The Case Against Slave Reparations

By Peter Flaherty and John Carlisle

This study is published by the National Legal and Policy Center.

National Legal and Policy Center
107 Park Washington Court
Falls Church, Virginia 22046
Tel: (703)237-1970
Fax: (703)237-2090
Email: [email protected]
Web Site: www.nlpc.org
Ken Boehm, Chairman
Peter Flaherty, President

About NLPC
Founded in 1991, NLPC promotes ethics in public life through research, education and legal action. Through the
Corporate Integrity Project, NLPC promotes integrity in corporate governance, including honesty and fair play in
relationships with shareholders, employees, business partners and customers.
Pro-reparations activists have targeted corporate America. This monograph gives corporate executives, directors and
shareholders the information necessary for an effective and credible response. It is also a useful guide for government
officials, teachers, students and members of the public.
This monograph was published in October 2004, and may be downloaded as a pdf file free of charge from www.nlpc.org.
Updates will be made on a regular basis to the pdf version.

Donations to NLPC are tax-deductible.

INTRODUCTION
Imagine that, years in the future, thousands of special slavery reparations courts are set up throughout America,
charged with the task of trying to sort out who gets compensation for the wrongs of slavery, and who pays. People are
demanding government money based on some claim to African American ancestry, even light-skinned people with
a trace of African American blood. Others are there to challenge having to pay for the reparations, such as recent
immigrants, Latinos, Asian Americans and Caucasian Americans whose ancestors arrived in America long after slavery
ended.
Sound far-fetched? It is not. The issue of slave reparations has gone from being on the fringes of American politics to
the front and center today. Political momentum for it is strong within the black community, and many whites embrace
the issue as well. A growing number of local, state and national politicians support creating a massive government
program that would pay billions of taxpayer dollars to slave descendants. In addition, the reparations coalition is
orchestrating aggressive media and litigation campaigns to force corporations that allegedly profited from slavery to
make huge payouts.
One has to ask why this is happening now, more than 140 years after slavery ended. A critical dynamic fueling
the slave reparations movement is a phenomenon common to advocacy groups: once they reach their goal, their
original reason for being is no more, but they do not want to disband so they seek another issue. This is the dilemma
confronting the civil rights movement. In the 1960s, civil rights activists achieved the worthy goal of ending statesponsored discrimination. Then they moved on to more dubious things such as racial quotas. Having succeeded, they
are now embracing the cause of slave reparations.
It goes hand-in-hand with the current political and legal climate in America. People increasingly see themselves as
victims of some alleged wrong, and politicians and juries are taking their side. In the wake of the litigation explosion
in America, moreover, trial lawyers keep pushing the envelope as to how much they can get away with, and they are
succeeding.
However surreal or absurd the issue of slave reparations sounds, it is vital that Americans start taking the issue
seriously. Though the issue of slave reparations seems frivolous, the political movement coalescing behind it is not.

AN OVERVIEW
OF THE SLAVE
REPARATIONS
MOVEMENT
Once an issue pushed only by
radicals, compensating blacks for
the slavery and discrimination of
centuries past is now championed
by the civil rights establishment.
Such groups include the National
Association for the Advancement
of Colored People (NAACP), the
Southern Christian Leadership
Conference and the National Urban
League. Congressmen regularly
raise the issue, most notably Rep.
John Conyers (D-MI). Since 1989,
Conyers has been pushing a bill
asking Congress to establish a
commission to study reparations
proposals for African Americans.
To date, Congress has not acted
on it. But the Democratic Party,
while not explicitly endorsing
reparations, appears to be gradually
accepting the idea. During the 2000
presidential race, the Democratic
Partys Platform Statement officially
adopted a plank supporting
the establishment of a federal
commission to examine the history
of slavery and to make appropriate
recommendations on behalf of the
American people.1 In addition, a
growing number of books, lectures,
websites, rallies and grassroots groups
press the reparations issue.
Demands for reparations reach
into the trillions of dollars. Some
advocates favor direct cash payments
by the U.S. government to blacks,
while others favor support for
organizations and other initiatives
aimed at assisting blacks. Activist

lawyer Dr. Robert Brock, for

example, wants the government
to pay $500,000 to every slave
descendant. Given that the large
majority of the 35 million African
Americans have a slave ancestor,
that would amount to more than
$15 trillion and require a surtax
of roughly $50,000 on each nonAfrican American man, woman and
child in this country (the median
family income is not even that
high).2 One estimate, cited in a
Harpers magazine article, puts the
reparations total at $97 trillion,
based on 222,505,049 hours of
forced labor between 1619 and 1865,
compounded at 6% interest through
1993.3
Members of Congress are throwing
in their support for Rep. Conyers
reparations billThe Commission
to Study Reparation Proposals for
African Americans Act (H.R. 40).
It would establish a commission to
examine the institution of slavery,
subsequently de jure and de facto
racial and economic discrimination
against African-Americans, and
the impact of these forces on
living African-Americans, to make
recommendations to the Congress
on appropriate remedies, and for
other purposes. (Conyers chose
the bill number 40 to reflect the
40 acres and a mule the U.S.
government allegedly promised freed
slaves). Conyers first introduced the
bill in 1989. Although Congress has
never acted on it, he vows to keep
re-introducing it until its passed
into law. Conyers argues that just as
weve discussed the Holocaust and
Japanese internment camps, and to
some extent the devastation that the
colonists inflicted upon the Indians,

we must talk about slavery and its

continued effects. If Democrats
regain control of the House of
Representatives, Conyers, who
would likely become the chairman
of the House Judiciary Committee,
has pledged to immediately take up
the reparations issue.4 At last count,
22 congressmen have co-sponsored
the bill.5 Influential liberal interest
groups are also lending support to a
reparations commission. In February
2006, the House of Delegates of
the American Bar Association
formally urged Congress to establish
a commission to study the effects of
slavery and make recommendations
to address those effects.
Polls show the issue enjoys
widespread support within the
black population and even some
support within the non-black
population. According to a CNN/
USA Today/Gallup poll conducted
in February 2002, 55 percent of
African American respondents said
the government should make cash
payments to slave descendants, while
nine out of 10 white respondents
said the government should not do
so. The same poll indicated that 68
percent of African Americans would
like corporations that made profits
from slavery to apologize to African
Americans, and 32 percent of whites
support this proposal. Three-quarters
of African American respondents
said the companies should set up
scholarship funds for descendants
of slaves; 35 percent of white
respondents favored this.6
The issue is gaining ground among
the white far left or those who
call themselves progressives.
Comparing the situation with
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Russell Simmons, a hip-hop mogul,

launched a radio and print ad
campaign that featured the slogan,
Reparations. Its about time, while
promoting his tennis shoes.10 Others
are cashing in on the movement
as well. One group has hawked
reparations action kits on the
Internet at $30 a piece.

Politicians Get on the

Reparations Bandwagon

Randall Robinson, former president of TransAfrica Forum, is one of the leading proponents of
slavery reparations. To his left is actor Danny Glover, chairman of TransAfrica.

that of the early 1990s, one such

commentator observed, Nearly a
decade later, I detect a significant
change in the willingness of
white progressives to embrace and
advocate for reparations.7
Another sign that the issue is
gaining momentum was a proreparations rally held on the
Mall in Washington, D.C. in
August 2002, the first such mass
gathering in support of reparations.
Several thousand people were
in attendance, and it enjoyed
wide media coverage. The theme
was, They Owe Us. The rally
was organized by the Millions
for Reparations coalition. The
group got the idea after attending
the UN conference against
racism in Durban, South Africa
in September 2001 where it
successfully lobbied delegates to
support a statement condemning

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modern slavery as a crime against

humanity.
Louis Farrakhan, leader of the
Nation of Islam, organized a
Millions More Movement march
in Washington, DC on October
15, 2005 that drew thousands
of people. The events official
statement of purpose demanded
full and complete reparations for
the descendants of slaves.8
Pro-reparations grassroots groups
in the black community have been
sprouting up all over the country. The
umbrella group National Coalition
of Blacks for Reparations in America
(NCOBRA) has dozens of local
chapters. It has drawn up a blueprint
for federal down payments on
reparations, which it is trying to move
through the courts and Congress.
Many within NCOBRA even want
an independent black state within
the United States.9

During the 2000 presidential

election campaign, Al Gore
expressed his support for the notion
of reparations. At a primary debate
in Harlem early in 2000, both
Gore and Bill Bradley refused to
condemn reparations when the
topic was brought up. And during a
rally in Tulsa, OK Gore reportedly
said reparations were a definite
possibility.11 As noted earlier, the
2000 Democratic Party Platform
Statement endorsed the principle of
reparations.
Green Party presidential candidate
Ralph Naders 2000 platform
explicitly endorsed reparations.
The platform states that people
of color have legitimate claims in
this country to reparations in the
form of monetary compensation for
these centuries of discrimination.12
Although Nader did not run as the
Green Party candidate in 2004,
the Green Party Platform still
includes the language supporting
reparations.13
In April 2002, then-California
Governor Gray Davis indicated
his support for slave reparations,
declaring, Clearly, we want to right
any wrongs and do justice to people

who were taken advantage of, if that

is the case. I believe that will be the
case. He also signed a law forcing
insurance companies to disclose
information about any ties to slavery
they had a century and a half ago.14
The governor of Michigan, Jennifer
Granholm, also supports reparations.
She declared before the NAACP
that I support reparations as well,
and supported John Conyers bill.15
However, the 2004 Democratic
presidential candidate John Kerry
did not support reparations. In
an April 2004 speech to students
at historically black Howard
University, Kerry said, I personally
do not believe that America is
going to advance if we go backwards
and look to reparations in the way
some people are defining them.
Kerry emphasized that while he
understands the scars blacks still
feel from slavery and segregation,
reparations legislation would only
divide the nation and not heal the
wounds.16
Nevertheless, many influential
Democrats aggressively advocate
the issue. One of the more notable
speakers at the 2004 Democratic
Presidential Nominating
Convention was the Rev. Al
Sharpton, veteran political agitator
and a one-time presidential
candidate. Responding to a speech
President Bush had just given asking
African Americans to leave the
Democratic Party, Sharpton said, It
is true that Mr. Lincoln signed the
Emancipation Proclamation, after
which there was a commitment to
give 40 acres and a mule...We went
all the way to Herbert Hoover and
we never got the 40 acres. We didnt

get the mule. So we decided wed

ride this donkey as far as it would
take us.17

State and Municipal

Governments Advance
Reparations Agenda
In May 2002, the California
insurance department announced
that Aetna, AIG, New York
Life, Royal & Sun Alliance, and
other companies provided records
indicating they or their predecessors
may have issued policies to
slaveholders. The report was issued
under the previously-noted state law
backed by Gov. Davis requiring such
disclosures; it is expected to make
slave reparations lawsuits easier.
At the time of the announcement,
Jesse Jackson said he planned to
urge other states to enact similar
legislation requiring companies to
disclose any links to slavery. Much
more research must be done to
understand the full breadth of the
insurance industrys involvement,
said Jackson.18
City councils in Los Angeles,
Detroit, Cleveland, Chicago,
Dallas and Atlanta have endorsed
Conyers H.R. 40. In August 2002,
the Houston city council voted on a
measure to support the Conyers bill,
but it failed by one vote. Things got
ugly in that fight. Activists harassed
and vilified those who voted against
the measure, such as council member
Michael Berry (R), who was running
for Houston mayor. They made
repeated threats against him and
protested outside his homesome
reportedly armed with clubs. They
even targeted the councilmans
mother, who does not live in the

city. According to Berry, they made

threatening, harassing and highly
insulting phone calls to her. She
was frightened by the calls and the
heinous threats they carried, he
said.19
In October 2002two years after
it voted to endorse H.R. 40the
Chicago city council, in a 44-0 vote,
approved an ordinance requiring city
contractors to inspect their records
on whether they or their predecessor
companies profited from slavery, and
turn over all paperwork to the city
if such evidence is found. If slavery
connections are established, the
company in question can continue
to do business with the city, but
the city wants the information as a
preliminary form of discovery in an
upcoming lawsuit, according to a
news report.20
Said Mayor Richard M. Daley, It
will help demonstrate how much
of the nations wealth was created
by the sweat and blood of slavery.
Daley supports a national dialogue
on reparations. Alderman Dorothy
Tillman said other cities are
interested in enacting similar laws.
Its spreading already, very quickly,
she said.
Tillman was right. In May 2003,
the Los Angeles City Council
approved legislation that requires
businesses seeking city contracts
to disclose any profits made from
slavery. In June 2004, Detroit
passed a similar measure. Supporters
maintain that the disclosure law
doesnt bar companies with ties to
slavery from receiving municipal
contracts. But, like the Chicago law,
the Detroit ordinance builds the
case for reparations by identifying
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Prominent Advocates of
Slave Reparations
Charles Ogletree is a professor
of law at Harvard University and
co-chairman of the Reparations
Coordinating Committee (RCC).
The RCC was established to obtain
reparations through litigation, and is
currently suing the U.S. government.
Ogletree, who writes extensively on
the issue, is one of the key figures
in helping to galvanize the modern
movement for reparations.
Randall Robinson is co-chairman
of the RCC and former president of
TransAfrica Forum, which lobbies on
U.S. foreign policy issues affecting
Africa and the Caribbean. He authored
the 2000 bestseller The Debt: What
America Owes to Blacks, which helped
to further galvanize the movement.
Robinson often casts Fidel Castro in a
favorable light, and is a sharp critic of
capitalism and the United States. In
The Debt, Robinson writes, I will say
what few of us will say aloud. . . . Many
blacksmost, perhaps, though I cant
be suredont like America.
Dorothy Tillman is a Chicago city
councilman and a leading reparations
activist. Tillman was a field staff
organizer for Dr. Martin Luther
Kings Southern Christian Leadership
Conference. Elected to serve as an
alderman for Chicagos Third Ward in
1985, she has earned a reputation as a
major political figure in city politics.
She frequently gets involved in issues
such as inner-city education, housing
and homelessness. Tillman sponsored
Chicagos slave disclosure law in 2003
which has served as a model for other
municipal disclosure ordinances.
Cornel West is a professor of
Religion and African American

