U.S. MUST PAY FOR ITS SINS
Slavery reparations are long overdue
How is it that I can go my whole life without learning an important piece of American history only to discover it on someone’s Facebook post? Because if it’s true — and it is — that this country once paid reparations as compensation in the aftermath of slavery, then it seems like that is something I should have heard about in a social studies class somewhere along the way.
I refer you to President Abraham Lincoln’s District of Columbia Emancipation Act of 1862 which freed slaves in the nation’s capital a full eight months before his Emancipation Proclamation did the same across the rest of the country.
The earlier act even included a provision for compensation, reparations, as it were.
Except, it wasn’t the slaves who were being compensated. It was the slave owners.
Now. If that doesn’t put a jolt in your Juneteenth celebration, I don’t know what will.
It should not surprise me that it took this long for me to learn this important history lesson. Accurate news about slavery in this country tends to travel slowly.
Case in point: Juneteenth, the holiday we are celebrating on Saturday.
This festivity marks the day in the nation’s history, June 19, 1865, when Black captives still working their owner’s land in Galveston, Texas, a stubborn Confederacy stronghold, learned that slavery had indeed been abolished and that they were actually free.
Never mind that slavery had actually been outlawed two and a half years earlier, the civil war was over, and that Lincoln, who had signed the
Emancipation Proclamation, had already been assassinated.
The Blacks in Galveston didn’t quibble over missing the memo. Freedom Day, as it is called in some circles, was indeed a day of jubilee, one that has been recognized over generations, including this one.
“By making Juneteenth a federal holiday, all Americans can feel the power of this day and learn from our history, and celebrate progress, and grapple with the distance we’ve come but the distance we have to travel too,” President Biden said Thursday at the White House, where he signed a bill making Juneteenth a federal holiday.
But no true commemoration of Juneteenth is really meaningful without an honest discussion about reparations, compensation for the descendants of men and women held in bondage in America whose stolen labor and lives poisoned this country from the very moment of its inception.
While the Juneteenth holiday, the first since a day was set aside in 1983 to honor Martin Luther King Jr., is a step in the right direction, the goal should be bigger.
We don’t really need another day off. What we need is for our country — yes, our country — a nation for which Black people fought and died in every war, a
country which built its wealth and monuments on the backs of forced Black labor, to finally make good on the restitution that continues to keep us apart.
“A crime has been committed and compensation is due,” said state Assemblyman Charles Barron. “They stole us, they worked us, they owe us.”
Barron is behind a bill that would set up a commission to study slavery and reparations for Black New Yorkers. The bill, which passed in the Assembly last week, is the only one in the nation that would have a commmunity-led mission. Why is that important?
“What’s the sense in having a commission if the very state that enslaved you in the first place, that created the harm, is in charge of determining the compensation?” Barron said.
“Some people say, ‘Well I didn’t oppress you. My European ancestors came at the turn of the century. Why should I have to pay?’ I don’t care if you came here last night, you benefited from the ill-gotten gains.”
Slavery was evil. Slavery was brutal. Slavery was theft, and rape and broke up families, and continues to benefit some while burdening others.
“Great nations don’t walk away,” Biden said. “We come to terms with the mistakes we’ve made.”
It’s time to right the wrong.
‘A crime has been committed and compensation is due. They stole us, they worked us, they owe us.’ ASSEMBLYMAN CHARLES BARRON