The City Council of Evanston, Illinois voted 8-1 in favor of paying reparations to African Americans for past legal discrimination in housing, and for the savage holocaust of slavery. Funds from the 3% tax on marijuana businesses are being used to issue $25,000 real estate assistance payments to African American Evanston residents and direct descendants of African Americans who lived in Evanston from 1919 to 1969. Evanston’s reparations vote is not an anomaly. It’s a harbinger of similar actions across America to pay the debt owed to African Americans for centuries of horrific enslavement that enriched America.
Governor Gavin Newsome signed a bill making California the first state to empower a 9 member panel to educate Californians about the history and legacy of slavery and systemic racism and make recommendations on how the state can pay reparations to African Americans. That put a target on Newsome’s head. Republicans funded a one and half million signature drive to place an initiative on the ballot to recall (fire) Newsome. Cities as different as Asheville, North Carolina, Amherst, Massachusetts and Iowa City, Iowa, as well as universities and corporations across the United States are considering paying reparations to African Americans.
Reparations not only compensate African Americans for slavery, they acknowledge the 100 years after the civil war of “Black Codes” – laws designed to take away the rights of newly freed Black people and insure a supply of cheap labor. These laws resulted in mass incarceration of African Americans, vigilante lynchings, police killings of unarmed Black people, theft of Black people and their property, “redlining” housing discrimination, governmental agencies like the Department of Agriculture and private banks’ discriminatory denial of loans to Black people, separate and unequal education and generational trauma.
Opponents who argue slavery was in the past and blacks should just “get over it,” ignore the 100 years of legal discrimination in housing, education, banking, and every aspect of the American economic system after slavery (1870 – 1970). Even after passage of The Voting Rights Act of 1965, The Fair Housing Act of 1968, landlords like Trump and banks continued to discriminate against African Americans. For example, in 2020 Wells Fargo was forced to pay $7.8 million to settle discrimination complaints brought by African American loan applicants.
There’s a long history of African Americans demanding reparations dating back to colonial time. One sister’s struggle in the 1880s after Emancipation exemplifies the resistance of the oppressors to paying the debt. Callie Guy House, with almost no schooling, organized chapters and had 300,000 members of the National Ex-Slave Mutual Relief Bounty and Pension Association. She knew the U.S. government had paid former slave owners for their human “property,” so she sought reparations in the form of pensions. Believing her to be “dangerous,” the government charged her with fraud (stirring up ex-slaves with talk about getting pensions for slavery when she knew the government was never going to pay ex-slaves). Ms. House wrote a letter to the government explaining why the ex-slaves earned payment for their unpaid labor, but an all white male jury convicted her and the judge sentenced her to one year in prison.
They thought imprisoning Ms. House would destroy the demand for justice, but in every generation, African Americans have stood up and joined the struggle for reparations. Dr. King said:
“America has given the Negro people a bad check: a check that has come back marked “Insufficient Funds.”
When I released my “Reparations” music video in 2018, many called me naïve (and that was one of the nicer remarks). I’ve been called a lot worse names for daring to write and sing a social justice song about payment for the debt owed to me and my people. Now in 2021 as more and more local and state governments, educational institutions and corporations begin paying reparations, it is evident that at last African Americans will receive some compensation for historical and present day atrocities. No amount of money will erase the violence and harm inflicted upon African Americans, but good faith payments of reparations will at least show some acknowledgment of the wrongs and willingness to change.
Peace and One Love…
Aria
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