another that would study and recommend remedies for the descendants of slaves.

An Assembly member who represents a district in Harlem, Keith Wright, has introduced the bill in which New York would apologize for slavery. State Senator Dale Volker, a Republican who represents a district in western New York, sponsored a companion apology bill in the Senate on March 5. Mr. Volker told The New York Sun that he expected the bill would get strong bipartisan support.

Both apology bills are technically amendments to Chapter 137 of the laws of 1817 relating to slaves and servants â€” laws that imposed penalties on those who harbored runaway slaves.

Mr. Wright said slavery was the "bedrock" and "foundation" of why New York is a financial capital. "It's New York's dirty little secret," he said. The bill would also establish June 19 as a day commemorating those who were enslaved.

"If Don Imus can apologize, I think New York State could apologize," Mr. Wright said, referring to the radio talk show host who has apologized for demeaning remarks about the Rutgers women's basketball team.

An assemblyman whose district includes Clinton Hill, Fort Greene, and Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn, Hakeem Jeffries, likewise sponsored a bill in February to establish a commission to study reparations for slavery.

Both bills are currently under consideration by the governmental operations committee in the Assembly. A spokeswoman for the governor's office said that once either bill passes both houses, the governor would review the legislation and act accordingly. The office of the speaker of the Assembly, Sheldon Silver, told The New York Sun it was their policy to wait until bills have gone through the committee process before commenting.

Maryland and Virginia have expressed "profound regret" about their roles in slavery. Mr. Jeffries said he found those examples encouraging. He also said it would be "tough" to get a bill for a reparations commission passed this year, but hopes its introduction in this state with "a great progressive tradition" will generate discussion and debate to gain support for passage in the near future. (Mr. Jeffries' predecessor, Roger Green, had introduced a previous bill.)

The Jeffries bill would also revise the state's civil laws to make it possible for the heir of a person enslaved in New York before December 31, 1827, to sue to recover damages for unpaid labor.

Regarding a state apology for slavery, Guillermo Martinez, who is the legislative director for Assemblyman Peter Rivera, one of the sponsors of Mr. Wright's bill, said there were a lot of receptive ears in the Assembly.

If the subject of apologies or reparations has renewed interest, why now? A professor of sociology at the CUNY Graduate Center, John Torpey, said the issue of reparations "fell off the map" after the attacks of September 11, 2001. Reparations has a long history, though, he said, going back to "40 acres and a mule," a phrase associated with payment that was to be awarded to former slaves after the Civil War.
Slavery existed in New York until 1827. The subject of New York's role in slavery was given enhanced visibility by a recent two-part exhibition at the New-York Historical Society.

The author of "Making Whole What Has Been Smashed: On Reparations Politics" (Harvard), Mr. Torpey said reparations were not particularly likely to pass, but said they are one way of thinking about the "ongoing issue of racial inequality" in America.

A former mayor, Edward Koch, told the Sun he had no objection to a state or federal apology for historical tragedies such as slavery but said reparations for slavery were not feasible.

An assemblyman who represents a district in the Bronx, JosÃ© Rivera, one of the sponsors for the bill for an apology, said today America is a great nation but should not shy away from acknowledging mistakes made in the past. He said the bill was movement in the right direction and hoped it will spur dialogue.

A fellow at the Manhattan Institute, Heather Mac Donald, said slavery was truly an awful crime but that the people doing the apologizing were not the ones responsible for it. An apology for actions that no one alive today either perpetrated or suffered, she said, was at best a useless diversion from the problems of black America and at worst a contributor to those problems.

Ms. Mac Donald said the reparations bill is a foolish enterprise and a "clear shakedown of businesses." She said that given the already hostile tax and regulatory environment in New York State for businesses, a law starting a commission to investigate reparations would be sending a further bad signal that New York is a business-hostile environment.

She said it was also unclear who should be the beneficiaries of reparations.

The Jeffries bill charges the commission with recommending "genealogical and historical methodologies to confirm that a claimant is an heir of an enslaved person," but also says, "in recommending methodologies the commission shall acknowledge and factor in the historical experiences which prevent the overwhelming majority of people of African descent from knowing, learning, or tracing their lineage to enslaved ancestors."

Not just states have been examining their past connection to slavery. A committee at Brown University last year recommended that the university start a study center of slavery, erect a memorial, and step up minority recruitment in response to the wrong of slavery in its history. In 2005, the U.S. Senate apologized for not passing anti-lynching legislation.

Regarding New York acknowledging its role in slavery, Mr. Wright, a graduate of Rutgers Law School, said it was an adage that "in order to cure cancer, you must expose cancer."

Both bills cite as part of their justifications findings of the U.N.-sponsored "World Conference Against Racism" held at Durban, South Africa, a conference that the Secretary of State Powell pulled out of when it became clear the event was designed as a forum for Israel-bashing.

Call to Action! Legislative Hearing for Survivors of 1921 Tulsa Massacre

2007-04-23T10:09:00.000-04:00

As posted on the N'COBRA listserv. If you can go to Washington to support this effort please do. If you can't please write your congressman to consider this legislation.

Legislative Hearing for Survivors of 1921 Tulsa Massacre
On Tuesday, April 24, at 9:00 AM EST, at the Capitol Hill Rayburn Bldg, Room 2141, at 1st and Independence Streets SE, in Washington, DC, survivors of the 1921 Oklahoma State sponsored massacre of "Black Wall Street,", including survivor and renowned historian, Dr. John Hope Franklin, will testify before members of Congress for the passage of legislation to extend the statute of limitations in order to allow the filing of lawsuits on behalf of the survivors or descendants. The National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (NCOBRA) and the Reparations Coordinating Council (RCC) urge you to come out en
masse to demand that justice be done.

Kirk Douglass calls for a National Apology for Slavery

2007-04-18T08:21:00.000-04:00

KIRK DOUGLAS WANTS NATIONAL APOLOGY FOR SLAVERY: Actor believes recent apologists North Carolina should lead the effort.
(April 17, 2007)

Perhaps best known for slaying Roman oppressors as the rebellious slave Spartacus in the legendary 1960 Stanley Kubrick film of the same name, Kirk Douglas has recently turned attention toward the history of enslaved Africans in America.

The 90-year-old actor and stroke survivor is among the contingent of American citizens who believe the nation owes African Americans an apology for the practice of slavery. On Friday, he posted a statement on the MySpace page for his book “Let’s Face It” to explain his position:

He writes: “Let's face it -- the world is in a mess! The younger generation will inherit that mess, what can we do to help them? At 90 years of age, I'm living on "the house's money" and I don't intend to buy "green bananas." But what about the kids who will replace us? What can we do to help them?

“I wrote a book that I dedicated to my grandchildren and the younger generation. They must know now that our country needs to take inventory. What causes suicide bombers, corruption in our top business officials, inefficient bureaucrats that can't deal with Katrina, deficits, schools, border patrols? Lots of problems.

“I don't have any easy solutions to offer but I can suggest the goal that we must strive to reach -- a strong nation filled with caring citizens. Let's not try to spread democracy by military might, but by a good example.

“Let's start by apologizing for our mistakes. First, we need an apology for slavery. Recently, the Jews celebrated the holiday, Passover. That commemorates the time when we were slaves in Egypt -- over 3,000 years ago.

“It was a much shorter time ago that human beings were wrenched from their families and their lands, put into the hold of a ship and carried to a far off country to become slaves. Thousands of young Americans were killed in a war to end slavery, but did the Civil War end it? Cruelty and discrimination existed long after the war. The examples are too numerous to mention. It is less now, but it still exists.

“I suggest that our offspring work to reach a national apology with that heinous error. The apology should be accompanied by a "Marshall Plan" in Africa. Let's try to help eliminate the poverty, starvation, genocide, AIDS that plagues the country where we captured our slaves. Let the world see that we really care about others and have the courage to admit our mistakes.

“I am encouraged to see that North Carolina is leading this apology. The State Senate expressed ‘regret for the practice of slavery and apologized for promoting legalized discrimination.’ Larry Shaw told his fellow senators, ‘When you dehumanize a human being it's one of the worst things you can do.’

“I hope our future citizens will follow up and lead to a national apology for all African-Americans. There must be a national museum of that period to remind the world of man's inhumanity to man. Maybe 3,000 years from now, the African-Americans will celebrate a holiday, like Passover, to remind them that they were once slaves and their Moses, Martin Luther King Jr. helped to free them.”

Don Imus

2007-04-16T10:30:00.000-04:00

I don't normally write about current events unless they are directly or indirectly related to reparations. However, I must comment on the Don Imus debacle. I am truly impressed with my Alma Mater's women's basketball team for standing strong against the hateful and hurtful words Mr. Imus said and the media frenzied aftermath. As an African American woman, I understand what it's like to work hard to achieve academically. Yet, I didn't have the added pressure of achieving athletically. And after achieving so much, for the Rutgers women to be nationally embarrassed by this man is heartbreaking.

I like to note that there were many in the African American community who were not afraid to speak out. Whoopi Goldberg was certainly one. I was very impressed with her interview with CNN's Anderson Cooper. She was calm, composed, funny and yet very serious. And persuasive. There's really no excuse for what Mr. Imus did and those that try by equating it to hip hop musicians are trying to defuse the gravity of what he did. Gwen Ifill, who was called a "cleaning lady for the Washington Post" by Imus 10 years ago while she was covering the White House, stood up for the Rutgers woman and wrote a very direct op-ed piece condemning Mr. Imus and the media community for supporting him for so long. There were also African Americans like Larry Elders who believed that Imus should not have been terminated.

I also applaud Imus's wife, Deirdre, who set the record straight with Imus's radio listeners Friday. She called for the stop of the hate mail to the Rutgers women she found out they were receiving. She said on WFAN "if you want to send hate mail, send it to my husband."

I feel that in this tragedy there is an opportunity to open the channels of communication across communities in order to continue the work of bridging the racial divide.

AP: "Official Criticized for Slavery Remark"

2007-04-12T11:18:00.000-04:00

AP story posted on Salon.com. It's amazing that this city commissioner would support something that is recognized by the United Nations as a crime against humanity. Makes me question if he's fit to properly represent his constituency, obey laws and respect human rights. I think this is one of the main problems for the reparations movement is that some Americans do not see slavery as serious crime, that it is accepted under certain conditions.

Official Criticized for Slavery Remark

- - - - - - - - - - - -

By PATRICK CONDON Associated Press Writer

April 12,2007 | MINNEAPOLIS -- A county commissioner from northern Minnesota has been criticized by community members for saying he would go as far as to support slavery if his constituents wanted him to.

Commissioner Keith Nelson's comment came during a St. Louis County Board debate in February over a proposed county smoking ban, but didn't gain widespread attention until local media reported it could be viewed on the online video site YouTube.

If "the people in my district had voted for slavery, and if the vast majority had, and I was representing them, the answer is yes, I would have voted for it," Nelson said at the meeting.

That prompted a question from fellow commissioner Bill Kron.

"I said, `There are some issues of conscience where the majority may not be right. For example, would you have voted for slavery if the majority of your constituents would have?'" Kron recalled Wednesday.

When Nelson said yes, "everyone's jaws sort of dropped," Kron said.

Nelson, who has apologized for the comment, said he opposed the smoking ban because most of his constituents wanted him to and he always followed the will of his constituents. He said in retrospect that he would resign his post rather than support slavery.

The Rev. Denita Williams, pastor of St. Mark African Methodist Episcopal Church, said Nelson's remark was insensitive.

"He doesn't seem to understand, and for him to hold a public office and not understand that is offensive," Williams said. She said Nelson must offer a public, unqualified apology, "and he also needs to take a diversity class."

--__

On the Net:

Nelson's comments: http://www.youtube.com/watch?vVHDUaYGOFso
(Video is no longer available)
St. Louis County: http://www.stlouiscounty.org/slcportal/

Another N'COBRA Event: 2007 Conference

2007-04-10T23:47:00.000-04:00

News Flash! N'COBRA 2007 Conference: Philadelphia is hitting a home run!:

Reverand Jeremiah Wright will be the keynote speaker for our Gala Celebration on Thursday, June 21, 2007!

Kenny Gamble, Philadelphia International Records will be our Musical Host for the Gala Celebration, We will have TSOP/MFSB (The Sound Of Philadelphia/Mother Father Sister Brother) message music playing all during the Gala. So bring your Bopping Shoes!

Philadelphia Millions More Movement in the spirit of operational unity, has purchased the back page of the Conference Program Book!

Send In Your Early Registration, Now! Go to www.ncobraphiladelphia.org and click on N'COBRA 2007 Conference!
--
Ari S. Merretazon, M.S.CED
267-307-0001
Fax 215-885-3759

Event: N'COBRA Southwestern Regional Conference

2007-04-09T11:50:00.000-04:00

April 14, 2007

NATIONAL COALITION OF BLACKS FOR REPARATIONS IN AMERICA
SOUTHWESTERN REGIONAL CONFERENCE

Education: To Win Reparations and Create a New African Reality

Guest Speakers
Dr. Imari Obadele
Baba Hannibal Afrik
Ezrah Aharone

10:00 am - 5:00 pm

The Claude W. Black Center
2803 East Commerce @ Rio Grande
San Antonio, Texas

REGISTER NOW!

N‚COBRA - San Antonio Chapter
P.O. Box 2355
San Antonio, TX 78148
www.webspawner.com/users/sareparations/index.html
(210) 391-6308____(210) 363-3977!

The Hill: "Patient Conyers hopes to move slavery bill during an Obama administration"

2007-04-08T09:31:00.000-04:00

Not a recent article but an important one. I don't know how much faith Conyers should put in Obama or Clinton, for that matter. But I guess better them than W.

Patient Conyers hopes to move slavery bill during an Obama administration
By Bob Cusack
March 13, 2007

After waiting nearly two decades, Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) is well positioned to move legislation that could lead the federal government to apologize for slavery and pay reparations.

But the Judiciary Committee chairman is willing to wait two more years, when he hopes Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) will be in the White House.

In every Congress since 1989, Conyers has introduced the controversial measure that falls under the sole jurisdiction of the Judiciary panel. But the legislation was dormant in the Republican-led House and failed to move through committee when then-Rep. Jack Brooks (D-Texas) headed the Judiciary Committee before the GOP revolution of 1994.
Despite having finally arrived at the head of the powerful committee, the 77-year-old Conyers is prepared to wait yet longer and is biding his time.

Conyers noted that his bill calls for the president to appoint three members to a seven-member commission to analyze the effects of slavery. The House Speaker would make three appointments, while the president pro tempore of the Senate would tap one member.

Even if he had the votes to make his bill law — a big if — Conyers does not want President Bush’s appointees to have a role on such a panel.

The Michigan lawmaker, who has strongly backed Obama for president, said he has not called on the senator to endorse his measure. “I don’t want to put him on the spot,” Conyers told The Hill.

Obama’s campaign did not respond to requests for information about the senator’s position on the bill, H.R. 40. Yet Obama’s stance could be extremely important as he and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) vigorously court the black vote and wrap themselves in the mantle of the civil rights movement.

Both front-runners visited Selma, Ala., this month to commemorate the sacrifices of black demonstrators who were assaulted crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1965.

The Clinton campaign also did not comment on the Conyers bill.

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson (D), another 2008 White House hopeful, supports the Conyers measure and a formal apology for slavery. In a statement, Richardson said, “Slavery is one of the most tragic periods of our great nation, and we continue to struggle with the legacy of slavery.”

Conyers’s measure recently attracted the cosponsorship of civil rights leader Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.).

Lewis said he believes the federal government should follow Virginia’s recent lead and apologize for slavery, though he opposes reparations.

The Bush administration indicated opposition to Conyers’s bill in 2001, when then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said living African-Americans should not be paid for the wrongs of slavery.

Conyers countered that reparations should not be dismissed prematurely, pointing out that trust funds have been established for Holocaust survivors, World War II-era internment victims and Native Americans.

The bill instructs the commission to review whether “any form of compensation to the descendants of African slaves is warranted.” The legislation adds that if the commission approves such compensation, it should determine who should be eligible for the reparations. The commission would be appropriated $8 million.

