Reparations seek to repair those damages.

History

America's indispensable working class existed as property beyond the realm of politics, leaving white Americans free to trumpet their love of freedom and democratic values

Enslaved people were material wealth: Thomas Jefferson’s 600 enslaved people profited him and built his personal wealth from the value of their bodies and, particularly, their natural increase. As property, the enslaved men, women, and children who belonged to Jefferson could be leased, mortgaged, bought, sold, willed and given away.

Yale historian David W. Blight notes that, “in 1860, slaves as an asset were worth more than all of America’s manufacturing, all of the railroads, all of the productive capacity of the United States put together.”

H.R.40 - Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act

First Proposed by Detroit Congressperson John Conyers in 1989, currently sponsored by Ms. Jackson Lee.

The CARICOM Reparations Commission is a regional body created to establish the moral, ethical, and legal case for the payment of Reparations by the Governments of all the former colonial powers and the relevant institutions of those countries, to the nations and people of the Caribbean Community for the Crimes against Humanity of Native Genocide, the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and a racialized system of chattel Slavery.

In March of this year, nearly two centuries after the sale of 227 slaves to save Georgetown University, the Jesuits of the US announced a $100 million program, part of its “truth and reconciliation” effort, to benefit the descendants of slaves.

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