In California, the preliminary report of a governmental task force suggests how the toll of slavery and white supremacy can be assessed—and compensated for.
In 1862, more than 900 enslavers living in the nation’s capital received money compensating them for the immediate emancipation of the more than 3,000 people they enslaved.
California Reparations Task Force
Office of the California Attorney General
The interim report surveys the ongoing and compounding harms experienced by African Americans as a result of slavery and systemic discrimination and includes a set of preliminary recommendations to the CA legislature to remedy those harms.
At the close of the Civil War, people recently freed from slavery in Charleston honored fallen Union soldiers. A battered U.S. was faced with the task of burying and honoring the 600,000 to 800,000 Union and Confederate soldiers who had died.
Incivility runs through the history of this country, founded on stolen land, built with the labor of stolen lives. The document that governs our lives effectively denied more than half of the population the right to vote.
Catherine Porter, Constant Méheut, Matt Apuzzo and Selam Gebrekidan
New York Times
In 1791, enslaved Haitians did the seemingly impossible. They ousted their French masters and founded a nation. But France made generations of Haitians pay for their freedom — in cash. How much has remained a mystery, until now.
Unfinished in 1865 and unfinished today, the 13th Amendment says to every woman: You are heir in your person to a promise of universal freedom, that recognizes an individual’s right to her life, her labor, her body and self-possession all as one.
Rodney lays out an invaluable concept: that underdevelopment expresses a relationship of exploitation. It implies not lack of development but the existence and results of suppression, oppression and exploitation.
The Civil War was a revolutionary upheaval that crushed slavery and stoked hopes of a broader emancipation against the rule of property. We should draw on that memory today for struggles against racism and capitalism.
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