Most of the cosponsors of the measure are black, including Reps. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.), Bobby Rush (D-Ill.), Carolyn Kilpatrick (D-Mich.), and Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.). White members who back it include Reps. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) and John Olver (D-Mass.).

Senior leadership lawmakers, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), and Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.), have never cosponsored H.R. 40.

Freshman Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.), a white member who replaced Rep. Harold Ford (D), recently introduced a bill that calls on the U.S. to apologize for slavery. The measure has 36 cosponsors, including Conyers.

Cohen said he was aware that Conyers wants to wait on H.R. 40, but expressed optimism that the 110th Congress would move forward on his measure.

The number of the Conyers bill, H.R. 40, was chosen by Conyers as a symbol of the 40 acres and a mule that the U.S. initially promised freed slaves. Conyers said the Judiciary Committee will likely hold a hearing on H.R. 40 this fall.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) formally backs the Cohen bill, but is not a cosponsor of the Conyers measure. The presidential campaigns of Sens. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) and Joseph Biden (D-Del.) and former Sens. John Edwards (D-N.C.) and Mike Gravel (D-Alaska) did not comment for this article.

Stacey Pistritto contributed to this report.

UK Guardian: The truth in Chains

2007-04-05T19:27:00.000-04:00

The Truth in Chains
Guardian Unlimited
By Lola Young

"Two centuries after Britain began to dismantle the slave trade, the whole issue is still beset by myths, half-truths and ignorance, says Lola Young."

This is a great, reasoned opinion piece about Britain's celebration of the end of slavery. Lola Young makes one interesting reparations related point that the British government made reparations to slave owners in the 1830s. So one would think that they should not be squeamish about considering reparations for current African descendants.

Thursday March 15, 2007
The Guardian

An African-Caribbean family walks into an English country house that is open to the public. As they pass the ticket desk, a member of staff calls after them, "There is an entry fee, you know." Without breaking stride, one of the adults says, "We've already paid." And they carry on with their tour. This story may be apocryphal, but the point is clear: the great house was built with the profits made from the blood, sweat and tears of that family's African forebears, and it is time for some reckoning.

It is a busy year for anniversaries connected to national identity and liberation. Three hundred years ago, the Act of Union that brought together the kingdoms of Scotland and England was passed; 50 years ago, Ghana won independence from British colonial rule; and, of course, 2007 is the 200th anniversary of . . . well, something to do with slavery, judging by all the activity. The Royal Mail is issuing a set of postage stamps featuring abolitionists such as Olaudah Equiano, Hannah Moore and William Wilberforce. There will be a commemorative £2 coin, exhibitions in the National Portrait Gallery, the Victoria and Albert Museum and the National Gallery, and a number of memorial services. The Mayor of London is proposing an Africa Day in Trafalgar Square in May. Along with Dr Nima Poovaya Smith (director of the Leeds-based arts organisation Alchemy), I have developed a project to commemorate the bicentenary, Freedom and Culture. This is a year-long programme of performing, literary and visual arts commissions and related educational materials, with national reach.

But what, precisely, is it that we are all marking? Ministers and other public figures, along with newspapers (including the Guardian, sadly), have referred to 2007 as the bicentenary of the abolition of slavery. That is not so. Even to say that the slave trade (that is the trafficking in human beings as distinct from "slavery", which is the condition of being enslaved) was ended in 1807 is not strictly true: the act did not come into effect until 1808 and "the abominable traffick" was continued by Europeans and North Americans for decades afterwards. So, to be precise: 200 years ago the British parliament passed a bill to end trading in enslaved Africans using British ships. Before slavery was finally stamped out, somewhere between 10 million and 30 million Africans had been traded, transported or killed by Europeans in the Caribbean and the Americas.

Racist theories that "explained" Africans' supposed inferiority were used as a justification for enslavement. The chilling logic of this attitude is demonstrated by what happened on the slave ship Zong in 1781. Many of the malnourished occupants were thrown overboard by order of the captain; the ship's owners subsequently claimed compensation for the loss of "their" slaves. Sending kidnapped African people to certain death was not considered a crime because they were "goods", to do with as the owner saw fit. The most direct comparison with the systematic dehumanisation of Africans is that of the murder of millions of Jewish people under the rule of Nazi Germany.

What is the point of this year's commemorations? "I hope it will help British people of all kinds to be able to look each other in the eye and talk without hostility or embarrassment about the events of the past," says the writer, curator and academic Mike Phillips, who is involved in several of this year's events. But that is a lot to ask of a series of uncoordinated events and activities - and the signs are that there is entrenched hostility, as well as significant pockets of guilt. It is hardly surprising that such sentiments exist, given the way in which debate about the subject has been stifled over the years: the story of Britain's role in transatlantic slavery is, to use Professor Stuart Hall's term, a case of "historical amnesia".

Some white people are hooked on guilt, and others are seeking to appropriate the bicentenary to promote the image of a benevolent Britain ridding the world of slavery. Some black people, meanwhile, are locked into seeing themselves in a state of victimhood. I am sure few people really enjoy these feelings, although they can masquerade as a source of comfort. For me, as a black Briton of Nigerian descent, it is essential to recognise that millions of our predecessors were victimised. However, we can achieve this recognition without seeing ourselves as wholly determined by a history of enslavement. As the author Andrea Levy put it, "I'm not a victim of the slave trade - I just live with its legacy."

And although our ancestors can be correctly identified as victims of the slave trade, we should not infer meekness on their part. A damaging side effect of the focus on white people's role in abolition is that Africans are represented as being passive in the face of oppression. In popular public consciousness, Wilberforce ended slavery. This perception makes projects such as Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery's exhibition about Equiano so important: how many Britons, black or white, have even heard of this prominent African abolitionist? The British Museum's Day of Resistance and Remembrance will also help to set the record straight: trustee Bonnie Greer describes it as a time to honour the forms of resistance deployed by Africans - through armed struggle, culture and spirituality - under enslavement. So while it is right that Wilberforce is recognised for taking up the abolitionist cause as an MP, 2007 gives us the opportunity to highlight other personalities and factors that led eventually to the end of the slave trade.

One downside of the commemorations is that the emphasis on enslavement reinforces the belief that there was no African history before European domination. In many ways Africa is still a "blank space" in most European peoples' consciousness. The media carry images of conflict and famine, but there is very little coverage of the continent's history. Before slavery devastated vast areas of the continent, however, several European travellers recognised that, in terms of architecture, trading and systems of government, African societies were as advanced as their own. The west African empire of Mali, for example, was reputed to be one of the largest, richest and most powerful states in the world during the 14th century.

A consequence of the ignorance about pre-slavery Africa is that it is hard for Africans and African-Caribbeans to have an open, honest debate about the role of African traders in enslavement. Some questions are rarely discussed publicly, partly for fear of the use to which such debates may be put by those anxious to direct attention away from the brutality of Britain's slave-trading history.

That last point is not unconnected with the complex issue of reparations. Governments exhibit squeamishness whenever the linked questions of apologies and compensation are raised, but as Arthur Torrington, the secretary of the Equiano Society, points out: "The British government apologised to the slave owners in the 1830s, giving them £20m in reparations." Paid after slavery in the British Empire was finally outlawed in 1833, this amount is equivalent to around £1.5bn today.

Of course, no one alive today is personally responsible for Africa's loss, but those in positions of power do have a responsibility to deal properly with the legacy of that history. Expressions of sorrow or regret should only be viewed as a precursor to concerted action that will address the problems that are preventing us from achieving equality of opportunity. None the less, for some even an expression of regret represents progress.

I have heard several people argue that this year's commemorations should focus exclusively on transatlantic enslavement, but others see the need to link past histories of brutal exploitation to those that surround us today. Lord Herman Ouseley, former head of the Commission for Racial Equality, sees a link to the "modern slave trade in the form of human cargo trading, domestic servants from abroad enslaved by the rich in their affluent homes, and the victims of economic migration".

Making such connections may well allow those in denial of the realities of the slave trade to switch their attention to deeds in which they do not feel implicated. This effect is regrettable, but I don't see it as a reason not to make the links to modern forms of slavery and trafficking. It is important for us all to recognise how easy it is to come to the view that some lives are more important than others and for us to be complicit in perpetuating new varieties of discrimination.

Making connections across time and place also enables us to understand better how people from a wide range of backgrounds can come together to articulate opposition to the status quo. This year presents an opportunity to, as Phillips puts it, "reanimate the historical context". Giving more prominence to the history of slavery and the slave trade is a case of locating transatlantic slavery, Phillips argues, in the context of the French revolution, the American War of Independence, the Haitian revolution, Tom Paine's Rights of Man, Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Woman and so on. Questions regarding the nature of humanity, who was really entitled to liberty, fraternity and equality - the political, legal and constitutional issues raised by slavery and abolition were a formative part of these debates.

What might white people gain from a more open and honest dialogue about these events? As a white child brought up in a predominantly white area not far from Liverpool, the writer and musician Ian Brownbill found that racist comments were both rife and routine. He has since developed an interest in black history, and says this learning process has been "liberating". He is now working with the television dramatist Jimmy McGovern and the black historian and activist Lawrence Westgaph to bring his research to life for a wider public.

If new aspects of our intertwined histories are revealed as a result of the commemorations, then the year may yet make a useful contribution to the development of shared understanding of overlapping histories. There are great tears in the fabric of history caused by the failure to treat all humans with respect and dignity. These can be repaired - but only through carefully negotiated, collective effort.

· The International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition is on August 23. The exhibition The British Slave Trade: Abolition, Parliament and People is at Westminster Hall, London SW1, from May 23 to September 23. Details: www.parliament.uk/slavetrade/. Breaking the Chains is at the British Empire & Commonwealth Museum, Bristol, from April 23 until 2009 (www.empiremuseum.co.uk) Freedom and Culture, a nationwide programme of events, starts on April 25 and culminates in a weekend event at the Southbank Centre, London SE1, November 9-11

NYT: Relatives of Interned Japanese-Americans Side With Muslims

2007-04-03T14:32:00.000-04:00

Reparations history.

The New York Times
April 3, 2007
Relatives of Interned Japanese-Americans Side With Muslims
By NINA BERNSTEIN

Holly Yasui was far away when a federal judge in Brooklyn ruled last June that the government had wide latitude to detain noncitizens indefinitely on the basis of race, religion or national origin. The ruling came in a class-action lawsuit by Muslim immigrants held after 9/11. But Ms. Yasui, an American citizen of Japanese ancestry, had reason to take it personally.

Her grandparents were among thousands of Japanese immigrants in the United States who were wrongfully detained as enemy aliens during World War II. And her father was one of three Japanese-Americans who challenged the government’s racial detention and curfew programs in litigation that reached the Supreme Court in the 1940s.

Now, Ms. Yasui, along with Jay Hirabayashi and Karen Korematsu-Haigh, a son and a daughter of the two other Japanese-American litigants, is urging an appeals court in Manhattan to overturn the sweeping language of the judge’s ruling last year.

The ruling “painfully resurrects the long-discredited legal theory” that was used to put their grandparents behind barbed wire, along with the rest of the West Coast’s Japanese alien population, the three contend in an unusual friends-of-the-court brief filed today in the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

“Their interest is in avoiding the repetition of a tragic episode in American history that is also, for them, painful family history,” the brief states.

In recent years, many scholars have drawn parallels and contrasts between the internment of Japanese-Americans after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and the treatment of hundreds of Muslim noncitizens who were swept up in the weeks after the 2001 terror attacks, then held for months before they were cleared of links to terrorism and deported.

But the brief filed today is a rare case of members of a third generation stepping up to defend legal protections that were lost to their grandparents, and that their parents devoted their lives to reclaiming.

“I feel that racial profiling is absolutely wrong and unjustifiable,” Ms. Yasui, 53, wrote in an e-mail message from San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, where she works as a writer and graphic designer. “That my grandmother was treated by the U.S. government as a ‘dangerous enemy alien’ was a travesty. And it killed my grandfather.”

Prof. Eric L. Muller, a legal historian at the University of North Carolina School of Law, said he contacted Ms. Yasui and the others after reading about the decision by the federal judge, John Gleeson. Both sides in the case, known as Turkmen v. Ashcroft— a lead plaintiff is Ibrahim Turkmen — appealed parts of the decision by Judge Gleeson. He let the Muslims’ lawsuit continue, mainly on their claims of unlawful detention conditions, but dismissed key elements of their discrimination claims.

Asked to comment, the Justice Department would not discuss the Turkmen case, but its appeal argues in part that government officials “were confronted with unprecedented law enforcement and security challenges in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks,” and that “there were no clear judicial precedents in this extraordinary context.”

Professor Muller said he drafted the brief on behalf of the three grandchildren to try to persuade the Second Circuit to reject what he considers the needless breadth of Judge Gleeson’s opinion. “Judge Gleeson’s decision paints with such a broad brush, there isn’t really any stopping point,” he said.

The judge held that under immigration law, “the executive is free to single out ‘nationals of a particular country.’ ” And because so little was known about the 9/11 hijackers, he ruled, singling out Arab Muslims for detention to investigate possible ties to terrorism, though “crude,” was not “so irrational or outrageous as to warrant judicial intrusion into an area in which courts have little experience and less expertise.”

The brief counters that the ruling “overlooks the nearly 20-year-old declaration by the United States Congress and the president of the United States that the racially selective detention of Japanese aliens during World War II was a ‘fundamental injustice’ warranting an apology and the payment of reparations.”

And, it adds, the district court’s deference to the government “ignores the tragic consequences of such deference” for 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry during World War II.

Among those people was Ms. Yasui’s grandfather Masuo Yasui, who immigrated to the United States in 1903 and became a successful businessman and apple grower in Hood River, Ore., where his nine children were born and raised.

By 1940, he was one of 47,000 Japanese immigrants who lived in the 48 states, nearly 90 percent on the West Coast. They had remained aliens because federal law forbade naturalization of any person of Asian ancestry. Since the law also forbade Japanese immigration after 1924, the United States had been home to all of them for at least 17 years on Dec. 7, 1941, when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.

Two months later, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, decreeing that West Coast residents of Japanese ancestry — whether American citizens or not — were “enemy aliens.” An 8 p.m. curfew was imposed on them; roundups sent them to desolate internment camps.

Challenged by Fred Korematsu, Gordon Hirabayashi and Ms. Yasui’s father, Minoru — all of them American citizens, like most of those interned — the measures were upheld, on a 6-to-3 decision, by the Supreme Court in 1944. The decision was not repudiated by the courts until 1983.

“In the case of my grandfather, the tragedy was multiplied by the fact that he was a hero in the eyes of his children, a leader in the Japanese-American community of Hood River, and had always counseled his compatriots to be ‘200 percent American,’ ” Ms. Yasui said. “And look what it got him: arrested and dragged out of his house a few days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, transferred from one military prison to another for years, and not released until several months after the war was over.”

She was only 5 when he died in the 1950s, she said, but she later learned that he committed suicide, after days of hallucinations in which he imagined that the F.B.I. was after him again.

The Hirabayashi and Korematsu grandparents, too, died before Congress enacted a law apologizing for the internment and offering compensation of $20,000 each for the survivors. Signed into law in 1988, the law was intended partly “to discourage the occurrence of similar injustice and violations of civil liberties in the future.”

By then, courts re-examining the cases of the three Japanese-American litigants found that the government had suppressed evidence that security fears were overblown. For example, what the Army had suspected were signals sent to Japanese submarines from California hillsides had actually come from “farms where people used flashlights to go to outside toilets,” a former Justice Department lawyer testified.

Since 9/11, Professor Muller said, “post-Pearl Harbor fear is no longer a historical fossil,” making the new brief all the more significant.

If it was a grave injustice to subject “enemy aliens” to prolonged detention on account of race and national origin in World War II, the brief says, it was at least as unjust to single out the Turkmen plaintiffs, who were accused only of overstaying their visas.

Time Editorial: "Should States Apologize for Slavery?"