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Studies at Princeton University, and

a RCC member. His book Prophesy
Deliverance! An Afro-American
Revolutionary Christianity (1982)
attempted to fuse Christianity and
Marxism. Other books include Beyond
Eurocentrism and Multiculturalism
(1993) and Race Matters (1993). To
his credit, West has publicly disagreed
with Louis Farrakhans anti-Semitism.
Rev. Al Sharpton is a black activist
and a former Democratic presidential
candidate. He burst onto the national
scene in 1987 with the Tawana
Brawley hoax, in which a black
teenager falsely claimed she had
been raped by a gang of whites. In
1991, after a Hasidic Jewish driver in
Brooklyn accidentally killed a sevenyear-old black, Sharpton participated
in anti-Semitic riots, and at the funeral
denounced diamond merchants in a
veiled reference to Jews. In 1995, after
a dispute between a Jewish store owner
and black tenant, Sharptons National
Action Network staged protests
filled with anti-Semitism and violent
language. A protester shot four store
employees and set the store on fire,
killing three more.
Minister Louis Farrakhan is the
leader of the Nation of Islam and was
the keynote speaker at the August
2002 Millions for Reparations Rally
in Washington, D.C. Farrakhan has
a long history of anti-Semitism. His
organization published The Secret
Relationship Between Blacks and Jews,
which falsely claims that Jews were
instrumental in the slave trade.
Interestingly, Farrakhan is demanding
land grants for blacks rather than
money transfers. He said, We cannot
accept a cash payment because a fool
and his money will soon part. He
wants the U.S. government to transfer

millions of acres of land to African

Americans.
Rev. Jesse Jackson is a black activist
and president and founder of the
Rainbow/PUSH Coalition. In recent
years, he has become adept at accusing
corporations and other entities of
racism, prompting them to grant
money and concessions to Jacksons
organization and associates. It is a
practice that lends itself well to the
slave reparations issue. Jacksons
methods are reflected in the large
revenues of his Citizenship Education
Fund (CEF). (In 2001, the National
Legal and Policy Center filed a formal
complaint that the CEF operates
outside of its tax-exempt status.)
Interestingly, Jackson advocates
giving slave reparations payments
not to slave descendants directly,
but to nonprofit organizations (e.g.,
Rainbow/PUSH) that focus on the
black community.
Deadria Farmer-Paellmann, a lawyeractivist, gained notoriety in 2002 after
filing suit in a New York federal court
demanding reparations payments
from corporations such as Aetna
Insurance, FleetBoston Financial, and
CSX railroad. She alleges that these
companies or their predecessors in
interest profited from slavery.
Edward Fagan is the attorney of
Richard Barber and Deadria FarmerPaellmann, who were plaintiffs in two
separate lawsuits against several U.S.
companies for their alleged role in
slavery. Prior to becoming involved
in slave reparations, Fagan was
prominent in the Holocaust-related
lawsuits against European companies.
Fagan, who is white, has vowed to file
additional slave-reparations lawsuits
throughout the country.

the guilty companiesand how

much they could pay out in a
possible shakedown. Detroit City
Councilwoman Barbara RoseCollins, a former Democratic
congresswoman, says, The
purpose of this ordinance is to
set the groundwork for [slavery]
reparations. First, you have to get
the information and show the
companies that benefited from the
slave trade.21
The Philadelphia City Council
unanimously passed a disclosure law
in March 2005. Modeled on the
Chicago ordinance, Philadelphias
measure requires companies doing
business with the city to search their
records and disclose if they profited
from slavery. Companies that fail to
provide information could have their
contracts nullified. On December 20,
2005, Milwaukee followed suit and
enacted a disclosure law.22
Clearly, there is growing momentum
to force businesses to reveal past
ties to slavery. But attempts to
pass disclosure laws have also met
with defeat. In 2005, the New
York City Council held hearings
on a disclosure bill proposed by
Councilman Charles Barron but did
not bring it up for a vote. Mayor
Michael Bloomberg criticized the
measure, pointing out that Youre
talking about people who are simply
running and working at these
companies who werent even born
in those days. One Councilman
said the bill should also look at
the injustices inflicted on IrishAmericans and Italian-Americans.
Councilman Peter Vallone correctly
observed that the disclosure proposal
sounds like an attempt to help

trial lawyers get evidence to start

lawsuits.23
The North Carolina legislature
considered a state-wide disclosure
law in 2005. Sponsored by Rep.
Larry Womble and Rep. Earl Jones,
the proposal would have required
companies to disclose any and all
records of participation in or profits
derived from slavery. Like the
municipal ordinances in Chicago
and Philadelphia, the bill would not
prohibit companies that trafficked
in slavery from getting contracts.
The House State Government
Committee approved the measure in
the spring. However, it was sent to
the Rules Committee which did not
report it out.24

Shakedown Via the Courts

Slave reparations advocates are
resorting to the courts to push the
issue. High-profile lawyers have
filed class-action lawsuits against
corporations that they allege
profited directly or indirectly from
slavery. According to Brooklyn Law
School Professor Anthony J. Sebok,
corporations are easier targets because
of easily accessible records, huge cash
reserves, the fact that they are prone
to public pressure, and because they
fall under successor corporation laws.
These laws facilitate lawsuits against
companies that have been sold or
merged many times.25
In March 2002, the first lawsuit
was filed in a U.S. District Court
in New York seeking unspecified
reparations for the 35 million
descendants of African slaves against
the Aetna Insurance Company,
FleetBoston Financial Corporation,

and railroad giant CSX Corp.26 The

suit puts the value of slave labor at
$1.4 trillionalmost as much as
the federal government collects in
individual and corporate income
taxes each year. One of the plaintiffs
was Deadria Farmer-Paellmann, an
activist attorney who is credited
with helping to initiate the current
reparations movement. In 2000,
Farmer-Paellmann, then a student
at the New England School of Law,
discovered that Aetna, Inc., based
in Hartford, CT., had a history of
insuring the lives of slaves. The
company issued an apology but the
episode marked the beginning of the
reparations crusade against alleged
corporate slave profiteers.
But holding contemporary
corporations accountable for
business transactions that occurred
a century and a half ago is absurd.
To begin, few companies even have
records from that historical period
because they are not legally required
to do so. Furthermore, the main
responsibility of corporations is to
current employees and investors.
William Carney, a law professor
at Emory University in Atlanta,
says, If Im a stockholder and the
company decides to give away some
of my money [for reparations], I may
not be very pleased.27
In addition, many of the corporations
being sued have at best a tenuous
connection to the 19th century firms
involved in slave-related business. For
instance, CSX was formed in 1980
and represented the end product
of numerous railroad mergers and
acquisitions going back decades.
FleetBoston Financial Corporation
can be traced to hundreds of
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predecessor banks, only one of which

the plaintiffs can single out for its
links to slavery. Providence Bank,
which no longer exists, allegedly
profited from a loan it made to a
Providence, RI slave trader.28
The reparations suits are without
merit for other reasons. As tragic
as slavery was, it was legal in the
South between 1789 and 1865. The
Constitution prohibits ex post facto
laws, which are laws that criminalize
conduct that was legal when
originally performed.
But the reparations movement is
not interested in legal probity. After
Farmer-Paellmann filed her suit,
reparations suits against corporations
proliferated. Richard E. Barber, a
former deputy executive director
of the NAACP, filed a lawsuit in
Newark, NJ targeting New York
Life Insurance Co., the Wall Street
investment firm Brown Brothers
Harriman & Co., and the railway
company Norfolk Southern.
This is just another step in a
series of upcoming political and
legal moves that will address the
issue of reparations for American
slave descendants, said Edward
Fagan, Barbers attorney. Fagan was
involved in the Holocaust-related
lawsuits against German companies
and Swiss banks. He vowed to file
similar slave reparations lawsuits all
over the country.
Eventually, the six reparations
lawsuits filed were consolidated
into one federal suit seeking an
unspecified amount of money from
19 corporations representing some
of the nations largest banking,
insurance, tobacco and railroad
6

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firms. These included JP Morgan

Chase & Co., Brown & Williamson
Tobacco Corp., RJ Reynolds
Tobacco, Union Pacific and Lehman
Brothers. Reparations lawyers argued
that the corporations ancestors
profited by insuring slave ships,
using slaves, or financing businesses
built with slave labor. Lawyers plan
to use any compensation awarded
to establish a fund for health care,
housing and education that would
benefit African Americans.
But reparations activists lost this
round. On January 26, 2004, Illinois
U.S. District Judge Charles Norgle
dismissed the suit on the grounds that
it was not the courts role to render
judgment on such claims. In his
official legal opinion, Norgle wrote
that the president and Congress
have the constitutional authority
to determine the nature and scope
of relief . . . not the courts. But
Norgle dismissed the reparations suit
without prejudice which means
that activists can file new suits.29
On March 29, Farmer-Paellmann
filed a class action suit against many
of the same companies under the
legal theory of unjust enrichment.30
The amended complaint alleged
violations of consumer protection
and corporate fraud. The suit charges
that corporations had business
relationships, including through
mortgage loans, connected to slavery
but lied about those ties. Andrew
McGaan, lead defense counsel who
represented Brown and Williamson
Tobacco, said the amended lawsuit
brought essentially no change at all
in the allegations.
The lawyers representing FarmerPaellmann are Carl Mayer and Bruce

Afran. Mayer is a former Hofstra

Law School professor and former
special counsel to New York State
Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. He
played a major role in the United
States Supreme Court victory for
consumers in the case, Nike v. Kasky,
in which Nike was sued for making
fraudulent statements to consumers
about its role in inhumane labor
practices in its overseas factories.
Afran, a professor at Rutgers
University Law School, has won
numerous civil rights cases in state
and federal courts.31
In a major legal setback for the
reparations cause, on July 6,
2005 Judge Norgle tossed out the
reparations lawsuit. In a 104-page
opinion, Norgle said the plaintiffs
did not prove that they were
personally injured by slavery, noting
that a genealogical tie to slaves is
not enough to prove injury. Norgle
again ruled that any decision about
reparations has to be made by the
president or Congress, not the
courts. Congress has considered and
rejected Representative Conyers
calls for the establishment of a
commission to study the effects of
slavery, wrote Norgle. This district
court will therefore not substitute its
judgment for that of Congress on the
matter of slave reparations.32
Norgle also pointed to the negative
consequences of paying reparations,
arguing that present-day Americans
are not morally or legally liable for
historical injustices, that the debt
to African Americans has already
been paid, and that reparations
talk is divisive, immersing
African Americans in a culture of
victimhood.

Not surprisingly, reparations activists

bitterly denounced the decision.
Conrad Worrill, chairman of the
National Black United Front,
attacked the ruling as a product of
conservative, right-wing, judicial,
political decision-making. He called
Norgle a liar whose eyes are the
eyes of a racist.
Worrill vowed that the reparations
movement will gain momentum
by pushing Congress to pass a bill
to study reparations and a national
disclosure bill based on Chicagos
disclosure law.
The activists are currently appealing
Norgles decision to the U.S.
Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals.
Lawsuits are just one part of a broader
strategy to agitate for reparations
compensation. After the unfavorable
January ruling, Farmer-Paellmann
said that advocates will start using
other tactics to pressure companies:
The next stages will include boycotts
and ads in university (newspapers)
and major press.33
This is bad news for corporations,
whose leaders believe they can ignore
the issue. An unidentified lawyer
for one of the targeted corporations
says business believes the reparations
issue will fade away because it doesnt
resonate with the public.

Banks Cave-In to
Reparations Activists
Reparations activists are targeting
the banking sector in particular for
shakedown campaigns and scoring
notable successes. Since January
2005, four of the nations leading
banksJPMorgan Chase & Co.,
Wachovia, Bank of America and

Lehman Brothershave come under

withering criticism after disclosing
that they or their predecessor firms
had some sort of financial dealings
with slavery.
The banks had to disclose such
transactions pursuant to the
disclosure laws in Chicago and
Philadelphia. Each company has
significant financial interests in
those cities and to keep doing
business, they have to comply with
the law.
Although it is legally and morally
ridiculous to hold a company
responsible for 150-year-old
commercial transactions, banks
make themselves targets by
apologizing for alleged involvement
in slavery and attempting to appease
activists with multi-million dollar
donations.
JPMorgan Chase & Co.