2007-03-28T12:11:00.000-04:00

Should States Apologize for Slavery?
Tuesday, Mar. 27, 2007 By JENINNE LEE-ST. JOHN

On Monday Maryland became only the second state after Virginia to officially seek atonement for slavery. The state's House of Delegates approved a measure, already passed by the senate and not requiring the governor's signature, expressing "profound regret for the role that Maryland played in instituting and maintaining slavery and for the discrimination that was slavery's legacy."

While the apology for slavery has been grabbing all the headlines, it's the regret for the legacy of slavery that really matters.

Many non-blacks assert that they shouldn't apologize for something they didn't do. There is logic to that thinking: if you didn't own slaves or enable others to own slaves, you aren't culpable. But the U.S. didn't do a very good job of converting its former slaves to full-fledged citizens. Slavery gave way to Jim Crow, lynchings, poll taxes, redlining and educational and job discrimination. Although illegal now, these tools perpetuated a racial hierarchy that affects every American today, no matter how subtly. Just compare any rates of achievement, poverty, imprisonment by race; blacks are nowhere closing to catching up.

No wonder black people were so appalled when Frank Hargrove, a Virginia legislator who is white, said last month "black citizens should get over" slavery. That notion invalidates the black reality. It essentially says: The discrimination you feel and I benefit from is an illusion — or at least has no historical context.

Ultimately, Hargrove voted for Virginia's apology measure, which was passed in February and acknowledges that abolition was followed by "insidious institutions and practices toward Americans of African descent that were rooted in racism, racial bias and racial misunderstanding." Put more simply, the Maryland resolution seems to imply that discrimination against blacks hurts everyone: "Slavery's legacy has afflicted the citizens of our state down to the present."

These aren't easy things to talk about. It's one thing to say that slavery, so long ago, was wrong; quite another to discuss our complicity in its lingering effects. That's why Delegate Michael L. Vaughn, who sponsored the Maryland House measure, says the apology isn't about reparations but opening a dialogue to bridge the racial divide. "Slavery has had a negative effect on relationships between people of color and non-color to this day," Vaughn, who is black, told me. "When we talk about matters of race, people are uncomfortable. I don't think this resolution is the be-all, end-all, but it gets people talking."

Legislators in a handful of states including Missouri and Georgia are considering their own expressions of regret for slavery, and Rep. Stephen I. Cohen, a white Tennessean, just introduced a resolution for a national apology in the U.S. House that reads, in part, "African-Americans continue to suffer from the consequences of slavery and Jim Crow — long after both systems were formally abolished — through enormous damage and loss, both tangible and intangible, including the loss of human dignity and liberty, the frustration of careers and professional lives, and the long-term loss of income and opportunity."

Obviously, not everyone is convinced that the apology is necessary. Maryland Delegate Patrick L. McDonough said he voted against the resolution not only because his ancestors were in Ireland during the time of U.S. slavery, but also because he feels such a stance amounts to meaningless symbolism. "I don't think apologies solve anything," the Baltimore Sun reported McDonough saying. "They're just feel-good superficial measures."

But sometimes feel-good does good. "The first step in healing is to apologize," Vaughn says. "For a young person who is knowledgeable of the effects slavery has had on him and his country — for any of us who have felt discriminated against because of this legacy — you do have a small sense of relief when you hear an apology."

CTV: Canada joins nations in marking slavery abolition

2007-03-25T18:57:00.000-04:00

What did the US government do to celebrate this anniversary? Nothing I've seen so far.

Canada joins nations in marking slavery abolition
CTV.ca News Staff

Updated: Sun. Mar. 25 2007 3:48 PM ET

Canada joined other nations today in marking the 200th anniversary of the start of the abolition of the slave trade in the British Empire, while Africans blamed modern-day problems that plague their continent on slavery's crippling legacy.

On March 25, 1807, Britain introduced the Act to Abolish the African slave trade. While the law forbade trading in slaves with Africa, Britain did not ban the practice across its empire until 1833.

Canada was not directly involved in the Transatlantic slave trade, but slavery was legal in this country prior to 1834.

The federal government today called the 1807 act a "milestone" that reflects two themes:

"First, it is an opportunity to reflect on the evil of slavery in all its forms, past and present," said Jason Kenney, the secretary of state (multiculturalism and Canadian identity) in a news release.

"Secondly, it highlights the tradition that we have inherited as legislators in Canada, a successor state of the British Commonwealth and its unique tradition of freedom, human rights, democracy, and the rule of law."

More than 10 million Africans -- although some estimates say up to 60 million -- were sent on slave ships across the Atlantic to the Americas. The journey itself killed many, while others perished on disease-infested plantations.

The effects of slavery

On Sunday, the west African nation of Ghana held a ceremony at a former slave fort in Elmina -- a port that sent hundreds of thousands of slaves to the Americas.

"We have seen the manipulation, the impoverishment of Africa," South African jazz legend Hugh Masekela told a news conference. "That is testament to the effects of slavery."

Elmina was where the Portuguese, in 1492, built sub-Saharan Africa's first permanent slave trading post. The English took over and by the 18th century, tens of thousands of Africans every year were sent on slave ships bound for the New World.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who expressed "deep sorrow" earlier this year for Britain's role in the trade, will send a recorded message of regret today to be played at the Ghana ceremony.

But a senior cleric in the Church of England is calling on the government to go further and issue a formal apology.

"A nation of this quality should have the sense of saying we are very sorry and we have to put the record straight," Archbishop of York John Sentamu told the BBC.

"This community was involved in a very terrible trade, Africans were involved in a very terrible trade, the Church was involved in a very terrible trade ... it's important that we all own up to what was collectively done."

Sentamu joined about 3,600 others in marches through central London yesterday as part of a series of events in Britain to mark the anniversary.

In Canada, Governor General Michaëlle Jean commemorated the anniversary on Sunday with a keynote speech at the inauguration of York University's new Harriet Tubman Institute in Toronto.

Harriet Tubman, known as the "Moses of Her People," was an African-American abolitionist. Having escaped slavery herself, Tubman made over a dozen trips to rescue about 70 enslaved friends and family to freedom in Canada.

The research centre will be devoted to the study of "global migrations of African peoples," a media release from Jean's office said.

The Liberal Party of Canada also marked the anniversary today.

"The Transatlantic Slave Trade was a barbaric and appalling chapter in the history of the world. Racism, forced detention and labour resulted in the dehumanization of millions of Africans," said Liberal Leader Stephane Dion in a news release.

"On behalf of the Liberal Party of Canada, our Parliamentary caucus, and all Canadians I wish to recognize and honour the millions of people of African descent who suffered under slavery and all subsequent generations who have born the brunt of its legacy."

Houston Chronicle: Texas pressed to apologize for slavery

2007-03-24T09:55:00.000-04:00

The Texas legislature is considering a resolution for a state apology for its participation in slavery. Texas has a unique place in the history of slavery in the United States. It took until June 1865 for news of the Emancipation Proclamation to reach Texas. The holiday, Juneteenth, which celebrates the end of slavery, originates from this event. So, it is significant that Texas will join the movement to recognize and apologize for this country's slave past. Texas Governor, Rick Perry, says he will let lawmakers figure it out but adds "you know I'm a big fan of the preparations for the future, not focusing on reparations for the past." Why when it comes to slavery conservatives do not want to consider the concept of some kind of material redress?

Here's an article from the Houston Chronicle.

March 24, 2007
Texas pressed to apologize for slavery

By KRISTEN MACK
Houston Chronicle

AUSTIN — Two Houston lawmakers are leading an effort to build consensus for a formal apology and acknowledgment of slavery in Texas history, as part of a movement among Southern states considering official expressions of regret.

Although state Sen. Rodney Ellis and Rep. Senfronia Thompson had been weighing the drive for some time, they redoubled their efforts after this week's bitter debate over Confederate statues on state property.

Both Democrats say they want to get bipartisan support for a resolution of formal apology and recognition of contributions made by black Americans in Texas.

Texas would join legislatures in seven other states that are considering similar measures. Last month lawmakers in Richmond, Va. — the capital of the Confederacy — unanimously passed a resolution expressing "profound regret" over that state's role in slavery and the segregation of black Americans after slavery. On the congressional level, a Tennessee Democrat has introduced a resolution for a national apology.

"It does seem to be a movement. It's interesting to see this spread," said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics in Charlottesville, Va., who likened it to the momentum in the late 1990s toward removing Confederate flags from state flags and other official symbols.

"If the apology for slavery could pass in Virginia, it could pass anywhere."

In Virginia, the resolution's sponsor worked behind the scenes for four years to gain support from the majority Republican Legislature. Texas legislators, however, are seeking more than a symbolic gesture. They hope to create something tangible in the form of a lasting commission to study the vestiges of slavery.

Potential cost
The potential cost of such an undertaking, which eventually could include the creation of museums and textbook revisions, has yet to be determined.

Lawmakers backing the effort, including Rep. Borris Miles, D-Houston, and Sen. Royce West, D-Dallas, emphasized it is not an attempt to seek monetary reparations.

They said they want to be methodical and analytical in their approach. They realize it will be an uphill battle and already are anticipating the kind of push back they will get, including members who will say that they should let "bygones be bygones."

Ellis said his response to that will be that resolution supporters are not seeking a personal apology, but rather an acknowledgment that Texas sanctioned and encouraged slavery.

"Texas played a key role in this 'peculiar institution' called slavery," Ellis said.

News of the Emancipation Proclamation that freed slaves in the Confederate states didn't reach Texas until June of 1865, more than two years after it took effect.

Gov. Rick Perry said Friday that it would be up to lawmakers to sort out what action, if any, the state should take in acknowledging or apologizing for slavery.

"You know I'm a big fan of the preparations for the future, not focusing on reparations for the past," he said.

Thompson and Ellis had planned to proceed slowly, working behind the scenes to seek consensus in the Legislature and counsel from those developing slavery resolutions elsewhere in the country.

That changed when Rep. Sid Miller, R-Stephenville, sought Wednesday to preserve some Confederate statues by prohibiting the removal or relocation of memorial plaques or statues from state property without approval of the Legislature, Texas Historical Commission or State Preservation Board.

The debate veered into a divisive discussion of slavery and civil rights.

After nearly two hours and several close votes, Miller abandoned his bill.

Thompson said the leadership should not have allowed the bill to make its way to the House floor and "subject the members to such an unnecessary confrontation."

She said the showdown highlighted some House members' "lack of sensitivity, by constantly reopening wounds that have not healed."

Darfur protest
Earlier this week Ellis won unanimous approval from the Senate for the state's two large pension funds to divest their holdings in companies doing business in Sudan as a protest of the genocide in Darfur.

Republican Sen. Florence Shapiro, of Plano, co-sponsored that measure, and the lawmakers pushing the slavery resolution also hope to get bipartisan support for their measure. They are considering inserting language about the contributions of American Indians and Hispanics, Ellis said.

Ed Dorn, the former dean of the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin who is advising lawmakers drafting the resolution, described it as "an effort to recognize the state's true history."

Dorn says an apology is just the beginning of a process. Lawmakers also are likely to push for the creation of a commission to "discover and reveal the contributions that African-Americans have made to this state. We need not only to acknowledge the mistakes, but correct the historical record."

Lawmakers are still working on specific wording of a proposed resolution — spearheaded by Sen. Rodney Ellis and Rep. Senfronia Thompson — acknowledging slavery in Texas history. Some excerpts from a draft:

• Whereas: " ... this 'peculiar institution,' as slavery has been called, was a unique and involuntary servitude that found Africans captured, brutalized, dehumanized and sold at auction like inanimate property or animals;"

• Whereas: " ... slavery became a key social institution in Texas with one in four families owning slaves in antebellum Texas;"

• Resolved : " ... that the Texas Legislature hereby acknowledges with profound regret the involuntary servitude of Africans and calls for reconciliation among all Texas"

NYT Travelogue: Britain Celebrates the Bicentennial of the End of Slavery

2007-03-23T10:59:00.000-04:00

This article from the New York Times is more like a travelogue than straight reportage of the actions the British government is taking to recognize the legacy of slavery. But it certainly shows a country that is ready to look at itself with open eyes, unlike this country.

March 20, 2007

Britain Confronts Legacy of Slave Trade

By Alan Riding

LONDON — The way history has long been taught here, Britain’s abolition of the slave trade on March 25, 1807, allowed it to claim the moral high ground in the struggle to end slavery in the New World. Two centuries later, if a series of exhibitions planned for this year leave their mark, perceptions may be about to change.

Rather than dwelling on William Wilberforce, the feisty abolitionist who drove the reform through the British Parliament and is the subject of the film “Amazing Grace,” these shows are highlighting a far uglier back story: Britain’s deep engagement in the slave trade in earlier centuries and the fundamental role this played in forging the nation’s wealth and power.

With the support of the government and a $20 million grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund, national museums and community groups across Britain have begun re-examining what a new exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London calls these “Uncomfortable Truths.”

The mood may be ripe for such a reassessment. After years of waxing nostalgic about its lost empire, Britain is now daring to look more critically at its imperial record. At the same time there is fresh curiosity about the history and culture of the Caribbean, African, Arab and Asian immigrants who are changing the face of Britain.

There is also new transparency. Although Prime Minister Tony Blair fell short of an apology, in November he went further than any previous official by expressing “deep sorrow” for Britain’s role in the slave trade. “It is hard to believe what would now be a crime against humanity was legal at the time,” he noted.

Penitence seems to weigh most heavily on the northwestern port city of Liverpool, which in 1800 controlled 80 percent of the British slave trade and over 40 percent of the European slave trade. The triangular trade, by which African slaves were bartered for sugar, cotton and tobacco in the Americas, was the foundation of Liverpool’s enormous prosperity.

Today the city takes this past seriously. In 1994 the Merseyside Maritime Museum opened a Transatlantic Slavery Gallery to tell the story of Liverpool and slavery. This display will close in June to make way for Britain’s first International Slavery Museum, which will open on Aug. 23, named by the United Nations as Slavery Remembrance Day.

David Fleming, the director of National Museums Liverpool, said the new museum would portray and analyze “the vitality and complexity of West Africa prior to the coming of European slavers, the horrors of the Middle Passage, the fate of the enslaved people in the Americas and of course the never-ending fight for freedom.”

London and Bristol, two other major slave-trading cities, are also probing their consciences this year. In October the Museum of Docklands in London will open a permanent gallery called “London, Sugar and Slavery,” while the Bristol Industrial Museum has opened a Transatlantic Slavery gallery exploring how the city profited from the slave trade in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Opening the bicentennial commemoration is the show at the Victoria and Albert Museum, “Uncomfortable Truths: The Shadow of Slave Trading on Contemporary Art and Design,” which looks at the slave trade and its benefits to Britain through the eyes of 11 contemporary artists from around the world.

In some cases — like Romuald Hazoumé’s striking serpent made from jerrycans, in the museum’s courtyard — the link between the art and this narrative is less than obvious. Mr. Hazoumé, a Benin-born artist, has also created a larger work, “La Bouche du Roi,” transforming 300 jerrycans into masks, which will tour Britain, starting at the British Museum.

With other artists the idea of scattering contemporary works through the Victoria and Albert’s collection is more successful in subverting the museum’s post-imperial elegance. For instance, with a series called “Naming the Money” by Lubaina Himid, the show’s curator, Zoe Whitley, has placed several life-size painted cutouts of slaves in the British Galleries, a reminder of the link between the slave trade and British wealth.

In the Norfolk House Music Room, a headless archer identified as Foster Cunliffe, a grandson of a slave trader, is dressed in period costume made of lively African textiles. And in the same room the American Fred Wilson displays “Regina Atra,” a replica of a royal crown, in this case made of lead and black diamonds.

“I didn’t want to have shackles and chains aesthetics,” said Ms. Whitley, 27, an American who is the museum’s curator of contemporary programs. “I wanted something relevant to the Victoria and Albert.” The show runs through June 17.

The National Portrait Gallery has organized a lecture series for the March anniversary around the theme “People, Portraits and Abolition.” It has also created its own trail through its collection, with panels explaining the role of significant players in promoting — and combating — the slave trade since the time of Elizabeth I. (This route can be followed on the gallery’s Web site, www.npg.org.uk/live/abo_tr_1.asp.)

The focus of “The Business of Slavery” at the British Museum, opening in May, will be the commodities that sustained the slave trade, starting with Europe’s initial interest in West Africa’s gold and ivory, then detailing the enormous profits earned from the New World’s tobacco, sugar, cotton and rum. This show will also recall the role played by enslaved people in their own liberation, notably in Haiti and Jamaica.

The National Maritime Museum at Greenwich has organized lectures related to Britain’s involvement in the slave trade as well as a new gallery called “Atlantic Worlds,” which will open in October with a display of slavery-related objects. The Royal Naval Museum in Portsmouth has an exhibition called “Chasing Freedom: The Royal Navy and the Suppression of the Transatlantic Slave Trade,” which presents the navy’s role in intercepting foreign slave ships after 1807.

It is a measure of the new awareness of the slave trade’s importance to Britain that so many institutions feel a need to respond this year.

For instance English Heritage, which manages large numbers of stately homes, has decided for the first time to research links between the slave trade and the properties in its care. The Palace of Westminster, in contrast, will focus on the March 25, 1807, reform in “The British Slave Trade: Abolition, Parliament and People,” from May 23 through Sept. 23.

For a country where national commemorations invariably relate to royal jubilees or sporting triumphs, this bicentennial represents an extraordinary reflection on a chapter of history that, notwithstanding the courage of Wilberforce and other abolitionists, remains a stain on Britain’s name.

Along with spotlighting the past, the campaign also hopes to draw attention to new forms of slavery, whether in remote parts of Africa, Latin America and the Middle East or closer to home where immigrant women are forced into prostitution. A photography exhibition at St. Paul’s Cathedral through March 29, “Slave Britain: The 21st Century Trade in Human Lives,” holds up just such a mirror to Britain today.

LA Times: Slavery apologies debated across U.S.

2007-03-21T02:59:00.001-04:00

Slavery apologies debated across U.S.

As the movement to express regret grows, some say the measures would be cathartic, others call them useless.

By Jenny Jarvie, Times Staff Writer
March 19, 2007

ATLANTA — More than 140 years after slavery was abolished, Congress and a growing number of elected officials in states and cities are wrestling with whether to formally apologize.

The movement began in the former Confederate capital, Richmond, Va., with state legislators last month unanimously passing a resolution expressing "profound regret" over Virginia's role in slavery and the Jim Crow era.

Now, lawmakers in Georgia, Maryland, Delaware, New York, Missouri, Massachusetts and Vermont are considering similar measures that would express regret, apologize or create commemorative days.

The wave of contrition has spread to cities too. In Macon, Ga., the mayor issued an executive order last month apologizing for the city's role in slavery. And in the former slave port of Annapolis, Md., the City Council has proposed an apology for "perpetual pain, distrust and bitterness" caused to African Americans.

On the federal level, Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) has introduced a House resolution for a national apology.

"America has never apologized for the enslavement of millions of Africans," said Tyrone Brooks, a Democratic Georgia state representative, noting that Congress had apologized to Japanese Americans interned during World War II and to native Hawaiians for the 1893 U.S. coup. "An apology is just long overdue."

There is wide agreement that such apologies would be largely symbolic political gestures, but there appears to be little consensus on what exactly they would mean.

Some believe official legislative remorse could be cathartic to the nation, showing that it is mature enough to confront its past. But others accuse lawmakers of picking an easy battle: Apologizing for blatant historical wrongs such as slavery, they say, only detracts from addressing present-day injustices.

"The value of such an apology is up for debate," said history professor James Cobb of the University of Georgia. "Certainly, for many people, it's not much of an emotional concession to apologize for something you don't really feel responsible for."

In Virginia, critics note, one of the legislators who voted for the apology was Frank Hargrove, a Republican who incensed African American leaders a month earlier by saying black citizens should "get over" slavery.

A deep divide

Nowhere has the debate been more fractious than Georgia, where slaves made up more than 40% of the state's population in 1830. The state ranks second only to Mississippi in the number of lynchings recorded during the Jim Crow era.

African American state legislators plan to introduce a resolution today, but House Speaker Glenn Richardson, who is white, has said an apology for slavery has almost no chance of passing.

"I'm not sure what we ought to be apologizing for," said Richardson, a Republican. "I think slavery was wrong — absolutely. But no one here was in office then."

Unlike in Virginia, where the sponsor of the resolution worked behind the scenes for four years to ensure that the majority Republican Legislature supported the apology, the debate in Georgia began in more strident style with local NAACP leaders holding a news conference at the state Capitol.

"The ancestors of white slave owners benefited off the backs of African Americans," said Edward DuBose, president of the Georgia State Conference of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People. "It's time for them to acknowledge that a wrong took place."

Republican legislators' resistance to an apology has strengthened civil rights activists' resolve.

Adding to the activists' resentment is a Senate committee's unanimous decision to vote for a Republican legislator's bill to designate April as Confederate history and heritage month.

Though the nation has become more open to discussion of its racial history — officials in once die-hard segregationist states have discontinued using confederate flags and constructed civil rights museums — some say there is no need to go further.

Many white Georgians say they are not responsible for the crimes of their ancestors or point out that their ancestors probably did not own slaves. In 1860, less than one-third of Georgia's adult white male population were slaveholders.

Last week, DuBose suggested it might be constructive to explore the genealogical records of Republican legislators.

"Honestly, I don't know if my ancestors held slaves," said Richardson, adding that his grandfather plowed fields with a mule. "But in the year 2007 in Georgia, we live in economic times when people can overcome whatever they need to overcome. You decide what you accomplish, without regard to race and sex. I don't think slavery plays a part."

More significant perhaps, an emerging generation of African Americans also wants to move beyond debates about the historical injustice of slavery.

"I don't want or need an apology for slavery," wrote Lyle V. Harris, an African American editorial writer for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, who suggested that the NAACP should instead focus on ensuring that blacks have full access to the ballot box.

Opinions within the black community about the usefulness of such apologies have tended to divide along age and ideological lines, said William Boone, a political scientist at the historically black Clark Atlanta University. They have resonated more with the older generation, he said, than younger or more conservative, affluent African Americans.

"I'm not sure the average guy who works from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. is thinking about this," he said.

Timing is questioned

Many question why the calls for official contrition are coming now.

While the Virginia apology was introduced to coincide with the state's observation of the 400th anniversary of the Jamestown settlement, historians and political analysts say it has been picked up by African American legislators and civil rights activists because they now find themselves struggling to maintain their relevance.

The NAACP, the nation's oldest civil rights group, is currently debating its mission. This month, its president, Bruce S. Gordon, resigned unexpectedly after ongoing disagreement with the board over whether the traditional social justice advocacy organization should offer social services.

Still, those who call for an apology argue that the discussion of historical discrimination against African Americans is deeply connected to present-day inequality.

"How can you understand the disparity around us without understanding the reasons for it?" DuBose asked.

After an apology, he said, the next logical step could be reparations for slave descendants. Until now, critics have denounced resolutions as a step toward financial settlements, and many legislators have taken pains to insist they are only symbolic.

"We will ask how did slavery and the Jim Crow era affect education when African Americans are still suffering in education and how did it affect black farmers who had land taken from them?" DuBose said.

"To what extent are African Americans still second-class citizens?"

AP: "21st century homesteading: Free land in Alaska"

2007-03-18T13:38:00.000-04:00

Land is more valuable than money these days and the government is giving it away to modern-day homesteaders who can brave the Alaskan climate. If global warming continues, Alaska won't be looking so bad in a couple of years.

Land is part of the reparations issue because in many cases, do to racism and slavery, African Americans lost land or were shut out from acquiring it. This was was the case in the early homesteading movement.

21st century homesteading: Free land in Alaska
Associated Press
March 16, 2007

Story Highlights
. Community of 300 offering 26 1.3-acre lots for free
. Lots go to first people to apply and pay $500 deposit beginning 9 a.m. Monday
. Winners must build 1,000-square-foot house within two years
. Idea for land lottery came from school project

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) -- Anderson, a little town in Alaska's interior, has no gas station, no grocery store and no traffic lights, but it does have plenty of woodsy land -- and it's free to anyone willing to put down roots in the often-frozen ground.

In a modern twist on the homesteading movement that populated the Plains in the 1800s, the community of 300 people is offering 26 large lots on spruce-covered land in a part of Alaska that has spectacular views of the Northern lights and Mount McKinley, North America's highest peak.

And what's an occasional day of 60-below cold in a town removed from big-city ills?

"It's Mayberry," said Anderson high-school teacher Daryl Frisbie, whose social studies class explored ways to boost the town's dwindling population. Students developed a Web site and Power Point presentation, then persuaded the City Council to give it a go.

"Are you tired of the hustle and bustle of the Lower 48, crime, poor schools, and the high cost of living?" the Web site asks. "Make your new home in the Last Frontier!"

The 1.3-acre lots will be awarded to the first people who apply for them and submit $500 refundable deposits beginning at 9 a.m. Monday. Each winning applicant must build a house measuring at least 1,000 square feet within two years. Power and phone hookups are now available.

City Clerk Nancy Hollis said people who apply in person or have someone stand in for them will have the best shot, since the post office doesn't open until noon and deliveries are even later from the regional hub of Fairbanks, 75 miles away.

People seeking more information are calling from such places as California, Texas, Idaho and Florida.

Locals eyeing the sites include 15-year-old newcomer Brittney Warner, a student who worked on the project. The 10th-grader, her parents and three siblings moved to Anderson two months ago from Boise, Idaho, when her father got a job at nearby Clear Air Force Station.

Warner calls her new community "very nice, small, very outdoorsy" -- a place that would be even better if it brought in some new businesses. Residents now have to drive at least 20 miles for gasoline or groceries.

Her family is now living in a rental home and planning to apply for one of the lots.

"We already have a house design," she said.

Cory Furrow, a 26-year-old electrician, said he will be in line, too. Anderson has everything he enjoys -- good terrain for snowshoeing and skiing, fishing, and hunting for moose and grizzly bears.

"I've lived here my whole life, so when free land comes up in my hometown, I can't pass that up," said Furrow, who lives in his family home.

Folks in Anderson say there are some job opportunities within driving distance, including a coal mine, a utility, major hotels and the air station, a ballistic missile early-warning site. Locals also would like to see entrepreneurs among the newcomers.

In addition, they are hoping for families. The high school basketball team had to go coed this year because there weren't enough boys.

Among the other advantages of Anderson: no property taxes, state income taxes or sales tax, virtually no crime, and no traffic. There are magnificent summers with temperatures as high as 90 degrees and plenty of wide-open space.

"One of the resources that we have is land," said Mayor Mike Pearson, a mechanic at the air station. "If this works out well, the city's got lots more property."

AJC: Key Georgia Republican supports call for slavery apology

2007-03-17T02:28:00.000-04:00

Georgia is now jumping on the slavery apology bandwagon, not to be outdone by 2 other southern states-- Virginia and Maryland. In 2001, the state of Georgia changed its state flag so that it no longer contains the Confederacy battle flag, which is considered by many a symbol of slavery and intolerance. Baby steps.

Key Georgia Republican supports call for slavery apology

By JEREMY REDMON, SONJI JACOBS
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 03/17/07

A powerful Republican leader has joined forces with African-American state lawmakers seeking an apology over Georgia's role in slavery, dramatically improving the possibility the Legislature will express some form of regret over the state's past.

Senate President Pro Tem Eric Johnson (R-Savannah) said Friday he plans to introduce a proposal that would acknowledge the state's role in slavery and encourage reconciliation among Georgians.

Johnson is working with state Rep. Al Williams (D-Midway), who last week announced he would file a resolution asking the state to apologize for slavery.

Johnson and Williams met to talk about the language of the proposals Friday with state Rep. Tyrone Brooks (D-Atlanta) and Labor Commissioner Michael Thurmond, the author of "Freedom: Georgia's Anti-slavery Heritage." Williams and Johnson said they hope to offer identical proposals in both the House and Senate.

Johnson told reporters at a news conference afterwards that "we are now moving forward with the agreement that Georgia will do something" regarding the slavery apology.

"It's not that we personally or our parents participated in slavery, but the state of Georgia did," Johnson said. "As a Georgian and as a Georgia legislator, acknowledging our role, expressing regret for it, and looking for resolution and reconciliation as we go forward, particularly with the sesquicentennial coming of the Civil War, is maybe appropriate for us to do."

Johnson would not reveal details on the proposal's language, saying he needed to review it with other Republican leaders, including Gov. Sonny Perdue.

"Atonement and apology are going to be an integral part of the finished document," Williams said. Asked if he was seeking reparations for slavery, he replied: "That is another day."

Williams, the chair of the Georgia Legislative Black Caucus, acknowledged that he and Johnson differ on some points, but he said he is encouraged they can reach an agreement.

"Our personalities dictate that there must be sticking points," Williams said. "But both of us, I think, respect each other to the point where we will listen to each other."

Johnson's involvement comes as the Senate is considering a bill that would declare April as Confederate History and Heritage Month. Sen. Jeff Mullis (R-Chickamauga), the bill's sponsor, introduced the legislation March 1, and it passed a key Senate committee this week — just days after Williams and the state NAACP called on the General Assembly and Perdue to apologize for Georgia's role in slavery.

Perdue has so far declined to comment on the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's request, and many leading Republicans gave the slavery apology proposal a cool reception.

House Speaker Glenn Richardson (R-Hiram) said in an interview Wednesday — before Johnson's announcement — that Williams' resolution would have no chance of moving out of committee this year.

"The Democrats have been in control of the Georgia General Assembly from the time slavery ended up until about three or four years ago, and there was never a proposal to do that, that I am aware of, then," Richardson said.

By contrast, the Confederate History and Heritage Month bill cleared a Senate committee Thursday with no opposition — offending many civil rights leaders and lawmakers.

Johnson said Friday he understands there is a link between the state promoting the 150th anniversary of the Civil War for tourism — and possibly recognizing Confederate History and Heritage Month — and acknowledging its role in slavery.

Before Friday, Williams was circulating a four-page draft of a resolution that would acknowledge the history of slavery in America "with contrition" and call for "reconciliations" among all Georgians.

Williams said he modeled his resolution on one that passed the Virginia Legislature late last month. But Virginia's resolution expresses "profound regret" for slavery.

Williams' draft traces the history of slavery from ancient times to the arrival of slaves in Jamestown. It also refers to slavery's role in the Civil War, lynchings of African-Americans and the system of Jim Crow laws designed to enforce racial segregation.

"In Georgia," the resolution reads, "the vestiges of slavery are ever before African-American citizens, from the overt racism of hate groups to the subtle racism encountered when requesting health care, transacting business, buying a home, seeking quality public education and college admission, and enduring pretextual traffic stops and other indignities."

That sentence concerned Johnson.

"I don't like this 'The vestiges of slavery are still with us today,' " Johnson said. "I think both sides want to be as positive as you can be — positive with the wording and the actions that we take."

BBC: Blair 'sorry' for UK slavery role

2007-03-15T11:25:00.000-04:00

Blair 'sorry' for UK slavery role

Wednesday, 14 March 2007
BBC News

Tony Blair has said sorry for the slave trade, months after his statement of "deep sorrow" was criticised by some for stopping short of a full apology."

I have said we are sorry and I say it again," he said after talks with Ghanaian president John Agyekum Kufuor.

Mr Blair met Ghanaian president John Kufuor

Britain had a "relationship of equals" with countries like Ghana, he said.

The most important thing was "to remember what happened in the past, to condemn it and say why it was entirely unacceptable," Mr Blair went on.

Some anti-slavery campaigners had said they wanted Mr Blair to go further ahead of the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade, after his first statement in November.

His expression of "deep sorrow" for Britain's role in the slave trade was welcomed by some but criticised by others for not going far enough.