JPMorgan Chase was the first to

capitulate to the activists. In January
2005, the bank announced that
after conducting a year-long review
of its 19th century business records,
it discovered that two predecessor
banks in Louisiana owned slaves
who were used as collateral for loans
to Louisiana plantation owners.
Between 1831 and 1865, Canal
Bank and Citizens Bank accepted
13,000 slaves as collateral on loans
and repossessed 1,250 enslaved
individuals after plantation owners
defaulted on loans. The banks
merged in 1924 to form Canal
Commercial Trust & Savings Bank
which failed in 1933 during the

Great Depression. Its deposits were

placed in The National Bank of
Commerce of New Orleans, which
later became the First National Bank
of Commerce. Bank One acquired
First National Bank of Commerce in
1998.34
JPMorgan Chase is now vilified
by reparations activists because it
acquired Bank One in 2004 which
supposedly inherited the tainted
banks in question which for all
practical purposes ceased to exist
decades ago.
Rather than stand up to the
reparations activists, JPMorgan
Chase apologized for its ties
to slavery. Bill Daley, Midwest
Chairman of JPMorgan Chase
and the brother of Chicago Mayor
Richard Daley, said, If you see those
documents, you cant help but be
moved as to a period that none of us
were proud of and a war was fought
over.
JPMorgan Chase created a $5
million college scholarship fund
for African American students in
Louisiana. Company executives
apparently thought that the apology
for contributing to a brutal and
unjust institution and a multimillion dollar payoff would buy
peace with the reparations lobby.
It didnt work. Reparations
advocates immediately denounced
the donation as a joke. Lionel
Jean Baptiste, a lawyer representing
plaintiffs in the reparations suit,
said, To give back $5 million
does not begin to make up for the
tremendous wealth that JPMorgan
Chase extracted from enslaved
Africans. Conrad Worrill said, To
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admit they owned 13,000 slaves and

say theyre only going to come up
with $5 million . . . Thats like no
money. Calling the scholarship fund
an insult, Viola Plummer, national
co-chair of Millions for Reparations,
said a serious donation would allow
every child in Louisiana to attend
school for free from pre-school to
Ph.D. Plummer vowed to continue
going after JPMorgan Chase and
other companies that allegedly
profited from slavery. Activists
immediately organized a protest
outside the JPMorgan Chase branch
in New Orleans.
Bank of America

The cowardly response of JPMorgan

Chase apparently prompted
Chicagos pro-reparations politicians
to extend their campaign to other
companies that had contracts with
the city.
On February 9, 2005, just days after
the JPMorgan Chase shakedown,
Chicago Alderman Dorothy
Tillman accused Bank of America
of lying on a sworn affidavit
that it did not have any past ties
to slavery. Tillman, sponsor of the
disclosure ordinance and the citys
leading reparations agitator, had
accused JPMorgan Chase the year
before of lying when it said its first
investigation revealed no ties to
slavery.
Initially, Bank of America appeared
to resist the arguments of reparations
advocates. Tillman contended that
Bank of America was complicit in
the slave trade because John Brown,
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a co-founder of Providence Bank in

1791 and one of Bank of Americas
many predecessor companies, was
a slave owner. Providence Bank
became a part of Fleet Boston, which
Bank of America acquired in 2004.35
Patricia Holden, a local lobbyist
for Bank of America, argued that
Browns personal connection to
slavery was irrelevant because it did
not mean Bank of America profited
from slavery. There is nothing
within our records that show that we
profited from the slave trade, said
Holden.
That should have been the end of
the matter but Bank of America
had an important $500 million refinancing deal with the city. Tillman
threatened to cancel the contract
if the bank did not admit that it
profited from slavery. Company
executives promised to commission
a study to re-check its records for
alleged slavery ties.
On August 24, 2005, Bank of
America announced that its new
report found that none of its 63
predecessor companies profited from
slavery. However, some companies
were involved in slave-relatedtransactions.
In 1840, John Forsyth, Secretary of
State of the United States, proposed
to pledge his slaves as collateral
to obtain a loan from the Bank of
Metropolis in Washington, D.C. In
the end, the slaves were not used as
collateral.
In 1863, two predecessor banks
Boatmens Bank and Southern Bank
in St. Louistook a lien against the
property of a Charles McLaran for
a past due debt. McLarans slaves

were listed among his property. But

McLaran paid the debt and the
banks never owned any of the slaves.
Incredibly, Bank of America still
felt compelled to apologize for these
activities. The institution of slavery
left an indelible and shameful mark
on our nations history, and we
regret any actions our predecessors
may have taken that supported or
tolerated the institution of slavery,
said Kenneth D. Thompson, the
banks chief executive officer.
In an effort to appease reparations
advocatesand ignore the best
interests of its shareholdersthe
bank pledged to donate $5 million to
institutions and programs involved
in preserving African American
history.
Activists were not mollified by Bank
of Americas display of contrition.
Alderman Ed Smith called the
donation miniscule and a poor
showing for an institution of this
magnitude. Tillman criticized the
report as disingenuous and insisted
she had evidence that Providence
Bank was involved in the
manufacture of leg irons for slaves.
Wachovia

In June 2005, Wachovia

Corporation, the nations fourthlargest bank, disclosed it had ties
to the slave trade through two
predecessor banks. The findings were
contained in a 111-page report that
examined 400 institutions dating
back to 1781 and eventually became
part of Wachovia.

Chicagos Unlikely
Reparations Advocates
The purported outrage with
Wachovia came not only from
African-American aldermen
but also from Eddy Burke, the
white Chairman of the Finance
Committee. Burke is a long-time
power broker linked to numerous
corruption scandals. A book
published last year titled When
Corruption Was King, by Robert
Cooley, described Burkes alleged
indifference to the beating death of a
homeless African-American man by
white policemen with mob ties.

The report found that the Georgia

Railroad and Banking Company,
established in 1833, built a railroad
using slave labor, and owned at
least 162 slaves. The company later
became part of First Union in 1986.
In 2001, First Union purchased
Wachovia and took its name.
The Bank of Charleston, founded
in 1834, accepted 529 slaves as
collateral on mortgages or loans and
took possession of those slaves when
customers defaulted. Wachovia is
connected to the bank through a
1991 merger with South Carolina
National Corporation.36
Wachovia chairman and chief
executive officer G. Kennedy
Thompson earned the dubious
distinction for being the most
obsequious of the corporate
apologists. I apologize to all
Americans, and especially to African
Americans and people of African
descent, said Thompson. We know
that we cannot change the past, and
we cant make up for the wrongs of
slavery, but we can learn from our
past and begin a stronger dialogue
about slavery and the experience of
African Americans in our country.
At the time, Wachovia did not
offer a monetary donation but
promised to partner with community
organizations in furthering
awareness and education of African
American history.
As usual, Wachovias efforts to make
amends for its past elicited only
more criticism from the Chicago
reparations lobby. Tillman again
accused Wachovia of lying about its
involvement with slavery earlier in
the year when it stated in a sworn

affidavit that it could not find any

ties to slavery in its records.

Of the Wachovia apology, Burke

stated, If they think that a simple
apology for . . . once again ignoring
a valid enactment of this Council
is going to be enough, theyve got
another thing coming.

Like the other banks, it logically

didnt occur to Wachovia that
mergers with companies that
had absorbed the remnants of
antebellum banks could be construed
as a link to slavery. As previously
noted, corporations are not legally
required to keep records of inherited
companies that disappeared as
separate entities so long ago.

Burke is not the only white machine

politician playing a prominent role
in the slavery debate. In January
2005, when JPMorgan Chase made
a similar apology, it was announced
by William Daley, who serves
as JPMorgan Chase Midwest
Chairman, a post apparently
created for him. Daley is the brother
of Chicago Mayor Richard Daley.

Edward Burke

Reparations activists are not

interested in such rational thought,
especially when the corporations
repeatedly refuse to defend their
rights. To punish Wachovia for its
alleged lies, the chairman of the City
Councils black caucus, Alderman
Ed Smith, asked the City Council to
void a housing financing deal with
Wachovia.
A company subsidiary, Wachovia
Affordable Housing Community
Development Corporation, is part of a
group that borrowed $9.4 million from
the citys Department of Housing to

build 162 affordable housing units in

Chicagos South Side.
We are not playing here, said
Smith. If you lie, youre out.37
It is ironic though that the black
caucus would choose to bar
Wachovia from building affordable
housing in a part of the city with
a large population of low-income
minorities. Indeed, the specific
neighborhoods where the housing
is to be constructed is suffering
from class tensions between
middle-income and low-income
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that companies doing business in

Florida invest in lower-income
communities and businesses run by
people of color.38
Lehman Brothers

William Daley

African Americans who have

been moved out of public housing
and fear displacement by rising
property values. African American
politicians frequently criticize
businesses for not investing
enough money in community
development projects in minority
neighborhoods.
However, Wachovia did not lose
its housing deal. On June 27, the
company announced that it would
lend $1 billion over the next five
years to auto dealers of color
through a partnership with the
National Association of Minority
Automobile Dealers (NAMAD).
Wachovia spokesman Ferris
Morrison denied that the initiative
is related to the slavery apology.
Nevertheless, suspicions remain that
the banks outreach to minority auto
dealers is related to efforts to placate
reparations critics. Wachovia and
NAMAD were brought together by
Al Pina who is head of the Florida
Minority Community Reinvestment
Coalition. According to
DiversityInc, its mission is to ensure
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In 2003, Lehman Brothers became

the first company to admit past ties
to slavery in response to the Chicago
disclosure ordinance. It would also
become the company to pay the
stiffest price.
Lehman Brothers stated in its 2003
affidavit that the three Lehman
brothers who founded the firms
predecessor in Montgomery,
Alabama in 1850 bought a slave
named Martha in 1854. The
company said its records suggest the
brothers Mayer, Henry and Emanuel
Lehman may have personally
owned other slaves. However,
the company insisted, There is
no evidence that these slaves were
purchased or used by any predecessor
entity of Lehman Brothers. As for
Martha, there is no evidence as to
what role, if any, she played in what
was then a modest dry goods store.39
There was no further discussion of
Lehman Brothers alleged ties to
slavery.
Then in June 2005, controversy
erupted when the City Council voted
on a $1.5 billion bond deal for the
expansion of OHare International
Airport. Lehman Brothers was one of
the eight bond underwriters. Tillman
accused the bank of lying about the
extent to which it profited from
slavery in its 2003 affidavit. Insisting
the company was founded on the

backs of slaves, Tillman demanded

that the City Council remove Lehman
Brothers from the bond issue.
The bond measure appeared
headed for defeat as indignant
city councilmen attacked Lehman
Brothers for its supposed disregard
of the municipal disclosure law. I
dont know who prepared this, or
who allowed Lehman Brothers to get
away with this kind of nonsensical
response to a serious issue, said
Alderman Toni Preckwinkle, but it
is disappointing both that we werent
more vigilant and Lehman Brothers
chose to disrespect us in the way
that they did.
Mayoral staffers and Aviation
Department officials moved to placate
the unhappy aldermen. Finance
Committee Chairman Edward Burke
secured passage of the bond measure
by securing an unprecedented
agreement from Lehman Brothers
that it had to appear before his
committee and tell the truth about its
involvement in slavery.
After the vote, Rosemarie Andolino,
executive director of the OHare
Modernization Program, ominously
warned that the slavery issue needs
to be resolved or we will remove
(Lehman Brothers) from the project
and move forward with another
organization. The bonds were
scheduled to be sold in the fall.
As with Bank of America, Lehman
Brothers initially appeared willing to
stand by its original affidavit that the
slave-related activities of its founders
150 years ago were irrelevant.
Lehman Brothers has conducted a
thorough search of its own records
and the historical records of its

founders and found no evidence that

the firm profited from slave labor,
the company said in a statement.
Unfortunately, Lehman Brothers
changed strategies to curry favor
with the reparations factionand
met disaster. On September 12, the
company disclosed that its founding
partners owned several slaves and
that, in all likelihood, it profited
significantly from slavery.
The basis for this significant profit
is that between 1852 and 1864, the
partners typically owned 25 slaves
per year. Of course, it wasnt until
after the Civil War when Lehman
Brothers relocated to New York City
that it began its rise to greatness by
financing railroad construction.
Company representatives issued
the usual litany of apologies and
regrets. This is a sad part of
our heritage . . . Were deeply
apologetic . . . It was a terrible
thing, said Joe Polizzotto, general
counsel of Lehman Brothers.

Business would do well to draw

another lesson from the harassment
of Lehman Brothers and the other
banks. A company that does not assert
its legal rights and uphold the best
interests of its shareholders against
the morally indefensible claims of
reparations activists will, in the
end, only lose money, undermine its
integrity, and make it a more tempting
target for further shakedowns.
Activists Launch Boycott
Campaign Against Banks
In December 2005, reparations
activists launched a boycott
campaign against three of the major
banks with alleged ties to slavery.
Organized by the Restitution Study
Group, a nonprofit organization led
by Deadria Farmer-Paellmann, the
One Student campaign asks college
students not to accept student loans
from Wachovia, Bank of America,
and JPMorgan Chase.41

The City Council promptly

reciprocated on September 30, 2005
by removing Lehman Brothers as
co-underwriter of the OHare bond
issue and fined it $500,000 for failure
to fully disclose slave ties in its
affidavit. This marked the first time
that a company suffered financially
for failing to comply with a slave
disclosure ordinance.