Local News: Supervisor loses vote to pull ads off weekly

2007-03-14T07:55:00.000-04:00

This is an interesting article because it illustrates the tenor of the local battles for African American slavery redress.

Supervisor loses vote to pull ads off weekly

County board spars over past motions on racially sensitive issues

By Karen Holzmeister, STAFF WRITER

Article Last Updated: 03/14/2007 03:45:34 AM PDT

OAKLAND — Alameda County Supervisor Alice Lai-Bitker seemed on her way to a sure slam-dunk Tuesday.

After all, she was asking her fellow supervisors to pull county advertising from AsianWeek, a San Francisco weekly newspaper for running columns that slapped whites, blacks and Asians.

And two of the three other supervisors present Tuesday were Keith Carson and Nate Miley, African Americans from Oakland. Lai-Bitker is a Chinese American who came to the United States in 1983.

Lai-Bitker, however, was the one who got slapped — figuratively — when her motion failed.

Miley politely, but bluntly, chided Lai-Bitker for voting against a 2005 slavery reparations resolution. That resolution lost on a 3-2 vote, backed only by Carson and Miley.

He asked Lai-Bitker why she wanted to penalize AsianWeek by eliminating its $15,000 annual advertising subsidy.

"Because you're Asian," Miley said, answering his own question.

In the future, he suggested, Lai-Bitker should be "as concerned" about issues outside of the Asian community. "I have a long memory," he added in reference to what happened with the reparation measure.

Lai-Bitker, of Alameda, who chaired the meeting in Livermore Supervisor Scott Haggerty's absence, appeared shocked.

She told Miley she was supportive of the slavery reparation measure, but needed answers "that were not available to me at the time."

Miley fired back, saying he could ask questions about

her resolution condemning AsianWeek for its columns encouraging racial discrimination.

Still, to be "collegial," Miley said, he endorsed her resolution and would join Lai-Bitker in supporting it.

But three votes were needed for passage. Supervisor Gail Steele of Hayward abstained, noting that she would not vote on any resolution unless it directly affected the county.

Carson also declined to endorse Lai-Bitker's resolution. While a February anti-black column in AsianWeek was "deplorable," racism is manifested in the press in many and subtle ways, he said.

Debate and dialogue are ways to deal with it, Carson maintained.

Karen Holzmeister covers Castro Valley, the Hayward Area Recreation and Park District, and county government for unincorporated areas. She can be reached at (510) 293-2478 or kholzmeister@dailyreviewonline.com.

ANTIGUA SUN: Black leader addresses issue of reparation in Antigua

2007-03-13T11:36:00.000-04:00

Black leader addresses issue of reparation in Antigua

Monday March 12 2007

by A. Aisha Browne

“We could get trillions of dollars from the reparation but if we can’t fix ourselves…the money will do us no good. If we don’t salvage our children, we’ll be running from them later.”

That view was expressed by renowned internationally respected foreign policy advocate and author Randall Robinson, as he brought his quest of reminding black people that “We have a history; we have a story that is most glorious as any on earth,” to Antigua last Friday.

“The blood that unites us,” he implored “Is thicker than the water that divides us”

Robinson, who was invited by the Bicentenary Committee to speak on various matters including slavery, its effect on present day people and the issue of reparation, also gave a riveting oration on the unrecognised “blacks”, who had contributed tremendously to some of the most noteworthy aspects of African heritage.

Rest of th Article

From the archives of the Antigua Sun newspaper reflecting on the character, values and eccentricities of the people of Antigua

Beginning of the Article

Delving into the controversial issue of reparation, Robinson called it a life’s journey, which has been compounded by figurative “blinders” fitted on black people, which made them less distracted and more manageable.

He further attributed this form of control to the fear that there were limits on what blacks were allowed to know about themselves, leaving the race vulnerable to this very fear.

He further noted with much distress that much of today’s “free world” has failed to apologise for slavery, adding “Its not about the money…it is and it's not. There is no greater crime you can commit against a people than to strip them of themselves.”

The Caribbean therefore came into focus as the lecturer spoke of the preservation of a heritage, a land and a story to be passed on to future generations.

One particular “thief” of time he bemoaned is television and the mass media, which he said allowed people like “him” to forget about people like “them”.

These influences he indicated are some of the reasons why Black people continue to lose their identity, fight against themselves and why one in every eight prisoners in the world is an African.

In revealing one of the turning points in his “blackness” Robinson said that it was at the age of 26 and while attending Harvard Law School when he sat next to a white American that he realised the importance of his ancestry.

“Harvard is the oldest US University, established since 1636. It has become extraordinarily rich. And I can recall sitting in class, poor little boy from the South looking at portraits of old bewigged white men from the 17th and 18th centuries.

“Thirty years would go by before I was to learn that Harvard Law School was established and made possible by a man named Isaac Royalle.”

Isaac Royalle, he would later shockingly learn had endowed the law school from the proceeds he had gotten from the sale of slaves on his Antiguan sugar plantation.

Therefore, Robinson surmised, much of America’s institutional wealth has its roots in slavery.

“We, I, am a member of the African World Community…there are no borders that can divide us.”

The Bicentenary Committee is embarking on a month-long anniversary celebration in commemoration of the abolition of the British Empire Atlantic Slave Trade (BEAST).

Reparations experts criticize U.'s slavery and justice response - Campus News

2007-03-09T10:52:00.000-05:00

Reparations experts criticize U.'s slavery and justice response - Campus News

More Calls for Apologies for Slavery

2007-03-07T07:28:00.000-05:00

It seems to be in vogue to offer an apology (well sort of) for the enslavement of millions of Africans for 400 years. Now, the Maryland state legislature and several congressmen are set to do same. The offers of "regret" by the Virginia Legislature, President Clinton, Prime Minister Tony Blair and others don't go far enough. I appreciate the sentiment but I must say it feels a bit hollow and I am not sure why. Maybe because these apologies have not actual used the word "apology." One reason for this is the fear of reparations lawsuits. These lawsuits are coming anyway, whether these states pass resolutions or not. You know, my mother always said to me "say sorry and meant it or don't say it at all."

Photo of Rep. Stephen I. Cohen (D-Tenn.). He is proposing legislation in U.S. House of Representatives to offer an official apology for slavery. Photo by John Shinkle.

Official Apologies to Blacks, American Indians Proposed

By: John Bresnahan
March 5, 2007 11:28 PM EST

Sen. Sam Brownback and Rep. Stephen I. Cohen are proposing two of the most sweeping apologies in American history.

Cohen, a Tennessee Democrat, has introduced a resolution apologizing for all of the wrongs suffered by blacks at the hands of the U.S. government, especially slavery and segregation. And Brownback, a Kansas Republican, is pushing a measure offering "an apology to all native peoples" for hundreds of years of government hostility and oppression.

Neither resolution is binding. And neither would require the United States to offer reparations to those wronged, although they would be powerful statements if adopted by either the House or the Senate.
Brownback, who is seeking the GOP presidential nomination, has offered his American Indian resolution in the last two Congresses, and it was approved by the Senate Indian Affairs Committee in 2005. But it has never been adopted by the full Senate. His co-sponsors this time are Sens. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) and Mary L. Landrieu (D-La.).

Brownback's resolution opens with declarations that American Indians "have for millennia honored, protected and stewarded this land we cherish" and that, with the coming of European settlers and the creation of the United States in the late 1700s, "Indian tribes provided great assistance to the fledgling republic as it strengthened and grew."

But the government "violated many of the treaties ratified by Congress and other diplomatic agreements with Indian tribes" and took numerous official actions that caused immense harm to American Indians, including "extermination, termination, forced removal and relocation, the outlawing of traditional religions and the destruction of sacred places," the resolution says. And these policies contribute to the social and economic problems facing American Indians today.

Brownback wants a formal apology to American Indians from the president and Congress.

His resolution states that Congress "apologizes on behalf of the people of the United States to all native peoples for the many instances of violence, maltreatment and neglect inflicted on native peoples by citizens of the United States." It also "urges the president to acknowledge the wrongs of the United States against Indian tribes in the history of the United States in order to bring healing to this land by providing a proper foundation for reconciliation between the United States and Indian tribes."

In a speech on the House floor last week, Cohen, a freshman representing a predominantly black district in Memphis, spoke out passionately for his resolution apologizing for the wrongs inflicted on blacks.

"For 246 years, our Constitution and our laws allowed a system that made people slaves, that divided people from their families and treated them as property," Cohen said. "And for 100 years thereafter, a system of laws in many states throughout the country had Jim Crow laws that deprived people of the opportunity for equal access to education, health care, public facilities and other types of programs. These ended by law in the [1960s], somewhat through the efforts of Thurgood Marshall and other attorneys in Brown v. Board of Education, but the effects are lingering.

"This country needs to apologize for a brutal, inhumane system of slavery and Jim Crow laws," Cohen went on. "President Bush has made remarks similar to this in Senegal; President Clinton also in the [commonwealth] of Virginia most recently."

Cohen's resolution is graphic. "Slavery in America resembled no other form of involuntary servitude known in history, as Africans were captured and sold at auction like inanimate objects or animals," it says.

It also states that "the system of de jure racial segregation known as 'Jim Crow,' which arose in certain parts of the nation following the Civil War to create separate and unequal societies for whites and African-Americans" still has some "vestiges" today.

Cohen wants the House to acknowledge "the fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality and inhumanity of slavery and Jim Crow" and officially apologize to "African-Americans on behalf of the people of the United States" and offer a "commitment to rectify the lingering consequences of the misdeeds committed against African-Americans under slavery and Jim Crow and to stop the occurrence of human rights violations in the future."

Cohen has 36 co-sponsors for his resolution, including Reps. Patrick J. Kennedy (D-R.I.) and Dennis J. Kucinich (D-Ohio), as well as House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) and several other members of the Congressional Black Caucus. Cohen tried to join the Black Caucus after the November election but was turned down because he's white.

His resolution has been referred to Conyers' committee for consideration.

Congressman Conyers' Re-introduces HR 40 to 110th Congress

2007-03-04T01:04:00.000-05:00

Some how I missed this. I am going to see if there's video and post it. There were reports that Representive Conyers was going to wait until after 2008 election to reintroduce his reparations commission legislation so that it might have a chance to be signed into law. Surely President Bush would veto the measure. But, I guess he moved forward with his annual presentation H.R. 40 anyway. Here's a copy of his floor speech.

SPEECH OF HON. JOHN CONYERS, JR. OF MICHIGAN IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
THURSDAY, JANUARY 4, 2007

Mr. CONYERS. Madam Speaker, today I come before this body to reintroduce the Commission to Study Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act. I have advanced the Commission bill for over 15 years to direct attention to a historical wrong that warrants substantial consideration and discussion. Since introduction in 1989, I have never intended to spark controversy or promote division. Rather, I have worked to further a national dialogue on the plight of African Americans in the context of slavery, Jim Crow, and other legally sanctioned discrimination.

As a result, our dialogue has become more substantive and afforded us invaluable knowledge over the years. This Congress I intend to continue such discourse. I will also work to ensure that more people understand the benefit and the promise of a Commission. Unfortunately, there are too many that do not understand its purpose. This means that we must dispel the myths and correct the mistruths surrounding the Commission bill.

Each Congress, the conversations and efforts surrounding the Commission bill become more mature and sophisticated. Today we have a better understanding of slavery and its implications than we did 16 years ago. Since [Page: E12] GPO's PDF1989, over forty states and cities have passed legislation in support of the Commission bill. In 2002, lawsuits were filed against U.S. corporations for their role in perpetuating slavery. The following year, in 2003, Brown University created the Committee on Slavery and Justice to assess the University's role in slavery and determine a response. And in 2004, a federal appeals court ruled that statute of limitations prevented redress in the case of the 1921 Tulsa Race Riot, but opened the door for legislative recourse.

Most recently, on December 13, 2006, a federal appeals court ruled that U.S. corporations can be found guilty of consumer fraud for failing to disclose their roles in slavery. Just a few weeks earlier, on November 27th, Prime Minister Tony Blair condemned the African slave trade and Britain's participation. As Brown University prepares to act on Committee recommendations in February, and on the eve of the 200th anniversary of Britain's prohibition of slavery in March, productive discussions on both the national and global levels seem promised.

However, as this dialogue continues to grow, one entity is noticeably absent--the federal government. The Commission would ensure proper participation in this conversation, in addition to taking us giant steps towards closure on this matter. The truth is that the institution of slavery will continue to tarnish the American national story until we confront this part of our history. While a Commission will not erase the past, it can bring us closer to racial reconciliation and advancement.

A Commission would not only examine the institution of slavery, but the legacy of slavery that weighs heavily on this country. Just last Congress, a bipartisan collective reauthorized the Voting Rights Act because racial inequities and injustices are a reality. This reality is the result of the social, economic, and political disenfranchisement African Americans have endured throughout our experience in this country. For a majority of this nation's history, this disenfranchisement was mandated by law. Disparities in education, housing, healthcare and other critical aspects of society have resulted.

After examining the issues, the Commission would recommend appropriate remedies to Congress. There is this common mis-perception that ``remedies'' means monetary compensation. Let me be clear, the Commission bill does not mandate financial payments of any kind. Recommendations would be at the sole discretion of the Commission. It is unfair to dismiss the idea of a Commission based on a fear that monetary reparations will be warranted. We need to understand that a reparations discussion goes beyond money.

We must also recognize that understanding slavery and its modern day implications is in the best interest of our society. This nation should serve as an example for corporations, universities, and other countries. In the 110th Congress, I look forward to open and constructive discourse about the Commission bill.

H.R. 40 Legislation

Kindly contact your congressional representative and local organizations and ask them to give strong support for H.R. 40. Let your voice be heard.

Yahoo News: Slavery ties Sharpton to Thurmond

2007-02-25T18:46:00.000-05:00

Very interesting story about the ties that bind.

Slavery ties Sharpton to Thurmond
By ADAM GOLDMAN, Associated Press Writer

The Rev. Al Sharpton is a descendant of a slave owned by relatives of the late Sen. Strom Thurmond — a discovery the civil rights activist called "shocking" on Sunday.
Sharpton learned of his connection to Thurmond, once a prominent defender of segregation, last week through the Daily News, which asked genealogists to trace his roots.
"It was probably the most shocking thing in my life," Sharpton said at a news conference Sunday, the same day the tabloid revealed the story.
Some of Thurmond's relatives said the nexus also came as a surprise to them. Doris Strom Costner, a distant cousin who said she knew the late senator all her life, said Sunday she "never heard of such a thing."
"My momma never would talk to me about nothing like that," Costner said of ancestors who owned slaves. "She only talked to me about good things."
The revelations surfaced after Ancestry.com contacted a Daily News reporter who agreed to have his own family tree done. The intrigued reporter then turned around and asked Sharpton if he wanted to participate. Sharpton said he told the paper, "Go for it."
The genealogists, who were not paid by the newspaper, uncovered the ancestral ties using a variety of documents that included census, marriage and death records.
They found that Sharpton's great-grandfather, Coleman Sharpton, was a slave owned by Julia Thurmond, whose grandfather was Strom Thurmond's great-great-grandfather. Coleman Sharpton was later freed.
Thurmond, of South Carolina, was once considered an icon of racial segregation. During his 1948 bid for president, he promised to preserve segregation and, in 1957, he filibustered for more than 24 hours against a civil rights bill.
Sharpton, who ran for president in 2004 on a ticket of racial justice, said he met Thurmond only once in 1991 when he visited Washington, D.C., with the late soul singer James Brown, who knew Thurmond. Sharpton said the meeting was "awkward."
"I was not happy to meet him because what he had done all his life," Sharpton said.
Thurmond was seen as softening his segregation stance later in his life. He died in 2003, at 100. The long-serving senator was originally a Democrat but became a Republican in 1964.
Thurmond's children have acknowledged that Thurmond fathered a biracial daughter. Essie Mae Washington-Williams' mother was a housekeeper in the home of Thurmond's parents.
Telephone message left by The Associated Press on Sunday for Strom Thurmond Jr. and an attorney who once represented Thurmond's biracial daughter, Essie Mae Washington-Williams, were not returned.
___
Associated Press writer Page Ivey in Columbia, S.C., contributed to this report.

2007-02-17T08:35:00.000-05:00

My friend Sushma emailed this good editorial about VA's "near" apology. It was posted by Anthony Asadullah Samad on Portside.org. Thanks Sushma!

Virginia Legislature's (Near) Apology for Slavery

Virginia Legislature's 'Profound Regret': Semantics Over Apology for Slavery Keeps Eye On Reparations

by Anthony Asadullah Samad

The Virginia Legislature issued a statement of "profound regret" last week over the state’s involvement in slavery, as the state prepares to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown--the first "official" colonial settlement in what eventually became British America, and subsequently the United States of America. While also condemning the "egregious wrongs" Virginia settlers committed against Native Americans, the state’s role in the start and facilitation of America’s legacy in the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade (which ended in 1808) and institutionalization of domestic slavery (breeding slaves) from 1808 to 1865, is what has grabbed the nation’s attention. In an effort to make amends, a national controversy has been reignited. Should America apologize for slavery? The way Virginia has approached the issue, it has come very close. In what might become a "first, the States--then the nation" approach, Virginia is using carefully worded terms like "profound regret" and "egregious wrongs" to "bring closure" on the state’s involvement in slavery. However, the state just can’t bring itself to say, "we’re sorry," or "we apologize" for slavery, because it opens the door for a discussion on reparations. The statement is purely semantics, to appease the guilt of some without admitting liability. Coming close to an apology is good enough for them, but is it good enough for us? It’s time to talk about it as "near apologies" puts semantics over sentiment on the slavery issue.

Virginia had the longest slave history in British colonies, with most historians, by and large, suggesting that the first 20 enslaved Africans arrived in Jamestown in 1619 (though other historians confirm that England’s first slave voyage was in 1555 when slave trader John Hawkins brought 300 slaves to North America [Santa Domingo], causing the Spanish to ban British from trading in the West Indies). Enslaved Africans were actually on the North American continent nearly one hundred years earlier with a documented presence in New Spain (now Mexico) in the 1520s, but it’s Jamestown that is credited with making involuntary servitude an accepted part of American culture long before it became associated with the deep South. Now Virginia wants to apologize…or do they? As the House of Delegates took on the task of broaching the question of an apology for slavery, the nation got a chance to see just how far below the surface of America’s already "thin" American skin the topic is. The initial measure was, in fact, a resolution apologizing for Virginia’s role in slavery. But objections to the apology changed the measure’s tone and intent.

One of its Republican members, delegate Frank D. Hargrove, opposed the measure stating that slavery ended 140 years ago and that black people "should get over" it (slavery). Black people are the only ones in the history of the world who are expected to "get over" the deconstruction of their cultural heritage, and have attempts to address the pain and repair the damage trivialized in public debate. He even went as far as to rationalize his opposition by asking if the Jews should apologize for killing Christ too, inferring that some things are best left alone. While the killing of Jesus was no trivial matter, it didn’t happen in the United States less than seven generations removed. It’s a highly sensitive matter with many Whites because they know the appropriate steps in healing are admission of the wrong, confession of the hurt, apology for the pain and reparation for the damage done. America (the nation) and White America (the culture) never wants to have a repatriation discussion with Black America. One, because they can’t return African Americans to their countries of origin in sufficient numbers, and secondly, they can’t restore African Americans to their previous culture status at the time the wrongs were committed.

Nearly 300 years of life-long servitude, by an inestimatable number, leaves America in a position it couldn’t possibly repair or reparate. And if they tried to address reparations, where would the number start? Try four trillion dollars (at last estimate, in the late 1990s), which is most of the wealth of the nation. The interest owed on reparations to descendents of slaves in America is in the hundreds of millions of dollars annually. This is not a conversation America is looking forward to, because it’s not a debt that America can pay (in dollars-but they can pay it in other ways). Now, that takes us to a decision point: does America ever want to pay reparations? The semantics that they’re playing in the apology over slavery should give one that answer. But America will never heal, racially or socially, until it’s addressed. Maybe it’s not Blacks that need to get over slavery. Maybe, just maybe, it’s time white America acknowledge the damage done and apologize, so both sides can heal. Maybe they need to get over their objection to reparations, so the vestiges of slavery can be eliminated and everyone can be made whole. Near apologies, without a sincere reparations follow-up conversation, won’t heal Blacks and it really doesn’t heal Whites.

In the meantime, we walk a slow road to an apology. I went to all twelve dictionaries I own and looked up the word "apology", and in each one, "regret" was a primary or secondary definition. But the state of Virginia purposely avoided using the word "apology" because the word acknowledges wrongdoing and amends having to be made. They wanted to avoid the reparations question. And they did, for now. So, at least in the state of Virginia, it looks like we’re almost there. Almost.

I guess for now, a near apology will have to do. At least until African Americans figure out how to work around the semantics of America confessing for slavery-- without paying.

Anthony Asadullah Samad is a national columnist, managing director of the Urban Issues Forum and author of the upcoming book, Saving The Race: Empowerment Through Wisdom. His Website is www.AnthonySamad.com.

British Official Offers Apology

2007-02-16T10:35:00.000-05:00

Cabinet Minster, Peter Hain, apologize for Northern Ireland and Wales' role in the Trans-Atlantic Slave trade. In doing so he has gone further than Prime Minister Tony Blair, who has expressed only "deep sorrow."
Links to the story:
Guardian Unlimited: "Hain Under Fire for Slave Trade Apology"
Metro: "Hain Apologises over Slave Trade"

PRESS RELEASE: CURE Response to VA Apology

2007-02-15T22:21:00.000-05:00

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tuesday, February 6th, 2007
For further information, contact:

Ida Hakim, 770-964-3963
Larry Yates, 540-436-9357
http://www.reparationsthecure.org/

Virginia's Regret will Not Heal the Wound, Says Group
As the Cradle of Slavery Begins to Face its Legacy

"My state of Virginia is the cradle of U.S. slavery," said Larry Yates, a resident of Virginia's Shenandoah Valley, and member of the leadership of Caucasians United for Reparations and Emancipation. "For that reason, I consider it worth national attention that our political leadership has taken even a small step towards facing that legacy in a public, institutional manner."

A resolution that passed the House of Delegates of the Commonwealth of Virginia on February 2, includes this language: "The General Assembly hereby expresses its profound regret for the Commonwealth's role in sanctioning the immoral institution of human slavery, in the historic wrongs visited upon native peoples, and in all other forms of discrimination and injustice that have been rooted in racial and cultural bias and misunderstanding," The resolution must also pass the Senate and be signed by the Governor.

The Assembly's website claims a history for itself which "dates from the establishment of the House of Burgesses at Jamestown in 1619." Jamestown in 1619 also saw the establishment of North American chattel slavery.

African-American legislators proposed the resolution of apology for Virginia's role in slavery. Although those who introduced the resolution stated explicitly they were not seeking reparations, the General Assembly's leadership insisted on an expression of "regret" rather than "apology" for slavery, afraid to "open the door" to reparations or any statement of their own liability.

"It is not within the Virginia General Assembly's power to 'close the door' on the call for justice," said Hugh Esco, CURE activist and twice a Green Party candidate for Lieutenant Governor of Georgia. "I express regret for the victims of natural disaster far from my home. I apologize for my role in perpetuating the culture we've inherited which privileges us as white people. Historically, a 17th Century Virginia statute was the first to draw a legal distinction between White and Black. It is time that white folks, not just in Virginia, but from the shores of Georgia to the shores of Alaska and Hawaii stepped into a conversation which can heal these wounds and recover our humanity."

The results of the enslavement of Africans have often preoccupied the Virginia legislature. It imposed harsher restrictions on people of African descent after Nat Turner's rebellion, initiated the 1902 constitution that restricted suffrage, joined other Southern legislatures in calling for "massive resistance" against school desegregation in the 1950s, and has maintained restrictions on voting by ex-felons in recent years.

"Since the establishment of this cruel market-based form of involuntary servitude," said Yates, "Virginia has been in the situation described by Thomas Jefferson as 'having a wolf by the ears,' unwilling to let go but unable to really maintain control. Today, once again, Virginia sought to appease the pressures of history and the call for justice, without giving up white dominance or facing real responsibility."

At least one senior white legislator actively opposed the resolution in this legislative session. Delegate Frank Hargove, a respected and powerful member of the Republican majority, urged African-Americans "to get over slavery." In the ensuing embarrassment, it became clear that the General Assembly had to pass the resolution, but leaders still acted to water it down.

"The white majority in the Virginia General Assembly will not be the ones to determine how the great wound of slavery will be made whole," said CURE Founder and CEO Ida Hakim, of Georgia. "We continue to support the call for full and complete reparations. We see this expression of regret by the General Assembly as a small step, at best, in the moral journey of whites. Every day, whites continue to do harm with our denial, while enjoying the vast disparity of resources between the heirs of the beneficiaries of slavery and the heirs of those who were enslaved. CURE looks forward to a time when moral values and personal responsibility rise above white self-interest."

EVENTS: In NYC and Jackson, Mississippi

2007-02-13T07:24:00.000-05:00

This was posted on the NCOBRA listserv.

IN NEW YORK CITY:

ON FEBRUARY 22, 2007
HEALTHCARE-NOW! PRESENTS
IN HONOR OF BLACK HISTORY MONTH

TWO FREE PUBLIC PRESENTATIONS
AND BOOK SIGNINGS
BY NOTED AFRICAN AMERICAN MEDICAL SCHOLARS

Harriet Washington, a medical historian, will present her groundbreaking work that uncovers the sordid history of medical experimentation on African descendants from colonial times to the present, including, the current use of unethical methods to provide health “care” to Black people. She will sign her new book, Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present.

Frederick Newsome, M.D., an attending physician at Harlem Hospital, will present his paradigm-shifting analysis and examination of unique and profound issues regarding the meaning of clinical practice for the African descendant professional health provider. He will sign his new book, An African American Philosophy of Medicine.

Ajamu Sankofa, a national organizer for Healthcare-Now! will offer brief remarks of why a national single-payer health system (H.R. 676) in the United States is urgently relevant to the quality of life of all people of African descent residing in the United States.

Torian Easterling, a fourth-year medical student at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey will moderate the event.

Books will be available for sale. Information is POWER.

DATE: Thursday, February 22, 2007
PLACE: St. Mary’s Episcopal Church
521 West 126th Street New York, NY 10027
TIME: 7 PM to 9:30 PM

Co-sponsors: New York City Chapter of Healthcare-NOW!; Latinos for National Health Insurance; Million Worker March; Muslim Women’s Institute for Research and Development; Brenda Stokely of the NYC Katrina Solidarity Committee; National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (N’COBRA); NYC Chapter of National Conference of Black Lawyers (NCBL); Student National Medical Association-Region IX; The Institute of the Black World, 21st Century, and Physicians for a National Health Plan.

Healthcare-NOW!
339 Lafayette Street, New York, NY 10012-2725
Phone: (212) 475-8530 or (800) 453-1305
www.healthcare-now.org

IN MISSISSIPPI:

Black Grassroots Political Movement

presents it 2007 1st Quarter Mini-Convention

on Saturday, March 24, 2007 at Tougaloo College

in Holmes Hall

from 9am - noon.

Topics of discuss

1. Adding African American History to the Education Curriculum in JSP & all Miss School Districts

2. Reviewing JSP's "Zero Tolerance Policy" and its impact on educating our children, which is suppose to be the number 1 priority of the district.

[If it ain't broke don't fit it, but if it is what?]

3. Jackson-MS NCOBRA's - "No Reconciliation without Reparations Campaign"

4. Testimonies from survivers from lynched, murdered and violently harassed African Americans by the Miss KKK and Miss law enforcement.

The Quarterly Mini-Conventions are free & open to the public

for more info call 601.957-2969

CURRENT TV: Short Documentary about Reparations

2007-02-08T08:12:00.000-05:00

"Untold Legacy" is a short documentary about the reparations movement produced by Leslie Brown. Current TV accepted it as part of its "Seeds of Tolerance" series. It is a very good treatment of the proposed slavery era disclosure legislation presented to the New York City Mayor Bloomberg administration and the NY City Council. It is also a good primer for the issue of reparations. Click here for a brief description from the film's distributor, Third World Newsreel. Enjoy!

Event: A FORUM ON REPARATIONS

2007-02-07T10:54:00.000-05:00

There will be a reparations forum in New York City in 2 weeks. Check it out!
salimah

THE NEW YORK CHAPTER OF THE
NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF KAWAIDA ORGANIZATIONS (NAKO)
PRESENTS
A FORUM ON REPARATIONS

SPEAKERS INCLUDE:
Kibibi Tyehimba: Ms. Tyehimba is the female co-chair of the National Coalition Of Blacks for Reparations in America (N’COBRA). She has served as Co-Chair of the Legislative
Commission, and Co-Chair of the DC Metropolitan Chapter of NCOBRA.

Wautella ibn Yusuf: Mr. Yusuf is Co-Chair of Washington Metropolitan Chapter of the National Coalition Of Blacks for Reparations in America (N’COBRA); co-author of BLACK
REPARATIONS: American Slavery & Its Vestiges;

ALSO INVITED:
DR. CJ MUNFORD, Author of Race & Reparations and
DEADRIA FARMER-PAELLMAN, Plaintiff in Reparations Lawsuit

SUNDAY FEB. 25, 2007 3-6PM
AT THE AFRIKAN POETRY THEATER
176-03 JAMAICA AVE., JA, NY 11432

FREE ADMISSION DONATIONS REQUESTED

FOR DIRECTIONS & INFORMATION CALL
(718) 523.3312 /398.1729

VA Lawmakers Pass Apology Resolution

2007-02-05T07:51:00.000-05:00

As reported by the Washington Post, Virginia State Lawmakers have passed a resolution that expressed "profound regret" for Virginia's involvement in the slave trade. Virginia is the first state in the Union to make a major step towards expressing remorse for the enslavement of Africans. The states, more than the federal government, are leading the movement towards making real and symbolic amends for US involvement in slavery. Will this movement have any effect on the federal government or the courts?

NYT: "Barclays Arena Deal Raises a Reputed Link to Slavery"

2007-02-02T14:36:00.000-05:00

Another article about the Barclay's naming rights deal for the new home of the NJ Nets basketball team in Brooklyn. One note about this article: I do not like how the writer gave the race of everyone who gave an opinion including the historian from Rutgers University. Why should we care about the race of the historian? Would the same be done in a piece about Holocaust reparations?

Barclays Arena Deal Raises a Reputed Link to Slavery
New York Times

By ANTHONY RAMIREZ
Published: February 2, 2007

Hakeem Jeffries, a state assemblyman who supports the $4 billion Atlantic Yards project near Downtown Brooklyn, has denounced an important facet of it — the name for the new arena for the Nets basketball team, which he called an affront to the black community.

Another supporter, Roger L. Green, a former assemblyman, has said the Nets naming deal contributed too little money to help Brooklyn.

With all the public criticism and praise laid at the doorstep of the Atlantic Yards project, the naming of the arena did not figure to be controversial. Last week, Bruce Ratner, the owner of the Nets and the president of Forest City Ratner, the Atlantic Yards developer, announced that the British bank Barclays would pay $400 million over 20 years for naming rights to the 18,000-seat stadium, to be called the Barclays Center.

Barclays’ accusers say the bank’s early founders had ties to the African slave trade in the 18th century. More recently, they say, the bank cooperated with the apartheid regime of South Africa. A spokesman for Barclays denied both claims.

In remarks reported last Friday in The Brooklyn Paper, a local weekly that is critical of the Atlantic Yards project, Mr. Jeffries said, “Of all of the companies in the world to pursue a naming rights agreement, Barclays is inappropriate to be in a borough which has one of the largest populations of African descent in this country,” Mr. Jeffries, who is black, said in an interview.