Farmer-Paellmann demands that the

banks must create a trust fund for
more scholarships and other funds
for African American students as a
condition to end the boycott. She
did not give a dollar figure. Given
the widespread criticism of the $5
million contributions made by Bank
of America and JPMorgan Chase
during the Chicago disclosure law
controversies, the corporate payoff
would have to be considerably larger.

Tillman said the tough actions

against Lehman Brothers sends a
signal to other companies doing
business in Chicago that they had
better comply with the disclosure
law. Said Tillman, If you tell the
truth, there is no penalty. If you lie,
there is.40

On the other hand, Farmer-Paellmann

may have targeted Wachovia because
it agreed to lend so much money to
minority auto dealers in a possible
effort to protect municipal contracts
from Chicagos reparations politicians.
In 2005, the Restitution Study
Group also met with Wachovia in an

effort to seek reparations payments.

Disappointed that the bank offered no
payoff, the Reparations Study Group
may very well have seen the financial
advantage in going after a corporation
that responds to pressure campaigns
with billion-dollar promises.

Shakedown Targets Multiply

Energy companies are possible targets
for reparations suits and pressure
campaigns because they reportedly
used slaves to lay oil lines beneath
cities, as well as mining companies
that relied on slaves to dig for coal
and salt.42 Even newspapers are
potential targets. The Hartford
Courant, Baltimore Sun and the
forerunner of the New Orleans TimesPicayune allegedly profited from
slavery by printing runaway slave
notices during the 1800s. (Most other
major newspapers did not yet exist.)
Fortunately, these newspapers pockets
are not deep enough to warrant
getting suedat least for now.
But reparations advocates have
their eye on many other targets as
well. For instance, the Reparations
Coordinating Committee announced
that it will sue universities, including
some of the nations most prestigious,
that it believes profited from slavery.
The Committee specifically cited
Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Brown
and the University of Virginia. They
claim these schools were built on the
backs of slave labor because their early
benefactors included slave owners.
This academic pressure campaign
is already yielding dividends for
the reparations movement. In
March 2004, Brown University
announced the creation of a
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11

Should the Democratic Party

Owe Reparations?
reparations committee that would
probe the universitys historical ties
to slavery and consider whether
reparations should be made to
slave descendants. Some of Brown
Universitys early benefactors
included slave owners and traders,
most notably members of the
Brown family of Providence. Brown
President Ruth Simmons (the first
African American president of
an Ivy League College) said the
university benefited in other ways
from slavery, citing the fact that the
universitys first building was built
by slaves. The investigating panel,
the University Steering Committee
on Slavery and Justice, will issue
a report in 2006 on what steps the
university should take to address its
past involvement with slavery.43
Many universities are emulating
Brown and starting similar projects
to investigate past ties to slavery.
Catherine Manegold, professor of
journalism at Emory University,
founded the schools Transforming
Community Project (TCP). It
is a question of how to re-initiate
responsible conversation on the
topic, says Manegold, and the
beauty of Browns example was
the language of needing factbased dialogue . . . around such an
emotional subject. The TCP will
include development of new curricula
and a review of hiring practices
(and) avenues for complaint.44
In 2004, the University of Alabama
(UA) weighed in on the issue after
UA law professor Al Brophy called
on the school to apologize for its
role in slavery. He discovered that
two slaves were buried on campus
and that both faculty members
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and students owned slaves. After

a contentious debate, UA issued a
formal apology and held a memorial
service for the slaves. In addition,
Brophy says the university should
pay reparations.45
The University of North Carolina is
researching its archives to uncover
connections to slavery. This
university was built by slaves and
free blacks, said Chancellor James
Moeser. We need to be candid
about that, acknowledge their
contributions.
Other institutions examining
slave connections include the
University of Mississippi, University
of South Carolina and University
of Virginia. Harvard law professor
Charles Olgetree, co-chairman
of the Reparations Coordinating
Committee, says all schools involved
in slavery must pay reparations.46

FALSE PRECEDENTS
A commonly heard rationale for slave
reparations is that other groups were
paid compensation for suffering they
endured, and that therefore African
Americans deserve compensation as
well. Reparations advocates often cite
as precedents the payments to Jews
who survived the Holocaust, and to
Japanese Americans placed in U.S.run internment camps during World
War II.
The experience of these groups has
certainly helped provide the slave
reparations movement with much
of its rationale. It follows a common
tradition in American politics: one
group gets a government benefit,
prompting another group to demand
a similar benefit. It is the classic

Slave reparations advocates

condemn and/or sue corporations,
universities, newspapers and
other entities for alleged ties to
slavery, but they are silent on
the extraordinary role that the
Democratic Party played in the
institution of slavery, and in the
Jim Crow laws of the post-Civil
War era. In fact, it makes more
sense to sue the Democratic Party
than corporations. While some
companies may have profited from
slavery, the Democratic Party fought
to keep it legal.
As pointed out in the Overview,
the 2000 Democratic Party Platform
Statement included a plank supporting
the establishment of a federal
commission to examine the history
of slavery and to make appropriate
recommendations. Many House
Democrats have lined up behind
Rep. John Conyers reparations bill,
and several prominent Democratic
politicians support slave reparations.
Logically (if there is any logic to
slave reparations), they should begin
in their own back yard and demand
that the Democratic Party itself make
reparations.
To be sure, this is not to imply
hypocrisy or to make a partisan
statement. Democrats are right
to separate themselves from their
partys racist, pro-slavery past to the
maximum extent possible, just as
Republicans are right to erase any
vestige of racism. This is simply
to point out the inconsistency in
reparations advocates demands.
The Party of Slavery
The Democratic Party has been
in existence since the early 1800s,

becoming a formal political party

in the 1830s during the presidency
of Andrew Jackson, a southern
slave owner. It was the bona-fide
party of slavery; anyone who was
pro-slavery was a Democrat. In
the decades leading up to the
outbreak of the Civil War in 1861,
congressional Democrats constantly
blocked legislation that would have
restricted slavery and made every
effort to legalize it in new states and
territories. It was the Democrats
ardent support for slavery that gave
birth to the anti-slavery Republican
Party in 1854.
Republican Abraham Lincolns
political nemesis and famous
debating partner was Stephan A.
Douglas, a Democratic senator from
Illinois. Douglas was the pro-slavery
demagogue extraordinaire, whipping
up peoples fears that freeing the slaves
would wreak havoc on white society.
Douglas represented the northern
Democrats, who wanted to leave it up
to the residents of new U.S. territories
to decide whether to allow slavery
(popular sovereignty). Southern
Democrats wanted to mandate slavery
in every new state and territory
regardless of whether the residents
wanted it.
The 1860 Democratic platform
strongly supported the U.S. Supreme
Courts Dred Scott decision, which
basically stipulated that slavery could
not be prohibited or restricted within
the United States, and that slaves
were the property of the owner in all
states, free or slave.
In the 1864 presidential election,
Lincoln ran against Democrat
George B. McClellan, who promised,
if elected, to immediately sign an
armistice with the Confederacy to
end the war. McClellan and his fellow
its only fair argument, where the

peace Democrats (also known as

Copperheads) claimed that they
did not want the proposed armistice
to result in a break-up of the Union.
But privately, they understood that
anything less than total victory over
the South would result in Southern
independence and the continuation of
slavery.

voted on 26 major civil rights bills.

In over 80 percent of those votes,
a majority of Democrats opposed
civil rights legislation. By contrast,
a majority of Republicans favored
the civil rights legislation in over 96
percent of the votes.

After the war, the goal of

Reconstruction and the Radical
Republicans was full civil and
political equality for blacks by
granting them the right to vote,
serve on juries, hold office, and
receive equal protection of
the laws. But the Democratic
Party successfully thwarted the
Reconstruction civil rights program.
The partys stated platform in
nearly every southern state included
the goal of establishing black
codes to limit black suffrage.

Of course, this is not to say that a

slave reparations lawsuit against
the Democratic Party is a good
idea. Slave reparations against
any entity are a terrible idea for
reasons outlined throughout this
report. But if activists are going to
defy common sense and demand
reparations, then the ripest target is
the Democratic Party.

The PBS four-part series, The Rise

and Fall of Jim Crow, summarized
the Democratic Partys complicity
in denying freed blacks their civil
rights:
Most whites rallied around the
Democratic Party as the party of
white supremacy. Between 1868
and 1871, terrorist organizations,
especially the Ku Klux Klan,
murdered blacks and whites who
tried to exercise their right to vote
or receive an education. The Klan,
working with Democrats in several
states, used fraud and violence to
help whites regain control of their
state governments...By the time
the last federal troops had been
withdrawn in 1877, Reconstruction
was all but over and the
Democratic Party controlled the
destiny of the South.

The Democratic Party firmly

established the Jim Crow era that
would endure for nearly 100 years.
Between 1933 and 1964, Congress
mentality is, They got money, so its

Comparing Culpabilities

For decades the Democratic Party

voted, campaigned, lobbied,
barnstormed, editorialized,
pontificated, and fought vigorously
to preserve and expand slavery in
the United States. And for many
decades after abolition, the party
led the fight to deny civil rights to
African Americans. From a legal
standpoint, filing a lawsuit against
the Democratic Party would also
be easier than suing corporations
whose links to slavery can only
be tenuously established through
complicated acquisitions of defunct
19th century-era companies. The
Democratic National Committee
after all was established in 1848.
It is laudable that the Democratic
Party of today has repudiated
its segregationist past. But slave
reparations advocates do not care
about an entitys contemporary
guilt or innocence; they focus on
the past. By the logic of reparations
advocates, the Democratic Party has
much to answer for.
only fair that we should, too.
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13

Slave Reparations Timeline

1989
Rep. John Conyers (D-MI)
introduces a bill calling for the
examination of slavery and for
appropriate remedies. The bill
has been reintroduced every year,
but has been voted down.
2000
Publication of The Debt: What
America Owes to Blacks by
Randall Robinson.
December 2000
The Reparations Coordinating
Committee is formed (originally
called the Reparations
Assessment Group) to attempt
to obtain reparations through
litigation. The organization
consists of prominent lawyers,
academics and authors. It
is currently involved in a
reparations lawsuit against the
U.S. government.
2001
Center for the Study of
Popular Culture president
David Horowitz submits ads to
student newspapers around the
country on 10 Reasons Why
Reparations for Slavery is a Bad
Ideaand Racist, Too. Of the
71 newspapers to which the ad
was submitted, 28 printed it.
AugustSeptember 2001
At the U.N. World Conference
Against Racism, Racial
Discrimination, Xenophobia,
and Related Intolerance in
Durban, South Africa, African
nations demand that Europe
and America apologize and
compensate for the slave trade of
centuries past.
2002
The IRS warns against filing false
tax claims tied to reparations. A
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bogus Slave Reparations Act or

black inheritance tax refund,
pushed by scam artists, prompted
some taxpayers to claim such
a refund. In March 2002,
responding to a surge in frivolous
claims for the non-existent slave
reparations tax credit, the U.S.
Department of Justice filed civil
suits in Mississippi and Virginia
to prohibit tax professionals from
preparing returns that claim
refunds based on this fictitious
tax credit. Prior to that, the
IRS disclosed it had paid out as
much as $30 million to persons
(including at least four current or
former IRS employees) who had
claimed such a credit in 2000
and part of 2001. One woman
reportedly received a $500,000
payment.
March, 2002
Lawyer-activist Deadria FarmerPaellmann files a class action
suit in New York against
corporations that are accused
of benefiting from slavery.
They include Aetna, Inc., Fleet
BostonFinancial Corp., and CSX
Corp.
May 2002
A second lawsuit is filed in
federal court in Newark, N.J.
against New York Life Insurance
Co., Wall Street investment firm
Brown Brothers Harriman & Co.
and Norfolk Southern Corp. The
plaintiff is Richard E. Barber
Sr., a former deputy executive
director of the NAACP.
May 2002
The California Insurance
Commission releases names
of 675 slaves and 350 of their
owners in accordance with a new
state law requiring insurance
companies conducting business

in the state to research their

records and the records of their
parent companies to ascertain
any involvement with slavery.
Additionally, Jesse Jackson asks
insurance commissioners in the
states where his Rainbow/PUSH
Coalition has offices to follow
Californias lead.
August 2002
Mass rally held on the Mall in
Washington, D.C. in support of
reparations.
October 2002
Chicago city government
unanimously passes the Slavery
Era Disclosure Ordinance, a new
law requiring corporations doing
business with the city to turn
over paperwork linking them or
their predecessor companies to
the slave trade.
May 2003
The Los Angeles City Council
approves legislation that requires
businesses seeking city contracts
to disclose any profits made from
slavery.
January 2004
U.S. District Court Judge
Charles Norgle dismisses class
action lawsuit seeking slave
reparations from Aetna and 18
other companies that allegedly
profited from slavery. But the suit
is dismissed without prejudice
which allows activists to file new
suits.
March 2004
A class action suit is filed in
the U.S. District Court against
many of the same companies
under the legal theory of unjust
enrichment.
June 2004
Detroit passes an ordinance
requiring companies doing

business with the city to disclose

ties to slavery.
January 2005
JPMorgan Chase & Co. is the
first bank to give millions of
dollars to African-American
programs and causes in effort
to quell criticism of its alleged
involvement in slavery.
March 2005
The Philadelphia City Council
unanimously approves a
disclosure law requiring
companies doing business with
the city to search their records
and disclose if they profited from
slavery.
July 2005
U.S. District Judge Charles
Norgle dismissed an amended
reparations lawsuit filed by
Deadria Farmer-Paellmann.
Norgle ruled that plaintiffs
did not prove that they were
personally injured by slavery and
any decision about reparations
payments must be made by the
president and Congress, not
the courts. Norgle also wrote
that present-day Americans
are not morally or legally liable
for historical injustices . . . and
that reparations talk is divisive,
immersing African-Americans
in a culture of victimhood.
Reparations activists are
currently appealing the decision
to the U.S. Seventh Circuit
Court of Appeals.
December 2005
Milwaukee becomes the fifth
major city to enact a disclosure
law.

Liberated inmates at the Buchenwald Nazi concentration camp. Reparations activists claim
that blacks are owed compensation because Holocaust survivors received money.

But slave reparations advocates

are wrong to make this argument.
In the cases of Holocaust and
Japanese internment reparations,
the payments went to the actual
victims of the wrongdoings or to
the victims immediate families,
not to the descendants of victims.
Slave reparations advocates,
of course, never point this out
when making their case. They are
seriously distorting the its only
fair argument, since they were
never actually enslaved. To get
around this inconvenient fact, they
argue they are suffering from the
effects of slavery, but as is made
clear in the chapter titled, Slavery
Did Not Cause Poverty Among
Todays Blacks, this too is a highly
dubious claim.

Money to the Actual Victims

Holocaust reparations are the

most commonly cited precedent
among reparations advocates.
West Germanys payments to
Israel following World War II are
frequently mentioned, as well
as the more recent lawsuits by
Holocaust survivors to extract
payments from German companies
that profited from slave labor
during the Nazi era.
In 1952, West Germany began
payments to Israel to help
defray expenses relating to
the resettlement of Holocaust
survivors, and to pay selected
Holocaust survivors directly. West
Germanys payments to Israel were
voluntary, and the money went to
actual victims of the Holocaust.
Initially, Israel was even hesitant
to accept the reparations. During
the Israeli Knesset debate over
whether to accept the payments
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15

era policies, and against Swiss

banks to recover assets that were
deposited there during the Nazi era.
(However, according to the Times
of London, most of the dormant
Swiss bank accounts belonged to
wealthy non-Jewish people who had
forgotten about the money.)48
Slave reparations advocates also
frequently cite the example of
compensation paid to Japanese
Americans. During World War II,
about 120,000 Japanese immigrants
or people of Japanese ancestry were
placed in 10 internment camps,
losing their freedom and, in many
cases, their property. Many of them
had to sell their property at far
below market prices. Three years
after the war, the U.S. government
began to pay out $38 million in
compensation to former internees.
In 1988, President Reagan and
Congress appropriated an additional
$1.25 billion for reparations of
$20,000 to each former internee.

Japanese Americans were compensated for their internment during World War II. Slavery
reparations advocates ignore the fact that compensation paid to Japanese Americans and
Holocaust survivors went to the actual victims.

from Germany, Menachem

Begin (who was later Israels
prime minister from 19771983)
considered such payments blood
money.47
In the 1990s, U.S. and German
negotiators agreed to establish a
$5.2 billion fund to compensate
people forced to work in Germany
during World War II. There were
16

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an estimated 12 million people

enslaved in concentration camps
or forced to work elsewheremany
of them non-Jews. Between
1.5 million to 2.3 million
were still alive and eligible for
compensation.
There also have been lawsuits
against insurance companies for
allegedly failing to pay Nazi-

In both the Holocaust and the

Japanese internment payments,
therefore, the recipients were the
actual victims, or in some cases, the
victims immediate family members.
The payments did not go to distant
descendents.

Demeaning the Memory

of Victims
Recent Holocaust reparations,
particularly those associated with
the 1990s lawsuits against European
insurance companies, have caused
considerable controversy. Several
Jewish American scholars and
journalists criticized the payments,
saying they started as a legitimate

effort to recover money in longdormant Swiss bank accounts, but

turned into a shameless money grab
by lawyers who started going after
European insurance companies.
Some say it only degrades the
memory of millions who died in the
Holocaust, and that the main focus
of activity is the claims, rather than
the horror of the death of 6 million
Jews. Norman Finkelstein, professor
of history at Hunter College and
author of The Holocaust Industry:
Reflections of the Exploitation of
Jewish Suffering, commented: They
[the lawyers] have hijacked the
Holocaust and appointed themselves
saviors of the victimsall in the
name of money.49
In 1998, Abraham Foxman, national
director of the Anti-Defamation
League, came out strongly against
Holocaust reparations, declaring that
when claims become the main focus
of activity regarding the Holocaust,
rather than the unique horror of 6
million Jews, including 1.5 million
children, being murdered simply
because they were Jewish, then
something has gone wrong.50 He
went on to say that the Holocaust
reparations movement could
send the message that accounting
for the material losses is what is
important, rather than mourning the
victims. As Massachusetts Institute
of Technology political science
professor Melissa Nobles said,
Money can profoundly obscure the
nature of a tragedy.
Of course, the same can be said
about the slave reparations
movement. Associating huge
amounts of money today with the
suffering of people in the 17th, 18th

and 19th centuries is demeaning

to those who suffered. Money,
moreover, can be corrupting.
As pointed out earlier, current
reparations agitation already
has degenerated into a cynical
game of legalized extortion with
multimillion-dollar lawsuits against
corporations, universities and other
entities whose alleged ties to slavery
are tenuous to nonexistent (see
Shakedown via the Courts).
Regarding the argument that the
obsession with money demeans the
suffering of the victims, Holocaust
reparations advocates counter by
saying that the victims deserve
compensation. But this cannot be
applied to the slave reparations
movement, since the victims are
no longer around to accept the
compensation.

Forcing Innocents to Pay

Another serious flaw with the
Holocaust reparations lawsuits is
that they create a situation where
innocents are being forced to pay. It
is the employees, shareholders and
customers of the accused companies
who are footing the bill. Yet, they
are totally innocent because their
generation is too young to have
had anything to do with the Nazis.
Had such settlements taken place
shortly after World War II, when
the generations responsible for the
Nazis rise to power were still very
much alive, then such lawsuits
would have been more justified.
Similar criticisms can be applied to
the slave reparations movement.
Not only can it be construed as a

shameless money grab, but innocents

would have to pay.

The Native American Case:

No Reparations Involved
Reparations advocates also claim
that, in recent decades, several
Native American nations received
reparations in the form of money
and land for actions that occurred a
century or more ago. For instance,
in 1986 the Ottawas of Michigan
received $32 million based on an
1836 treaty.
The reality, however, is that these
were not reparations but rather
settlements involving land disputes
between Native American tribes and
the U.S. government, under legally
binding treaties. According to the
Bureau of Indian Affairs, in the 1800s
the U.S. government sometimes
acquired land, mineral rights and
other property from Indian tribes
without adequate compensation.
Many treaties, for example, contained
provisions for the cessation of Indian
lands to the U.S. government, yet the
Indians did not get paid for ceding
those lands.
At the time of the breach of contract,
Indians could never challenge those
actions in court because they were not
made citizens of the United States
until 1924. It was not until the second
half of the 20th century, after the G.I.
bill sent Indians to college, that they
finally started to exert their rights and
take action on the outstanding claims.
Many of the settlements occurred
during the 1980s.
This issue, therefore, in no way
involved reparations to Native
Americans to compensate them
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17

for suffering. Their situation was

a clear-cut legal issue, involving
legally binding contractsusually
pertaining to disputes over land
whose terms were not abided by.
None of this applies to African
Americans situation.
Moreover, since 1888 the
Department of the Interior has
leased properties on Indian-owned
lands, and processed revenues from
activities on those lands such as
farming, drilling and other uses.
Indian tribes are supposed to get
royalties from these activities, but
have been denied many royalties
because of financial mismanagement
within the Interior department.
Tribes say they are owed up to $40
billion.
Indians are not seeking huge
settlements to right the wrongs
of the past. Said John Echohawk,
executive director of the Native
American Rights Fund, We dont
want reparations . . . we want our
land and our water back.51

A PANDORAS BOX
The slave reparations movement
is unprecedented in that people
are seeking remuneration for the
hardships endured by their distant
ancestors. Until now, reparations
movements always sought
compensation for the generations
that actually experienced the
hardships. To most observers, it
defies logic to demand payment
for work performed by long-dead
generations. But as indicated earlier,
this demand must be taken seriously.
A notion may be absurd, but if
millions of people support itand
18

www.nlpc.org

stand to profit from itpolitical

momentum for it builds.
A particularly disturbing
ramification of compensating
descendants of African slaves is the
dangerous precedent it would set.
It would open up a Pandoras Box
of other groups seeking reparations
for the injustices suffered by their
ancestors. Blacks in America, of
course, suffered incredible hardships
in centuries past. But so did other
races. The truth is that, prior to the
20th century, life was exceedingly
harsh for the large majority of
people. Many of those in positions
of power were cruel and unfairnot
only to blacks but to people of
many races, nationalities and
religious creeds. Enlightened ideas
of tolerance, fairness, and human
rights, which most of us enjoy today,
had not yet become widespread
throughout the civilized world.
Actions that are illegal todaysuch
as slavery, indentured servitude,
institutionalized discrimination, and
inhumane working conditions
were legal back then.

Reparations for the Irish?

Irish immigrants endured severe
ethnic discrimination, economic
exploitation and deplorable living
conditions in their long struggle
for prosperity and integration
into American society. Ever since
the first Irish immigrants came to
American shores 300 years ago,
they faced enormous resistance
to securing social acceptance and
civil rights. For example, around
1700 South Carolina instituted a
law excluding Irish immigrants.
About 15 years later, Maryland

passed a similar law, which was

ironic in that the colony had
been established in part as a
haven for Catholics. During
later centuries, Irish immigrants
were burdened with employment
and housing discrimination.
Employers and landlords, for
example, often posted signs telling
Irish immigrants to keep out. A
common sign was, Irish and dogs
need not apply.52
Many anti-Irish riots occurred in
the 1800s in major American cities,
in which churches and homes
were burned, and Irish immigrants
murdered. There was even a major
anti-Irish political party, the KnowNothing Party, formed in the
1840s.53
In the transatlantic ship crossing,
many Irish had to travel in steerage,
which was even lower than third
class. Living conditions in steerage
were inhuman with food often
infested with maggotswhen food
was available at alland scarce
fresh water. Many people died of
starvation.54
Prior to the Civil War in the South,
writer and landscape architect
Frederick Law Olmsted observed that
Irish immigrants, rather than black
slaves, were employed for the most
hazardous jobs. For example, while
watching black slaves throwing bales
into a cargos ships hold with Irishmen
on the receiving end, Olmsted was
told that blacks are worth too much
to be risked here; if the Paddies are
knocked overboard . . . nobody loses
anything.55
The Chinese were another group
that faced institutionalized

discrimination. When they

immigrated to America in the
mid-1800s, they faced tremendous
anti-Chinese sentiment and
discrimination. Laws were passed
to restrict them from employment,
property ownership, and even
from marrying outside their own
ethnic group. They also could not
live where they wanted, and were
confined to certain areaswhich
are now known as Chinatowns.
The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882
restricted them from immigrating to
America. Their basic rights were not
fully restored until the 1960s.56
The histories of numerous other
ethnic groups are filled with
similar stories. Such groups include
Hispanic Americans, Italian
Americans, Polish Americans,
German Americans, Russian
Americans, Portuguese Americans,
Scottish Americans, Armenian
Americans, Greek Americans,
Filipino Americans, and many
more.
If slave reparations were ever
enacted, it would not at all be
far-fetched to expect other ethnic
groups to demand similar types
of reparations for past bouts of
discrimination. Indeed, claims for
Chinese American reparations may
not be far behind. Under Californias
state law requiring insurance
companies to file disclosures of
past links to slavery, the California
Insurance Department found
evidence that Manhattan Life
provided an insurance policy to
shippers for 700 Chinese laborers on
a voyage from China in 1854.57
Not only would the prospect
of slave reparations open a

Immigrants having lunch at Ellis Island. The vast majority of Americans are descendants of
immigrants who came to this country after the abolition of slavery.

Pandoras Box of other ethnic

groups demanding money for
historical injustices, but groups
would no doubt demand even
more reparations. There would be
complaints that initial reparations
did not go far enough. If, for
example, the U.S. government
paid out a billion dollars in
reparations to African Americans,
activists would point out that
the total value of slaves work,
with interest, was much higher
than thatin the hundreds of
billions or trillions of dollars. The
potential for reparations inflation
is infinite.
Moreover, if reparations were paid,
activists would see that poverty
still exists among blacks, and
that real or imagined incidents
of racial discrimination continue
to occur. Blacks would perceive
that nothing much had changed;
and as discussed in the sidebar,

Reparations Would Exacerbate

Race Relations, reparationsinduced resentment toward blacks
by non-blacks, in fact, would
increase. Blacks would claim
that the solution is even more
reparations. And the vicious cycle
would continue.