He said he would discuss the agreement with Forest City Ratner officials. “All options should be on the table, and those options should include termination of the agreement or Barclays compensating the community for the wrongs” of the slave trade, Assemblyman Jeffries said.

Mr. Green, who is also black, said that Barclays, one of the wealthiest corporations in the world, had agreed to pay $2.5 million for park renovation and other projects. “At least as a point of negotiation,” he said, “we should seek far more.”

He added, “If we were to exclude all the corporations that participated in the slave trade, there would only be a handful of companies” for Forest City Ratner to negotiate with.

Forest City Ratner, which is the development partner in building a new Midtown headquarters for The New York Times Company, declined to comment.

Letitia James, a city councilwoman who opposes the project, said, “The reason that Barclays is the largest bank in the world by total assets is because their assets represent fruit from a poisoned tree.”

Peter Truell, a spokesman for Barclays, said, “Claims that Barclays was founded on the profits of slavery are untrue.” He also said that Barclays withdrew from South Africa in 1986, six years before the end of apartheid, and was one of the first to return to the country in 1995, after the fall of apartheid.

“Indeed, David Barclay, who was a partner in one of the primary Quaker banks in the 1770s that eventually merged to form Barclays, was opposed to slavery,” Mr. Truell added.

In an 1801 book entitled “An Account of the Emancipation of the Slaves of Unity Valley Pen, in Jamaica,” David Barclay wrote, “Having been a slave owner, and much dissatisfied in being so, I determined to try the experiment of liberating my slaves; firmly convinced, that the retaining my fellow creatures in bondage was not only irreconcileable with the precepts of Christianity, but subversive of the rights of human nature.”

Christopher Leslie Brown, a Rutgers history professor and an expert on the early British Empire, said in an interview that the Barclay family were slave owners, but minor ones.

Mr. Brown, who is black and the author of the 2006 book “Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism,” said, “The point I would make about these banks, like Barclays, is that much of the wealth generated in the 18th century came either directly or indirectly out of either the slave trade or plantations” in Virginia, Jamaica and Barbados.

He added, “This game of ‘gotcha!’ — pointing out this particular bank had relationships with slave traders or slaveholders — gets a little bit silly because all banks did. Barclays is not unusual in being connected to the history of slavery, nor is it unusually innocent.”

EVENT: Reparations Film Screening TODAY

2007-02-01T10:25:00.000-05:00

"Slave Reparations: The Final Passage" is a 28 minute documentary that provides an overview of the reparations movement and responds to the arguments typically made against the payment of reparations to African Americans. It features a number of plaintiffs who filed lawsuits against financial services companies that profited directly from the Transatlantic Slave Trade, some of the attorneys who represented them, Dr. Manning Marable of Columbia University, and Dr. Alivn Poussaint of Harvard University among others.

After the film, Diane Sammons, one of the lead attorneys from one of the class action lawsuits brought against three financial services/insurance companies will discuss how she got involved in the cases, the current status of the litigation, and test case litigation in general.

Refreshments will be served.

Sponsored by the Brooklyn Law School chapter of the Black Law Students
Association

When: This Thursday February 1st from 6 to 8 PM

Where: 200 State Street in the Forchelli Center (2,3,4,5 trains to
Borough Hall or the A, C, F trains to Jay Street Borough Hall)

Please RSVP to blsa@brooklaw.edu

Another Post about PBS Doc African American Lives

2007-01-30T22:47:00.000-05:00

Here's a good article from February 2006 reviewing the series, African American Lives. It also talks about some of the science behind the genetic tests used in the program. And yes, this, too, is not reparations related. But it's interesting.

Deep Roots and Tangled Branches
by Troy Duster

People who know their biological parents and grandparents typically take the information for granted. Some have a difficult time empathizing with the passionate genealogical quests of adoptees and, increasingly, products of anonymous sperm banks and other new technologies where one or both genetic contributors are unknown. In recent years, new legislation has enabled people to search for information about genetic progenitors—even in cases where there had been a signed agreement of nondisclosure. The laserlike focus of that search can be as relentless as Ahab's hunt for the white whale.

Mystery of lineage is the stuff of great literature. Mark Twain made use of it for biting social commentary in his Pudd'nhead Wilson, a story about the mix-up of babies born to a slave and a free person. Sophocles, Shakespeare, Molière, and Dickens built grand tragedy and enduring comedy on the theme. In England in 2002, a white Englishwoman gave birth to mixed-race twins after a mix-up at an in vitro fertilization clinic. Imagine what Shakespeare would have done with that!

If one person's passions can be so riled by such a puzzle, imagine the emotions involved when the uncertainty applies to a whole group - say, of 12 million people. The middle passage did just that to Americans of recent African descent. Names were obliterated from record books, and slaves were typically anointed with a new single first name. Sometimes no names were recorded, just the slaves' numbers, ages, and genders. Some African-Americans have deliberately and actively participated in the erasure, showing no desire to pursue a genealogical trail. For others, fragments of oral history generate a fierce longing to do the detective work.

That is the case among the prominent subjects featured in "African American Lives," a two-night, four-part PBS series scheduled for February 1 and 8. The host and executive co-producer is Henry Louis Gates Jr., chairman of the department of African and African-American studies at Harvard. Gates has assembled eight notably successful African-Americans, among them the media entrepreneur Oprah Winfrey, the legendary music producer Quincy Jones, and the film star Whoopi Goldberg. Each participant, along with Gates, is the subject of some serious professional family-tree tracing. There are surprises for each of them, and the series has undeniable human-interest appeal.

But there are other reasons why it is likely to be a staple for courses on history, family and kinship, and African-American studies for years to come. Who knew that before the Emancipation Proclamation, more than 250,000 free blacks lived below the Mason-Dixon line? We learn that the kinds of fears that preoccupied them in their daily lives were partially mitigated when they bonded in one place, permitting them to vouch for each other's long-term community standing if a white person came and tried to claim them as slaves.

The first three segments are very much driven by traditional genealogical research, the hard work of ferreting through archival materials, birth and death certificates, deeds, trusts, estates and wills, church records, and, inevitably, the sale of slaves. One of the patterns discernible at the outset is the speed of some tales of rags to riches and meteoric ascendancy from modest circumstance to extraordinary accomplishment. The Johns Hopkins neurosurgeon Benjamin Carson, who performed pioneering work in separating twins joined at the head, is the son of a domestic. Winfrey's story is fairly well known - as a child, she was sexually abused and shuttled between homes until finally becoming more settled as a late teenager.

Gates deserves special praise for the way in which he weaves biographies into the larger social and historical context. Reconstruction comes to life in the form of Winfrey's grandfather, Constantine Winfrey, who was illiterate as slavery ended. He taught himself how to read and write, then sponsored a new school, all the while raising a family and tilling the soil. The comedian Chris Tucker's great-grandfather was a beneficent church minister who purchased a large plot of land upon which the sanctuary was built. To keep his congregation together, he sold small plots to members. The Harvard sociologist Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot's ancestors left New England to start a trade school in the South to help the newly freed slaves find employment.

None of the participants knew the rich details of these histories, and the "only in America" element is compelling.

At another level, however, the series performs a disturbing sleight of hand. Conventional wisdom has it that we can choose our friends, but that our families are a given. But with long-term genealogical work, there is a sense in which this can be inverted. We each have two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, etc. As Gates points out in the fourth segment, current technology permits us to link via DNA analysis to only two specific lines. On the Y chromosome, one's father's father's DNA, going back as far as we can locate the genetic material, can be determined with a high degree of certainty. (That is how Thomas Jefferson - or one of his brothers - was definitively linked to Sally Hemmings's offspring.) On the female side, mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) can link one's mother's mother's mother going back as far as we can garner the DNA. So, while we have 64 great-great-great-great-grandparents, the technology allows us to locate only two of those 64, if we're going back six generations, as our real legacy and genetic link to the past. But what of the other 62? Those links are equal contributors to our genetic makeup, and we ignore them only because we do not have access to them.

What an arbitrary "choice" of a branch on the family tree!

At one point, upon learning that 50 percent of his ancestry has been traced by DNA analysis to Europe, and that both his maternal and paternal lines are also "European," Gates jokingly asks if he still qualifies to be chairman of African-American studies at Harvard.

But for many, that is no laughing matter. The Black Seminoles are struggling with this very question - whether to use DNA analysis to "authenticate" their relationship to the Seminoles. The reason is straightforward and serious: money. The federal government, pursuant to a land-settlement claim, made an award to Seminole Indians in 1976 and is poised to distribute upward of $60-million.

In 2000 the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma amended its constitution so that members needed to show "one-eighth Seminole blood." The Black Seminoles could use either Y-chromosome analysis or mitochondrial DNA to link themselves through very thin chains back on two edges of the genealogical axis (mother's mother's mother, etc.; or father's father's father, etc.), but that would miss all other grandparents (14 of 16, 30 of 32, 62 of 64).

One attempt to fill in the blanks is the use of a technology called admixture mapping through ancestry-informative markers, or AIM's. Unlike Y DNA or mtDNA tests, this technology examines groups' relative sharedness of genetic markers found on the autosomes - the nonsex chromosomes inherited from both parents.

In the last segment of the series, each of the nine subjects, including Gates, is given information using molecular genetics and computer-assisted analysis of all three kinds of DNA markers. Each of the subjects accepts the ostensibly scientific news of his or her percentage ancestry, deduced by AIM's - that is, African or European or Native American - as if it were of the same certainty as a clerk's entry of a birth date on a certificate. Oprah is crestfallen when she is told that she is not Zulu.

Gates has no match to Africa at all using the conventional tests ? so he deploys Mark D. Shriver, a Pennsylvania State University geneticist at the forefront of admixture mapping, to conduct a special test for him. Gates's autosomes are compared to the small set of African samples Shriver has in his database, from no more than six West African regions. When compared against those few, Gates is closest to the Mende people of Sierra Leone.

Shriver himself seems wary of these results. He surely knows the clusters of DNA are at best crude approximations completely contingent on available samples. Africa has over 700 million inhabitants, and among them it has the greatest amount of human genetic variation found on any of the seven continents. Depending on methods, some regions will be completely missed, while others will be oversampled. The scientists who do the analysis will freely admit that when pressed, but the seekers' eagerness to know spurs a willingness to accept as definitive these artifacts of sampling contingencies.

Ancestry-informative markers (with one exception) are shared across all human groups. It is therefore not their presence or absence, but their rate of incidence, or frequency, that is being analyzed. When taken together, these markers appear to yield certain patterns in people and populations tested. A specific pattern of alleles - corresponding genes on each of a set of chromosomes - that have a high frequency in the "Native Americans" sampled then become established as a "Native American" ancestry result. The problem is that millions of people around the globe will have a similar pattern ? that is, they'll share similar base-pair changes at the genomic points under scrutiny. This means that someone from Hungary whose ancestors go back to the 15th century could map as partly "Native American," although no direct ancestry is responsible for the shared genetic material. AIM's, however, arbitrarily reduce all such possibilities of shared genotypes to "inherited direct ancestry." In so doing, the process relies excessively on the idea of 100-percent purity, a condition that could never have existed in human populations.

To make claims about how a test subject's patterns of genetic variation map to continents of origin and to populations where particular genetic variants arose, the researchers need reference populations. The public needs to understand that these reference populations comprise relatively small groups of contemporary people. Moreover, researchers must make many untested assumptions in using these contemporary groups to stand in for populations from centuries ago representing a continent or an ethnic or tribal group. To construct tractable mathematical models and computer programs, researchers make many assumptions about ancient migrations, reproductive practices, and the demographic effects of historical events such as plagues and famines. Furthermore, in many cases, genetic variants cannot distinguish among tribes or national groups because the groups are too similar, so geneticists are on thin ice telling people that they do or don't have ancestors from a particular people.

Instead of asserting that someone has no Native American ancestry, the most truthful statement would be: "It is possible that while the Native American groups we sampled did not share your pattern of markers, others might since these markers do not exclusively belong to any one group of our existing racial, ethnic, linguistic, or tribal typologies." But computer-generated data provide an appearance of precision that is dangerously seductive.

There is a yet more ominous and troubling element of the reliance upon DNA analysis to determine who we are in terms of lineage, identity, and identification. The very technology that tells us what proportion of our ancestry can be linked, proportionately, to sub-Saharan Africa (ancestry-informative markers) is the same being offered to police stations around the country to "predict" or "estimate" whether the DNA left at a crime scene belongs to a white or black person. This "ethnic estimation" using DNA relies on a social definition of the phenotype. That is, in order to say that someone is 85 percent African, we must know who is 100 percent African. Any molecular, population, or behavioral geneticist is obliged to disclose that this "purity" is a statistical artifact that begins not with the DNA, but with a researcher's adopting the folk categories of race and ethnicity. With the demonstrable skew of the incarcerated population over the last few decades along social categories of race, African-Americans need to be particularly sensitive to the use of phenotype as the starting point for understanding genotype.

The fourth part of "African American Lives" would have benefited from a lot more scientific humility about just how much we can know about our "percentage ancestry." Oprah may have some Zulu (among the "other 62") in her lineage that current technology can neither tap nor exclude. And since nothing in the current state of scientific knowledge can rule that out, we should be so informed by an otherwise enlightening series. The Bantu migration entailed massive movements of people across the African continent. So it is possible that as a "West African," Oprah could indeed have a Bantu link somewhere in the ancestral pedigree. That this possible link might not be called Zulu is more a function of social definition and historical effect.

So, since the jury is still out, don't resign your post, Professor Gates. And nervous jokes aside, let's all recognize that scientific imprecision on matters of identity and identification have implications far graver than the undermining of a TV program's entertainment value.

"Oprah's Roots": Discovering and Owning Our Past

2007-01-29T09:57:00.000-05:00

I watched PBS's Oprah's Roots and it is wonderful. If you didn't watch it, try to catch it on reruns. This was a supplement to last year's program entitled African Americans Lives where it looked at several famous African Americans' family lineages. Oprah's Roots went more in-depth into Oprah's family history. Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. traced Oprah's lineage back on both sides of her family, to her slave ancestors and all the way back to Africa.

At times, the program was very moving. I, too, like many African Americans, long to learn my family history. This program gave me hope that it is possible to trace them all the way back to a specific tribe in Africa; something that has never been dreamed of being possible until now.

In February 2008, according to Boston Herald, there will another African American Lives program featuring Beyonce Knowles, Morgan Freeman, and Tina Turner. Also there will be a contest for the chance of an average African American to be featured.

In a way, this program is akin to reparations. It was partially funded by PBS and PBS gets it funding from the federal government. And why shouldn't our government pay? What a great idea for the government, that worked to destroy the roots of African Americans, to reverse the damage by sponsoring these kinds of programs.

The federal government should go further (and it has in part) to provide the resources to African Americans who are trying to reconstruct their past. In some cases, the federal government could just make accessible what is already open to its citizens. Many African Americans cannot afford hiring genealogists to trace their roots. Making the documents held at the National Archives and Records Administration and the Library of Congress available online would be a great start. Some are already available, but the majority are not.

ACTION PLAN
Here are some ideas for you to start tracing your roots:

1.Visit the National Archives and Records Administration and learn about how you can trace your own roots. They have great ideas on how to start your search and even host seminars in various locations around the country.

2. Start talking to your family members and write or record what they say. This is the first step in doing a genealogy of your family. Try to collect documents, letters, bibles, and memorabilia. You will need this along with their stories to start reconstructing the past.

3. Become a part of the National Geographic Human Genome Project and at the same time learn about your genetic ancestors for the cost of a Benjamin! For a more in-depth analysis there are other, more expensive tests you can do. Check out this website for other places that can trace your DNA.

4. Write to your congressman about sponsoring bills that would provide more funding to initiatives to digitize the collections held by our government.

So go out there and discover your roots.

Barclays’ apartheid past further taints Atlantic Yards project

2007-01-28T10:50:00.000-05:00

I am suprised that ACORN has come down on the side of big business.