Suing Today for Yesterdays

Working Conditions: Will
Labor Unions Join the
Reparations Bandwagon?
Based on slave reparation
advocates logic, those whose
ancestors toiled in factories in the
19th and early 20th centuries
underpaid and in hellish working
conditionsshould be entitled
to compensation. At that time,
there were not the same types of
employment laws that exist now.
Just as blacks are demanding to
be compensated for slavery, an
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19

illegal practice today but legal in

the 19th century, whites could
use the same justification to
demand compensation for working
conditions that are now illegal
but were legal in the early 20th
century.
Could this be on the agenda of
labor unions if the slave reparations
advocates succeed? They could sue
for billions, based on this line of
reasoning. Slavery, to be sure, was
an abomination, but so was child
labor, disease-ridden factories,
indentured servitude and other
legalized forms of labor of that era.
Were such practices widespread in
the 20th or 21st centuries, after
laws had been passed outlawing
them, the victims could sue for
tremendous damages.
And what about descendants of the
original colonists from England?
Adopting the mentality of slave
reparations advocates, even they
could demand reparations. As
detailed in the chapter below,
White Slavery, many of the
original inhabitants from Europe
came as white slaves. According to
historian John Van Der Zee, half
of the original American colonists
came here not of their own free
will, but either as indentured
servants (which is slavery, albeit
not for life), or as slaves for life.

International Repercussions
If the reparations advocates succeed,
there could be international
repercussions as well. Latin
Americans could start demanding
that the governments of Spain and
Portugal compensate them for the
20

www.nlpc.org

death and devastation they suffered

at the hands of the Conquistadors in
the 16th century.
Inspired by the slave reparations
controversy brewing in the
United States, African nations
are already demanding countryto-country reparations. At the
hyperbolic-named U.N. World
Conference Against Racism, Racial
Discrimination, Xenophobia, and
Related Intolerance that took
place in Durban, South Africa
in 2001, one of the biggest issues
was African nations demand that
Europe and America apologize and
compensate for the slave trade.
The provisional agenda called
for effective remedies, recourse,
redress, [compensatory]* and other
measures at the national, regional
and international levels to combat
racism. (The word compensatory
was in brackets because the
delegations could not agree on
what exactly it entailed; lengthy
footnoted information stated
the differing positions of various
delegations. African delegates,
of course, demanded monetary
compensation.)
Of course, even if Western nations
took the unlikely step of giving
Africa billions of dollars in slave
reparations, it would do nothing to
resolve the endemic poverty, tyranny
and civil war plaguing the continent.
Ironically, the African delegates to
the U.N. conference were reluctant
to discuss the very real problem of
modern-day slavery in Africa (see
Present-Day Slavery in Africa).
This is to say nothing of Africans
own heavy involvement in slave
trading during earlier centuries; in

most cases, as discussed in Africas

Complicity in the Slave Trade,
it was Africans themselves who
sold slaves to the Europeans and
Americans.

NONVICTIMS
PUNISHING THE
INNOCENT
The notion of paying recompense
for what ones distant ancestor
did a century and a half ago is
nonsensical. Yet that is what
advocates of slave reparations are
demanding. Equally disturbing,
the people who would receive the
money are not the victims, but the
great-great-great grandchildren
of the victims, many of whom are
much more prosperous than those
who would have to pay.
But the absurdity of reparations goes
much beyond that. First, only a tiny
minority of Americans today has
an ancestor who was a slave owner.
Prior to and during the Civil War,
the great majority of the population
was located in the northern states
where slavery was outlawed. In 1860,
the population of the free states
totaled about 19.5 million; the free
population of the slave-owning
states was 7.5 million.58 This means
that among Americans today who
had ancestors living in the United
States during the slavery era, most
of those ancestors lived in the
non-slave owning northern states.
In fact, many of those northerners
were abolitionists and detested the
institution of slavery.
As for the small number of
Americans alive today who had
ancestors living in the antebellum

Everyone can agree that the

more-than 45 million Americans

8
Millions

7
6
5
4
3
2
1

18

21

18 3
31 0
18 40
41
18 50
51
18 60
61
18 70
71
18 80
18 81
91 90
1
19 900
01
19 10
11
19 20
21
19 3
31 0
19 40
41
19 50
51
19 60
61
19 70
71
19 8
19 81 0
91 90
2
00
0

Source: U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service

Graph 2: Immigrants from Selected

West European Countries
4
3
3
2

n United
Kingdom
n Netherlands
n Ireland
n Germany
n France

2
1
1
0
18 3
31 0
18 40
41
18 50
51
18 60
61
18 70
71
18 80
18 81
91 90
1
19 900
01
19 10
11
19 20
21
19 3
31 0
19 40
41
19 50
51
19 60
61
19 70
71
19 8
19 81 0
91 90
2
00
0

The graph shows that the great

waves of immigration took place
after the Civil War ended in 1865,
particularly around 1900, as well as
the most recent decade. Since 1870,
more than 51 million people have
immigrated to the United States.60

21

Even more significant is that

the vast majority of Americans
ancestors did not even live in the
United States when slavery was
legal. They immigrated here after
slavery was abolished. Graph 1
illustrates this point. It shows the
number of immigrants per decade
since 1820, the earliest year for
which the U.S. Immigration
and Naturalization service has
statistics. There were 9.5 million
people in the U.S. in 1820.
Between 1820 and 1860, when
slavery existed, about 5 million
people immigrated to the U.S., the
large majority going to the nonslave owning states and territories.

10

Millions

Most Americans Came Here

After Slavery Ended

Graph 1: Total Legal Immigration Into the U.S.

18

South, chances are those ancestors

were not slave owners. Only
one out of four southern whites
owned slaves.59 Thus, only a very
small percentage of contemporary
Americans have direct ancestors
who were slave owners. Other
Americans perhaps have distant
uncles or cousins who were
slave owners. If reparations were
mandated, this would be a case
of paying recompense for an act
carried out by a distant cousin of a
long-deceased direct ancestor.

of Latin American and Asian

descent are completely absolved of
any complicity with U.S. slavery,
since almost all of their ancestors
immigrated to the U.S. long after

slavery ended, most of them in

recent decades. And of the very few
people of Latin American or Asian
origin who were U.S. citizens during
the slavery era, it is safe to say that
very few of them were slave owners.
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21

Graph 3: Estimates of African Slave Arrivals By Region,

15261870
5
4
4
Millions

3
3
2
2
1
1

Br
m itish
er
ic No
a/ r
U th
SA

s
W
es

tI

nd

ie

il
az
Br

S
A pan
m is
er h
ic
a

Source: Klein, The Atlantic Slave Trade

What about Americans of European

descent? If guilt is determined
by ones ancestors being slave
owners, then Americans of Italian,
Polish, Slavic, Scandinavian and
Greek descents can be sure they are
completely innocent; their ancestors
immigrated to the U.S. after slavery
ended. Even the vast majority of
Americans of Western European
origin are innocent. Their ancestors
mostly came here after the Civil War
as well.
Another significant point is that a
growing number of black Americans
do not have ancestors who were
U.S. slaves. As shown on graph 2,
more than a half-million Africans
immigrated to the United States
in recent decades. And many if
not most of those immigrants
have children, bringing the total
number of African Americans whose
22

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ancestors were not enslaved to at

least a million. Assuming reparations
were paid to all blacks, a substantial
number of people would be entitled
to reparations whose ancestors were
not even slaves.
Moreover, there were almost a
million immigrants from Haiti and
Jamaica in recent decades, almost all
of them black. While their ancestors
were slaves, they were not enslaved
in the U.S. Why should U.S. citizens
have to pay reparations to people
whose ancestors were enslaved in
another country?
But if reparations advocates get
their way, that is what would
happen. To allegedly combat the
injustice of slavery, they would
perpetrate an extraordinary
injustice by forcing the innocent
to pay reparations to those who do
even not deserve it.

SLAVERY DID NOT

CAUSE POVERTY
AMONG TODAYS
BLACKS
As detailed in Money to the Actual
Victims, slave reparations advocates
commonly use reparations paid to
Holocaust and Japanese American
internment victims as a precedent.
However, it is impossible to ignore
the crucial difference that those
instances involved payments to
actual victims or victims immediate
families, and not to descendents
of victims. This leaves reparations
advocates in a quandary, since
former slaves all passed away long
ago. Their solution is to allege that
slavery caused the current economic
gap between blacks and whites. In
The Debt, Randall Robinson writes,
Lamentably, there will always be
poverty. But African Americans are
overrepresented in that economic
class for one reason and one reason
only: African slavery and the vicious
climate that followed it.61
Robinson goes on to write that this
gap has been resolutely nurtured
since in law and public behavior. It
has now ossified. It is structural. Its
framing beams are disguised only
by the counterfeit manners of a
hypocritical governing class.62

Post-Traumatic Slavery
Disorder?
In a testament to the flimsiness of
Robinsons assertions, he makes
no attempt to support them with
evidence or theories of how slavery
allegedly caused the economic
disparities between blacks and whites.

Reparations Would
Exacerbate Race Relations
The few prevailing theories include
that of Thomas Shapiro, professor of
sociology at Northeastern University
and co-author of Black Wealth, White
Wealth. Shapiro attempts to provide
an economic explanation for the
gap, saying that because blacks could
not own property under slavery, they
could not accumulate assets to pass
on from generation to generation.63
Dr. Anthony Sutton, a
Minneapolis-based psychologist
and author of Breaking Chains:
Hope for Adult Children of
Recovering Slaves, attempts
to provide a psychological/
sociological explanation. He says
that African Americans have
internalized the behaviors
and attitudes of their enslaved
ancestors, creating an inferiority
complex. This inferiority complex,
he says, prevents many of them
from demanding their rights and
being more assertive. Sutton also
says that slavery is responsible for
the contemporary breakdown of
the black familyleading to crime,
teenage pregnancy, etc.because
under slavery, black men could not
act as providers and caretakers of
their families.64
Others point out that todays lack of
educational attainment among many
blacks can be traced to the practice of
punishing slaves for learning how to
read, and that widespread promiscuity
and out-of-wedlock births can be
attributed to male slaves not being
allowed to stay with their families.65
Those promoting this thesis have
even come up with a name for
this alleged phenomenon: PTSD,
which stands for Post-Traumatic
Slavery Disorder. Sekou Mims,

Reparations advocates ostensibly

think compensation would heal
racial wounds. Randall Robinson,
for example, says there is no chance
that America can solve its racial
problems without reparations.
Actually, it would exacerbate racial
divisions. The notion of forcing
innocents to pay people who
were never enslaved would likely
generate bitterness throughout the
country. In addit ion, the iniquitous
transfer of wealth from poorer nonblacks to more affluent blacks would
stir widespread outrage.
Walter Williams, a black professor
and columnist, observed, I cant
think of a better fortification for
racism than reparations to blacks.
. . . To force whites today, who
were not in any way responsible for
slavery, to make payments to black
peoplemany of whom may be
better off [than the whites]will
create nothing but great resentment
among whites.
Reparations, writes Robert W.
Tracinski of the Ayn Rand Institute,
implies that by simply belonging
to the same race as slave owners,
whites still bear a collective
responsibility. Each member is
blamed for actions of other members
who lived long ago. The ultimate
result, he warns, will not be racial
harmony or a color-blind society,

Larry Higgenbotham and Omar

G. Reidtwo social workers and
a psychologist, respectively
reportedly are writing a book about
PTSD. They allege the trauma
of slavery gave rise to crime,
drug abuse, family disunion and

but racial warfare. Says Tracinski,

It encourages the view of blacks
and whites as a collective of victims
pitted against an opposing and
hostile collective of oppressors, with
no possibility for integration or
peaceful coexistence.
Recent incidents in Alabama and
Mississippi provide a foretaste
of what would happen if slave
reparations became a reality.
In 2000, a record $1 billion
was paid out to black farmers
based on a lawsuit that alleged
racial discrimination at the U.S.
Department of Agriculture. Fliers
were circulated singling out black
farmers who received settlement
money, condemning the lawsuit
as a massive rip-off stemming
from governmental pandering to
minorities. Slave reparations would
involve much more money and
be on a much wider scale. The
ensuing racial animosity would be
unimaginably worse.
In addition to exacerbating race
relations, slave reparations also
would weaken any national effort
to eradicate poverty among blacks.
Glen Loury, director of the Institute
of Race and Social Division at
Boston University, says it would
be a Pyrrhic victory for African
Americans. It will undermine the
claim for further help down the road,
because the rest of America will say,
Shut up: Youve been paid.

low educational performance in

segments of the black community.
They also claim that black people
as a whole are suffering from
PTSD. Even a Harvard University
psychiatrist, Alvin F. Poussaint,
wrote about a posttraumatic
slavery syndrome.
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23

Mims, who is black, describes a

psychotic breakdown experienced
by his 16-year old son, in which
the teenager suffered delusions that
white police were following him, and
that other whites were staring at him
menacingly. Reid, the psychologist,
said black and Latino males were
showing up in droves with similar
symptoms.

more prevalent, black illegitimacy

was a tiny fraction of todays high
rate. He writes that roughly 75
percent of black children lived
in two-parent households, and
in New York City the figure was
85 percent. This suggests that
the breakdown of the family has
nothing to do with discrimination
and slavery.