Barclays’ apartheid past further taints Atlantic Yards project
by TANANGACHI MFUNI
Amsterdam News Staff
Originally posted 1/25/2007

The Atlantic Yards Nets stadium isn’t the only controversial “Atlantic” project banking giant Barclays is affiliated with.
The British bank--which announced last Thursday it purchased the naming rights to the divisive Brooklyn arena--also invested in the trans-Atlantic slave trade 300 years ago, angry Brooklyn leaders say. Barclays also has a history of profiting from South Africa’s apartheid regime and the Jewish holocaust.
“The reason why they are the largest bank in the world is because they financed slavery, supported apartheid in South Africa and took financial awards from holocaust survivors,” charged Downtown Brooklyn Councilwoman Letitia James in a phone interview. [more]

TV: Oprah looks for her roots

2007-01-24T16:12:00.000-05:00

Check out Oprah's new series tonight at 8pm, "Oprah's Roots." I loved African American Lives, the documentary about Henry Louis Gates, Jr. helping several well-known African Americans trace their genetic and family history. It was really inspiring. I am still trying to do this myself. Here's a link to a review of the tonight's program: "Back to her future: Oprah Winfrey traces family roots on 30th anniversary of landmark miniseries

NYT: "In Douglass Tribute, Slave Folklore and Fact Collide"

2007-01-24T16:06:00.000-05:00

This is an interesting article. Totally not reparations related.

January 23, 2007
In Douglass Tribute, Slave Folklore and Fact Collide
By NOAM COHEN

At the northwest corner of Central Park, construction is under way on Frederick Douglass Circle, a $15.5 million project honoring the escaped slave who became a world-renowned orator and abolitionist.

Beneath an eight-foot-tall sculpture of Douglass, the plans call for a huge quilt in granite, an array of squares, a symbol in each, supposedly part of a secret code sewn into family quilts and used along the Underground Railroad to aid slaves. Two plaques would explain this.

The only problem: According to many prominent historians, the secret code — the subject of a popular book that has been featured on no less a cultural touchstone than “The Oprah Winfrey Show” — never existed. And now the city is reconsidering the inclusion of the plaques, so as not to “publicize spurious history,” Kate D. Levin, the city’s commissioner of cultural affairs, said yesterday.

The plaques may go, but they have spawned an energetic debate about folklore versus fact, and who decides what becomes the lasting historical record.

The memorial’s link between Douglass, who escaped slavery from Baltimore at age 20, and the coded designs has puzzled historians. But what particularly raised the historians’ ire were the two plaques, one naming the code’s symbols and the other explaining that they were used “to indicate the location of safe houses, escape routes and to convey other information vital to a slave’s escape and survival.”

It’s “a myth, bordering on a hoax,” said David Blight, a Yale University historian who has written a book about Douglass and edited his autobiography. “To permanently associate Douglass’s life with this story instead of great, real stories is unfortunate at best.”

The quilt theory was first published in the 1999 book “Hidden in Plain View,” by Jacqueline Tobin, a journalist and college English instructor from Denver, and Raymond Dobard, a quilting and African textiles expert. It was based on the recollections of Ozella McDaniel Williams, a teacher in Los Angeles who became a quiltmaker in Charleston, S.C. “Ozella’s code,” the book says, was handed down from slave times from mother to daughter. Ms. Williams died in 1998.

According to “Hidden in Plain View,” slaves created quilts with codes to advise those fleeing captivity. What looked to the slave master like an abstract panel on a quilt being “aired out” on a porch in fact represented a reminder, say, to be sure to follow a zigzag path to avoid being tracked when escaping. In Ms. Williams’s account, there was a sequence of 10 panels to guide an escaping slave, beginning with a “monkey wrench” pattern meaning to gather up tools and supplies and concluding with a star, a reminder to head north.

The authors say that people have tried to make too much of the book, which they intended to be one family’s story. “I would say there has been a great deal of misunderstanding about the code,” Dr. Dobard said. “In the book Jackie and I set out to say it was a set of directives. It was a beginning, not an end-all, to stir people to think and share those stories.”

Even before the book was published, the codes in “Hidden in Plain View” got a boost from “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” which had Dr. Dobard, a quilter himself, as a guest in November 1998. The show was rebroadcast on Martin Luther King’s Birthday in 1999, the day before the book was published, according to Janet Hill, who edited it and is now a vice president of Doubleday. That same day, Ms. Hill wrote in an e-mail message, the book was featured in USA Today. “The book seemed to take off from there,” she wrote.

There are currently 207,000 copies in print, she said. The codes are frequently taught in elementary schools (teachers have been eager to take up the quilting-codes theory because of its useful pedagogic elements — a secret code, artwork and a story of triumph), and the patterns represent a small industry within quiltmaking.

Algernon Miller, who designed the memorial site, said he “was inspired by this story line,” which he discovered in the library. His was a re-interpretation, he said, noting that he was “taking a soft material, a quilt, and converting it into granite.”

“Traditionally what African-Americans do is take something and reinterpret into another form,” he said.

The team of Mr. Miller and a sculptor, Gabriel Koren, were selected in January 2003, from six proposals in a competition organized by the Studio Museum in Harlem. While the project, which involves rebuilding roadways, will cost more than $15 million in city, state and federal money, the 15,000-square-foot plaza and sculpture were commissioned for $750,000. It’s unclear how much it would cost to redesign it now. The memorial, at 110th Street and Frederick Douglass Boulevard, is expected to be completed in fall 2008.

Professor Blight raised his concerns shortly after reading an editorial column in The New York Times in November praising the project and treating the quilting codes as fact. He posted a message at an online discussion group for historians of slavery. “Unfortunately, this UGRR quilt code mythology has also managed to make its way onto the very permanent and very important Frederick Douglass Memorial,” he wrote, using initials to refer to the Underground Railroad. “Douglass never saw a quilt used to free any slaves in his day. Why do we need to pin this nonsense on him now?”

Dozens of postings later, one commentator this month posted a note cautioning that the discussion was threatening to “degenerate into an episode of ‘Historians Gone Wild.’ ”

“We are watching in real time an unfolding of belief in a story,” said Marsha MacDowell, a quilting expert and an art professor at Michigan State University. “It will take years to undo. It’s like Washington chopping down the cherry tree. It has finally been written out of the history books.”

Giles R. Wright, director of the Afro-American History Program at the New Jersey Historical Commission, rattled off the historians’ problems in a telephone interview: There is no surviving example of an encoded quilt from the period. The code was never mentioned in any of the interviews of ex-slaves carried out in the 1930’s by the Works Progress Administration. There is no mention of quilting codes in any diaries or memoirs from the period.

Mr. Miller responded to critics: “No matter what anyone has to say, they weren’t there in that particular moment, especially something that was in secret.”

John Reddick, who works for the Central Park Conservancy and helped shepherd the project through its financing and community board approval, noted that in less than a decade “Hidden in Plain View” had become “a touchstone to creative people” and compared the quilt code to the coded language in Negro spirituals. “Take ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,’ ” he said, “the slave master thinks you are talking about dying, and the slaves are talking about getting away.” He also noted the paradox of historians demanding written evidence when slaves were barred from learning to read and write.

On Ms. Winfrey’s show, Dr. Dobard appeared with the black descendants of Thomas Jefferson. That relationship was preserved in oral history across the centuries, even as historians of the past generally dismissed the claim. DNA tests published in 1998 are considered to have confirmed Jefferson’s paternity.

A spokeswoman for Harpo Productions, which produces the show, had no comment on the controversy.

A historian, Christopher Moore, who is research coordinator at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem, was consulted on the printed material in the memorial, which includes many quotations from Douglass.

In an interview, Mr. Moore said that as an unpaid consultant reviewing the project, he focused on the Douglass material, and gave cursory attention to the quilts.

When told of the historians’ objections, Mr. Moore said “it was a mistake” to include the text explaining the codes. He said he has since been asked to write a historically accurate text for the memorial.

Ms. Levin said she thought the memorial’s larger quilting theme was appropriate. “Something can inspire an artist that is not be based in fact,” she said. “This isn’t a work of history, it’s a work of art.”

Charlotte Observer: "Democrats apologize for 1898 violence"

2007-01-22T13:12:00.000-05:00

Finally a government body recognizing the linkages of our country's past to the tyranny practiced on Iraq by our country today. The anti-war movement and the Reparations movement are linked in this.

Democrats apologize for 1898 violence
State chair on racial conflict in Wilmington: `We're a different party'
JIM NESBITT
(Raleigh) News & Observer

ELON - The ruling body of the N.C. Democratic Party took a stand on searing issues of the past and present Saturday, adopting a resolution apologizing for the party's role in what is known as the 1898 Wilmington race riot and another calling for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq.

The first nonbinding measure repudiated the role of party leaders in the racially motivated violence of Nov. 17, 1898. Dozens of black citizens were killed in the fray, which terrorized and banished black businessmen, community leaders, journalists and their white allies.

The second measure, on the Iraq war, proved more controversial, drawing impassioned responses from several committee members. Their words reflected a split in Democratic ranks across the country between young, anti-war liberals older Democrats who don't want to dishonor the sacrifices of American troops.

"I do not see anything in this resolution that says we do not support the troops," said committee member Don Davis, mayor of Snow Hill in Greene County.

The Iraq war resolution notes that the fall election gave control of both the U.S. House and Senate to Democrats and calls for support of any measure that starts the withdrawal of troops by the summer of this year. It also calls on Congress to bar money for any permanent American bases in Iraq.

The Wilmington resolution, by contrast, drew no debate and was passed unanimously.

The violence of 1898 was the most notorious act of a white supremacy campaign that resulted in laws that denied the vote to blacks and poor whites across the state. The conflict gave rise to Jim Crow legislation that instituted segregation that remained in place until the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

State party Chairman Jerry Meek, who was unanimously re-elected by the committee Saturday, said the apology was an attempt to address the role of Democratic leaders and leading newspapers of the state -- including The (Raleigh) News & Observer and The Charlotte Observer -- in the riot and the party's subsequent statewide reign as proponents of white supremacy. That role was detailed in a 464-page report released in May by the 1898 Wilmington Race Riot Commission.

"Coming on the heels of the commission report, it's unmistakable our predecessors in the party played a significant role in disenfranchising African Americans, and I think there's a need to reflect upon that role and show that we're a different party than we were in 1898," said Meek, who initiated the resolution.

The resolution drew a lukewarm response from a leading member of the 1898 Wilmington Race Riot Commission and one of the state's top civil rights leaders. While both men praised the party's apology as a good first step, they said the party should pressure legislators to adopt the commission's 15 recommendations for redressing a historic wrong.

Those recommendations include establishing a Restructuring & Development Authority endowed by governments, media and businesses -- particularly those that benefited from the riot and subsequent takeover of state government by white supremacists. The commission also recommended creating a system for hearing claims for reparations by heirs of victims.

"Certainly, an apology is the minimum thing that is required," said Irving Joyner, a commission vice chairman and a law professor at N.C. Central University in Durham. "I would hope they would go further and look at all the recommendations in our report and seek to get all or some of them enacted by the legislature.

"That would show they are really serious about the apology and righting the wrongs of that overthrow."

OBIT: Co-Founder of Modern Reparations Dies

2007-01-21T09:38:00.000-05:00

This ran in the New York Times a couple of weeks ago. Very interesting person.

THE LIVES THEY LIVED; Segregationist Dreamer: MILTON HENRY b. 1919

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By FRANCIS WILKINSON
Published: December 31, 2006

In the 1960s, the phrase ''by any means necessary'' became a password of black militancy. But it had as many meanings as there are shades of brown. It was at once an authentic call to self-defense and the slipperiest cliché in the radical grab bag; a gauntlet hurled in exasperated defiance and an open invitation to thuggery. What ''means'' were truly ''necessary'' -- and to what end?

The question must have kept Milton Henry up nights, simultaneously stoking his righteous anger and testing his Christian forbearance as he desperately sought a way around the awful American dilemma. Like his brothers in the black-power movement and his white neighbors in affluent Bloomfield Hills, Mich., Henry never unwound America's racial tangle. But he led a remarkable life trying.

Born in Philadelphia in 1919, Henry was raised in a cultured Christian home chock full of professional aspirations for the family's 12 children. In World War II, Henry was inducted into the elite, all-black Tuskegee Airmen. While stationed in Alabama, he punched a white bus driver who had demanded that Henry use a rear entrance -- a decade before Rosa Parks instigated the Montgomery bus boycott. A group of British cadets on Henry's bus protected him from retaliation, probably saving his life.

After the war, Henry graduated from the historically black Lincoln University and traveled Philadelphia's black neighborhoods, discouraging young men from enlisting in the segregated armed forces. When a friend arranged to take an admissions exam at Yale Law School, Henry accompanied him and took the test, too. His friend was denied admission; Henry won a scholarship.

After graduation, Henry moved with his wife, Marilyn, and their young daughter to Pontiac, Mich., where in the 1950s Henry won election as a city commissioner, filed (and lost) one of the first school desegregation cases in the North and quickly became a role model for younger blacks.

''I had seen black lawyers before,'' says Elbert L. Hatchett, a Pontiac lawyer who told me he was inspired by Henry to attend law school. ''It's just that he's the first lawyer I ever saw who had the perception, the courage, the command of language -- he had it all.''

Frustrated by the pace of change, Henry was soon drawn to black nationalism. He met Malcolm X and traveled with him to Cairo to meet African leaders. Henry helped organize the 1963 conference in Detroit at which Malcolm delivered his Message to the Grass Roots. (A lifelong audiophile, Henry recorded and released the speech on his own record label.) He was a pallbearer at Malcolm's 1965 funeral.

By 1968, Henry and his brother Richard had adopted African names and developed a vaulting plan for racial separation. The Republic of New Africa, a socialist black nation, would be carved out of five Southern states with large black populations. In a move that helped ignite the contemporary reparations movement, the brothers demanded $400 billion in compensation from the U.S. government to descendants of slaves. Their offer to begin negotiations between the two nations received no reply.

Even as he staked his claim to a separatist dreamscape where the color of one's skin would be no less significant than the content of one's character, Henry kept his feet planted in the law and in the white-dominated court system in which he continued to represent clients. Then the dream turned violent.

Like the Black Panthers, the R.N.A. featured a cadre of young black men armed with rifles. At a March 1969 R.N.A. meeting at Detroit's New Bethel Baptist Church, a shootout erupted between the police and R.N.A. militants. Henry wasn't involved. But a young police officer was killed and another was wounded.

The R.N.A. splintered after the shooting. Henry's brother, now known as Imari Obadele, led a group to Mississippi to begin acquiring land. (Following another shootout, he went to jail on dubious conspiracy charges.) Henry stayed behind, remaining personally loyal to his brother while distancing himself politically. ''He did not want to be involved in the violence,'' says Godfrey Dillard, a longtime friend and Detroit lawyer.

Then, on a business trip to Ghana in the early '70s, Henry had an epiphany. He took a drive in the countryside where, according to an unpublished interview with Henry by Nick Salvatore, author of ''Singing in a Strange Land: C. L. Franklin, the Black Church and the Transformation of America,'' he happened upon a vestige of colonialism.

''I came upon this old English church,'' Henry told Salvatore in 2000, which had ''a weather-beaten sign out in front of it with the words of Paul on it: 'Know ye not but you are not your own. You've been born with a price, even the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.' ''

Henry returned to the U.S. and enrolled at Ashland Theological Seminary, determined to become a preacher. He continued practicing law (with his reputation for highlighting race when it suited his client's interests undiminished). But on Sundays, he preached from the pulpit of Christ Presbyterian, a church he founded in Southfield, Mich.

After having helped steer the civil rights movement to the brink of militant separatism, Henry had pulled back from the precipice. He didn't renounce the separatist path; he simply ceased to travel it, finding other means. He returned to his religious roots unbroken and unbowed, with both his spiritual bearings and political energy intact. His funeral included representatives of the Tuskegee Airmen, an honor guard of the Republic of New Africa and a phalanx of prominent lawyers, judges and clergy. All claimed him.