However, Reids mention of the Latino

males undermines the thesis of post
traumatic slavery disorder, since most
Latinos ancestors were not enslaved
in recent centuries. Moreover, the
PTSD thesis opens the door wide open
for ridicule. The Wall Street Journals
Best of the Web Today had a field
day with this, soliciting its readers
for similar maladies. They included
post traumatic potato disorder by a
reader of Irish descent, post-traumatic
communism disorder by a descendant
of Russians who suffered from Stalins
purge, and post-traumatic Santa Anna
disorder by a Mexican descendent of
someone who suffered under the rule
of the 19th century dictator.66

Williams also notes that black

communities were far safer in earlier
decades, such as in the 1920s, 30s
and 40s, when there was much
greater poverty and discrimination
and fewer opportunities.67

Modern Problems Have

Nothing to Do With Slavery
Today, the black illegitimacy rate
is almost 70 percent, and less
than 40 percent of black children
live in two-parent families. The
socioeconomic consequences are
devastating. Walter Williams, a
black economist at George Mason
University, asks how much of this
can be explained by discrimination
and/or the legacy of slavery. The
evidence, he concludes, is weak. In
the early 1900s, when slavery was
a much more recent phenomenon
and discrimination was much
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Perhaps the strongest evidence

that todays problems among
African Americans are not due to
slavery comes from an exhaustive
study titled Slavery and the
Intergenerational Transmission
of Human Capital by Bruce
Sacerdote of the Dartmouth
College economics department.
Sacerdote finds that the economic
disparities between the descendants
of former slaves and the
descendants of free blacks (pre1865) largely disappeared within
just two generations following
emancipation. Thus, the injustices
visited upon one generation seem
to have little if any harmful effect
on that generations grandsons and
granddaughters. The rich existing
literature on social mobility and
income mobility would suggest that
such convergence (i.e. recovery
from slavery) may take place rather
rapidly, writes Sacerdote.68
Sacerdote studied the matter by
comparing outcomes for former slaves
and their children and grandchildren,

to outcomes for free blacks and their

children and grandchildren. The
study takes into account literacy,
schooling status, occupation and
socioeconomic status.
Sacerdote used census data from 1880
and 1920, grouping people into three
generations to examine outcomes
for those born before 1865 and their
children and grandchildren. He
found that in 1880 there was a huge
literacy gap between former slaves
and free-born blacks, but that the gap
narrowed considerably over the next
two generations.
In a similar vein, children of former
slaves were less likely to be enrolled
in school than children of free blacks
in 1880, but by 1920 the gap largely
disappeared among grandchildren
of blacks born into slavery and the
grandchildren of free-born blacks.
Grandchildren of slaves were 6
percent less likely to be enrolled in
school than grandchildren of free
blacks, but this effect goes away
completely after controlling for region.
Regarding income, former slavesnot
surprisinglyworked in occupations
with lower median income than
those of blacks born free. But between
1880 and 1920, the income gap had
substantially narrowed.
The literacy gap between blacks and
whites also substantially narrowed
from the first generation of children
born after the Civil War to the next
generation. By 1920, the effect of
slavery status on literacy disappears
completely.
Sacerdote writes, The large
black-white wage gaps observed
in the twentieth century could be
a separate phenomenon from the

direct effects of slavery on slaves

and their descendants. He added,
What the study shows is how little
slavery actually has to do with todays
problems. It seems rather unlikely that
slavery itself caused a lot of the racism
problems present in the U.S. today.69
The claim that slavery causes
negative long-term effects is also
disproved by the experience of
many ethnic groups in America. As
detailed in A Pandoras Box, the
Chinese and other Asian ethnic
groups were subject to highly adverse
conditions when they immigrated
to America. Among their many
hardships, wages and working
conditions were terrible. If the
slavery-causes-long-term-poverty
thesis was correct, then it would be
reasonable to conclude that those
past hardships should have led to
endemic Asian poverty as well. Yet
todays Asian Americans, in general,
are economically successfuleven
more so than whites.

AMERICAN WEALTH
IS NOT BASED ON
SLAVERY
It is often claimed by reparations
advocates that the prosperity of the
United States is largely derived from
the free labor coerced from enslaved
blacks between 1619 and 1865, and
that non-blacks must now compensate
blacks. For example Conrad W.
Worrill, national chairman of the
National Black United Front, says
present generations should be held
responsible for the wrongdoings
of their ancestors because certain
sections of the present generation
have gained economically, politically

The Souths plantation-based economy hindered industrialization. In 1850, the South produced
only 10 to 11 percent of the nations industrial output.

and socially as a result of the unjust

enrichment enjoyed by their ancestors
at the expense of African people.70
Chicago Alderman Dorothy
Tillman says the United States
became rich because of slavery, and
that corporate America must pay
something in return. It was because
of the free labor of blacks. It was
because of all of the suffering we
took and we did that made America
so powerful. Chicago Mayor
Richard M. Daley said his citys
ordinance requiring companies to
disclose ties to slavery will help
demonstrate how much of the
nations wealth was created by the
sweat and blood of slavery.71
However, the evidence is
overwhelming that America is
wealthy despite slavery, not because
of it. If anything, slavery impeded
the economic development of the
United States.

Southern Underdevelopment
Well into the 20th century, the
South was economically less
advanced than the rest of the nation.
The reason for this can be traced to
the pre-Civil War era, when slavery
was the dominant system. The
Souths dependence on agriculture
and on a forced-labor system severely
hindered its economic development
compared with the North.72
In the mid-1800s, the Industrial
Revolution was radically
transforming the northern United
States and Europe. But the Industrial
Revolution bypassed the American
South. In 1850, the South produced
only 10 to 11 percent of the nations
industrial output. The South
produced less than New Hampshire
and only about one-third as much as
Massachusetts. In fact, the tiny state
of Rhode Island produced about as
much as the entire southern United
States. In 1860, output per person
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25

was $19 in the South, versus $149

for New England.73

reduce opportunities for industrial

change.76

Historians Fred Bateman and

Thomas Weiss write that
contemporary 19th-century
commentators and subsequent
historians criticized the southern
manufacturing economy not only
for its small size, but also for its lack
of diversity and its domination by
traditional processing industries
such as tobacco.74

But southern hostility to

industrialization wasnt just rooted
in economics; it was cultural as
well. Historian Eugene Genovese
argues that southern planters had
an aristocratic spirit and were
given to a life of luxury and ease.77
Liberated from the necessity of
daily labor, Tocqueville observed
that southerners, as enterprising
and energetic as northerners,
applied all their energies to field
sports, military exercises, lifeand-death single combat and
other activities involving violent
bodily exertion. Said Tocqueville,
[S]lavery prevents the whites
not only from becoming opulent,
but even from desiring to become
so.78 The Souths fundamentally
anti-capitalist values put it sharply
at odds with the values of the
emerging commercial society in
the North.

Many northerners blamed slavery,

observing that the institution had
sapped the South of entrepreneurial
vigor and enterprise. The results
were unprofitable plantations,
slow-growing cities and fewer of
them, and widespread poverty
among whites as well as blacks.
Commenting on a visit to Virginia,
New York politician William Seward
observed a[n] exhausted soil, old
and decaying towns, wretchedly
neglected roads, and, in every
respect, an absence of enterprise
and improvement. By contrast, the
North was known for its well-kept
family farms, widespread application
of technological advances, and fastgrowing cities.75
By being so integrally tied to
agriculture, slavery created an
economic incentive to shift
resources away from industry
and into agriculture. Moreover,
industrialization would have
disrupted the status quo,
substantially impacting the
economic and political power of
the holders of agricultural wealth.
Fear of this disruption probably
played a role in the efforts of
influential southerners to raise the
costs of starting enterprises and
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Slavery Absorbed Capital,

Discouraged Consumption
Slavery absorbed southern savings,
preventing the accumulation of
non-human capital and holding back
the growth of manufacturing. More
specifically, historians contend that
capital was frozen in the form of
slave labor, making it unavailable for
other forms of investment. Half of
the Souths assessed worth was tied
up in slaves and close to half in land
itself. Although the South earned
as much as $60 million a year in the
1850s from cotton, tobacco and rice
exports, almost all investment went
back into slaves and land, leaving
little for manufacturing.79

A poor transportation network also

hindered southern modernization.
There was a distinct lack of main
lines connecting cities to markets in
the West, and the manufacturing base
was very small compared with that
of the North. In A House Dividing:
Economic Development in Pennsylvania
and Virginia Before the Civil War,
historian John Majewski writes that
the central problem was Virginias
slave economy. The slave system
discouraged the growth of an investor
class that could provide funds for
transportation projects, or the
growth of a consumer class to provide
passengers for such projects.80
This was far different from the
situation in the North. For
example, in Pennsylvania in the
1830s and afterward, financiers
from Philadelphia funded
enormous railway projects that
extended far into the Midwest.
This gave entrepreneurs access
to new markets, leading to selfreinforcing growth.81
Bateman and Weiss observe
that the industrial output of the
West (the modern-day Midwest)
was growing rapidly, which
indicated that industrialization
was progressing from East to
West (where slavery did not
exist) rather than from North to
South. The Northeast and West
were uniting economically into
a system markedly unlike that of
the Southan inwardly directed
manufacturing economy inimical
to the economic interests of the
export-oriented, slave-based,
agrarian system.82
Because of the slave economy and
paucity of urban centers, the market

for consumer goods in the southern

states was very small. Beginning
in the early 19th century, cities
such as Richmond and Lynchburg,
VA., stagnated while Philadelphia
boomed. Factors hindering the
growth of Virginias cities include
the tobacco economy. Tobacco
required relatively simple processing
mechanisms, which in turn impeded
technological development or
the growth of cities and factories.
Another barrier to growth was
sparsely settled hinterlands,
providing little or no market for
manufactured products. By contrast,
the relatively densely populated
countryside of the North provided a
large consumer market.83
Without thriving urban centers,
Virginia and the South could not
achieve the concentration of capital
needed to build an interregional
railroad network like that in the
North. A slave society, no matter
how much wealth it produced, could
not compete against a northern
economy that harnessed the power
of ordinary households left free to
invent, to improve, to invest, and to
consume, writes Majewski.84
Compounding the problem was
the primacy of plantations. Slavery
was based largely on self-sufficient
plantations. But because of this
self-sufficiency, relatively little
interregional trade was required.
Majewski describes a self-reinforcing
cycle: a lack of markets discouraged
manufacturing and urbanization,
which led to more demand for slaves
and plantations, which further stifled
market development.85
Majewski concludes, The fragmented
transportation network impeded

industrialization. For all the hopes

of rejuvenating their economy,
Virginians never quite understood that
the chains of slavery also shackled
the invisible hand of the market. Left
without a true commercial center,
Virginias economy would remain
fettered to staple agriculture.86

More Slaves = Less Wealth:

Shouldnt Latin America Be
Richer?
If a countrys wealth is based on
slave labor, then Latin America
should be much wealthier than
North America. Brazil and the
Caribbean each had far more slaves
than North America. (See graph
3.) Cuba and Haiti were two of the
largest slave colonies. But Latin
America has always lagged far
behind North America in economic
development. This has to do in
large part with the contrasting
historical experience of the two
regions.
European colonization in the
Americas took different forms. In
the Latin American colonies, such
as Brazil, Mexico and the Caribbean,
European powers set up extractive
states, in which the primary goal
was to extract natural resources from
the colonysuch as gold, cash crops
and other resourcesand transfer
them to the colonizing country.87
These extractive states provided
few protections for private property,
while maximizing the potential for
government expropriation. They
were mostly colonized by individuals
simply interested in subjugating
the indigenous population and
then extracting as many resources

as possible with slave labor

imported from Africa. The Spanish
Conquistadors and Portuguese
typified this arrangement, as did
British and French colonizers.
In contrast, North America was
colonized by a different form of
European immigrationchiefly
characterized by families intent
on building economically selfsufficient farms and farming
communities. Arriving in large
numbers, these predominantly
British settlers replicated European
institutions, with a strong emphasis
on private property, checks against
government power, rule of law, and
representative democratic bodies.
In addition to the United States,
other examples of this arrangement
include Canada, Australia and
New Zealand.
The slavery experience and
economic histories of North and
South America clearly shows the
weakness in the argument that
the U.S.s high standard of living
is ultimately derived from slavery.
In places where slavery was the
foundation of the labor force, such
as Mexico and the Caribbean,
economic stagnation has been the
rule. In places where slavery was
limited or non-existent, prosperity
has been the rule.

Wealth Not Derived From

Slave-Produced Imports
Some reparations advocates claim
that the West grew wealthy due to
the cheap imports of slave-produced
goods. This, too, is baseless. As
described above, wealth is derived
from free enterprise, technological
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27

innovation and the rule of law.

The cost of imported goods is of
marginal importance to the overall
wealth of a society.
Major slave-produced products
imported by the Europeans included
cotton and rice. While slave labor
probably enabled Europeans to obtain
these goods cheaper than they could
have otherwise, it was a minor factor
in their prosperity. Had slave labor
not been available to grow cotton or
rice, those products no doubt would
have been grown by wage labor.
Indeed, it is instructive that when
the U.S. Civil War broke out in
1861, southerners believed that the
British textile industrys dependence
on imported cotton would
eventually lead Great Britain to aid
the Confederacy. More than threefourths of the cotton used in the
textile industries of Britain as well
as France came from the American
South.88 But while experiencing
some economic dislocation, Britain
continued to prosper as southern
cotton imports dramatically
declined. After the Civil War ended
in 1865, the global textile industry
flourished by relying on affordable
cotton grown by wage-labor in many
regions of the world.
Some slave reparations advocates
also contend that the slave trade
generated enormous profits and
that these powered the Industrial
Revolution. But research by European
economic historians has shown that
slave trade profits were relatively
modest by European standards. In
addition, as pointed out by historian
Herbert S. Klein, no current scholars
have ever shown that the profits from
the slave trade were directly invested
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in the earliest industrial enterprises of

Great Britain.89

AFRICAS
COMPLICITY IN THE
SLAVE TRADE
Slave reparations advocates promote
the myth that only Americans or
Europeans were responsible for
slavery, and ignore or downplay
Africans role. Randall Robinson,
for example, suggests that African
slavery was less brutal than
European/American slavery, and that
some of those who were enslaved
deserved their fate. Robinson writes,
While King Affonso [of Kongo] was
no stranger to slavery, which was
practiced throughout most of the
known world, he had understood
slavery as a condition befalling
prisoners of war, criminals, and
debtors, out of which slaves could
earn, or even marry, their way. This
was nothing like seeing this wholly
new and brutal commercial practice
of slavery where tens of thousands
of his subjects were dragged off in
chains.90
Dorothy Benton-Lewis, head of
NCOBRA, echoes this claim. She
writes, It is American slavery that
put a color on slavery. And American
slavery is not like the slavery of
Africa or ancient times. This was
dehumanizing, brutal and barbaric
slavery that subjugated people and
turned them into a profit.91
The reality, however, is that slavery
was just as brutal in Africa as it was in
America. According to historian Paul
Lovejoy, enslaved people in Africa
suffered forced marches, inadequate
food, sexual abuse and death.92

Slave reparations advocates also

would have people believe that
whites obtained slaves through
abductions and kidnappings in
Africa. This is a myth perpetuated
in part by the mini-series Roots, in
which the main character, Kunte
Kinte, becomes a slave after being
captured by white slave raiders. But
in the vast majority of cases, this
was not how the process worked.
Normally, white slave traders simply
bought existing slaves from local
African dealers.
Europeans could not force any
African region to enter the trade
against its wishes.93 Africans
themselves were tremendously
complicit in selling their fellow
Africans into slavery. It is important
to remember that during the most
active era of the slave trade, 1500
to 1807, Europeans were largely
confined to tiny coastal outposts
with no influence in the huge
continental interior. And venturing
into the interior was a deadly
proposition for whites, since they did
not enjoy immunity from tropical
diseases that Africans enjoyed. But
there was little need for Europeans
to attempt to capture Africans.
Slavery had been in existence for
centuries within Africa before the
arrival of the first European slave
traders, the Portuguese, in the mid15th century. The Portuguese easily
established commercial relations
with these thriving slave markets,
overseen by a well-established slave
merchant class. Experienced in
shipping slaves within Africa and
to the Middle East, the African
traders easily adapted their highlyspecialized infrastructure to selling
slaves to Europeans.94

According to Klein, those who

captured slaves in the interior typically
were not the same people who
brought them to the coast. Slaves
were passed from trader to trader in
multiple markets. They were often
sold into local slavery along the way,
and eventually resold to the Atlantic
slave traders.95 Initially, slaves came
from coastal areas, but after 1700 most
originated in the interior.96
Almost all African states recognized
domestic slavery. Enslavement was an
accepted institution, and slave traders
were respected by local communities,
as long as their own people were not
affected. The African ruling class
was not only immune to the danger
of becoming enslaved by Europeans,
but actively collaborated with them
in furthering the trade. For example,
in the early 1700s, the Kingdom of
Dahomey (in present-day Benin)
became a large player in the slave
trade, capturing and enslaving 10,000
people from a neighboring kingdom.
In 1726, the King of Dahomey urged
Europeans to set up plantations on
his territory, and he would supply the
slaves. Around 1750, the king is said
to have made 250,000 a year selling
people into slavery.97
There were numerous methods of
enslaving people. Most slaves had
been captured by Africans during
the course of local tribal warfare as
well as large-scale warfare. Slaves
were also obtained by requiring
conquered areas to pay taxes in the
form of slaves, by raiding peasant
communities, and by enslaving
criminals and debtors.98 Due to
the lack of a formal justice system,
sentencing for crimes took the form
of either physical punishment or

Slavery persists in Africa today. Christian Solidarity International paid $13,200 to free these
Sudanese slaves from their Arab masters.

enslavement. But African rulers

frequently abused their legal
authority to classify innocent people
as criminals just to have them
enslaved.99 There was also random
kidnapping of individuals.100
Some regions of coastal Africa
participated in the Atlantic slave
trade on a sporadic basis, depending
on the extent of warfare in those
regions. Local Islamic wars in
Senegambia (modern-day Senegal
and Gambia), for example, resulted
in a tremendous number of slaves for
export from the 1720s through 1740s.
The numbers of slaves dropped off
when the wars came to an end.101

My People Had Sold Me

An estimated 18 million slaves were
shipped from Africa between 1500
and 1900. Roughly 7 million of
those were shipped across the Sahara
to Middle Eastern markets, or to
markets across the Indian Ocean.102

At the height of the slave trade

during the 1700s, there were almost
as many slaves within Africa as there
were in the Americas. Scholars
estimate that by around 1800, roughly
one-tenth of the resident population
in Africa were slaves. According to
Stein, this translates into about 2.2
to 2.5 million slaves, compared with
about 2.9 million in the Americas
(most of the latter being in the
Caribbean or South America).103 In
the 1800s, the Atlantic slave trade
declined, but the slave trade within
Africa continued. Indeed, slave
prices declined and African slavery
actually increased. By 1850, there
were more slaves in Africa than in
the Americasthe former had on the
order of 10 million. In Africa, slaves
were used to produce such goods as
palm oil and rubber for export, and
were heavily used in local agricultural
production. It was not until the end
of the 1800s that slavery in Africa
declined substantially.104
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29

been taken for granted as just.

Concomitant with the growth of the
slave trade, an impressive number of
intellectuals and statesmen, inspired
by Enlightenment ideas of the innate
freedom and dignity of Man, worked
to end the practice (See Struggle
to Abolish Slavery). It was through
these efforts that the trans-Atlantic
slave trade was finally abolished in
1807. It is perhaps one of the great
ironies of history then that the
Europeans, who help globalize the
African slave trade, were also the
ones who abolished slavery globally.
And without the enlightened ideas
of the Europeans, Africa would have
continued the unhindered practice
of slavery.

The anti-slavery Republican Party distributed this handout in 1856 which showed that
Southern newspapers also defended the enslavement of whites.

Zora Neale Hurston, a black novelist,

lamented that, The white people
held my people in slavery here in
America. They bought us, it is true,
and exploited us. But the inescapable
fact that stuck in my craw was [that]
my people had sold me. . . . My own
people had exterminated whole
nations and tore families apart for
profit before the strangers got their
chance at a cut. It was a sobering
thought. It impressed upon me the
universal nature of greed and glory.105

Europe and America Abolish

Slaveryto Africas Dismay
It is ironic that African countries
and slave reparations activists are
demanding that Europe and the
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United States pay reparations to

Africa given that Africans were
among the worst perpetrators of
slavery.106
For centuries, of course, the
Europeans perpetuated the
institution of slavery. From the
15th to the 18th centuries, the
Portuguese, English, Dutch and
French competed and warred with
one another in part to monopolize
the Atlantic slave trade.
But one inescapable fact cannot be
denied. Europe was unique among
the worlds civilizations in that it
was the first to wage a determined
philosophical attack on the gross
injustice of an institution that,
since the dawn of civilization, had

Indeed, when the Europeans

attempted to abolish slavery, some
of the stiffest resistance came from
African tribes. For example, after
Britain decreed slave trading illegal
in 1807, the king of Bonny (in
what is now the Nigerian delta)
vigorously resisted the decree,
declaring We think this trade must
go on. That is the verdict of our
oracle and the priests. They say
that your country, however great,
can never stop a trade ordained by
God himself.107 When the British
destroyed the slave ports on the
west coast of Africa, blacks rioted
against the British. In the 1840s,
King Gezo of Dahomey said that
he would do anything the British
wanted him to do apart from giving
up the slave trade. The slave trade
is the ruling principle of my people.
It is the source and the glory of
their wealth . . . the mother lulls
the child to sleep with notes of
triumph over an enemy reduced to
slavery . . . 108

Slavery Facts
During most of the time that slavery
existed in North America, England
was the reigning government.
Slavery only existed for 82 years
(17831865) under the U.S.
government.
White slavers typically did not
capture slaves in Africa. In the
vast majority of cases, they simply
bought them from local African
dealers. Most slaves had been
originally captured by other
Africans in tribal wars.
At the height of the slave trade,
there were nearly as many slaves
within Africa as there were in the
Americas. Around 1800, roughly
one-tenth of the resident population
in Africa were slaves, about 2.5
million people. By 1850, there were
more slaves in Africa, 10 million,
than in the Americas.
An estimated 9.6 million African
slaves arrived in the Americas
from the 16th through the 19th
centuries. Of these, less than 5
percent came to what is now the
United States. About 4 million
went to Brazil (a Portuguese
colony).

Present-Day Slavery in Africa

Slavery goes on in Africa to this
day. There are child slave trafficking
routes transporting children
throughout the continent and to the
Middle East.
Slavery is particularly rampant
in Mauritania and Sudan. In
Mauritania, hundreds of thousands
of people are born into slavery.
In 1999, one Mauritanian who
escaped to the United States told
how people are bought and sold

Cuba was the largest slave colony in

Spanish America.
Beginning in the early 1500s,
African slaves were transported
to the Americas but it was not
until the late 1600s that they were
shipped to British North America in
great numbers. Prior to 1700, most
slaves in British North America
were white.
Deaths on ships coming from
Europe, carrying indentured
servants, equaled or exceeded
deaths on ships coming from Africa.
During the 1700s, the mortality rate
for black slaves on these ships was
10 to 20 percent, versus 25 percent
for indentured servants (white
slaves).
Of those who came to America on
the Mayflower, 12 of them were
indentured servants.
White slaves in the Americas
were hired out, sold or auctioned,
separated from families, beaten,
whipped, and/or branded.
Prior to the Civil War in the South,
Irish immigrants rather than black
slaves were often employed for
the most hazardous jobs, since the
lives of Irish immigrants were often
considered expendable.
like property and bred like farm
animals. He noted that he is still
his masters property because he
lacks papers to show his freedom.109
But the worst abuser by far is
Sudan. The Arab-dominated
National Islamic Front government
systematically promotes chattel
slavery as part of its policy to
subjugate the black, predominantly
Christian population in the southern
part of the country. Estimates of the
number of slaves range as high as
200,000.110

About three-quarters of whites in

the antebellum South did not own
slaves.
In the United States, blacks
frequently owned other blacks as
slaves. For example, about one-third
of the 10,600 free blacks in New
Orleans in 1860 were slave owners.
American Indians such as the
Cherokee enslaved blacks
extensively.
A very small percentage of
Americans have ancestors who
owned slaves.
Millions of black Americans, most
of them recent immigrants, do
not have ancestors who were U.S.
slaves.
Any economic disparity between
descendants of former slaves and
the descendants of free blacks
largely disappeared within just two
generations following emancipation,
suggesting that slavery has little
or no effect on the economic
condition of future generations.
Thousands of blacks are still
enslaved in Sudan and Mauritania.

Slavery has existed in Sudan since

the Arabs first established control
of the region in the 10th century.
While the British ended most slave
raiding after colonizing Sudan in
1898, the practice didnt totally stop.
The situation gradually deteriorated
after the country became
independent in 1956. Successive
Arab and Muslim-dominated
governments in Khartoum have
used various policies to forcibly
convert black Christians to Islam.
In 1983, a radical Islamic movement
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pressured the government to impose

Sharia, a harsh out-dated Islamic law,
on the whole country which led to
the reintroduction of slave raids on
black villages. After a military coup
by the radical Islamicists in 1989,
slave raiding dramatically increased.
Army units and militias conduct
devastating raids, killing the men
and seizing women and children who
undergo forced labor without pay,
severe beatings, acute hunger, forced
religious and cultural conversion,
rape, and ritual female genital
mutilation.111 The governments
use of slavery, forced famine, aerial
bombardment of defenseless villages,
and the incarceration of thousands
in concentration camps has caused
the death of more than 2 million
people. Another 5 million have been
displaced as refugees.
The conditions Sudanese slaves
endure are extremely harsh. One
woman who escaped captivity related
her personal experience:
I was visiting my younger sisters
home near Warawar when I was
captured...Six soldiers grabbed me.
I struggled with them to get away.
But they beat me with a big stick.
I had to submit. They tied my
hand together with a rope and led
me away to the bush. They raped
me in the bush, one after another,
all six of them . . . We walked
for four days. Then we reached a
place where the soldiers divided us
and the cows and goats amongst
themselves.

The woman was given to a man who

repeatedly raped her, eventually
bearing his child (She escaped
with the child as well.) The wife
frequently beat her and forced her to
sleep outside in the courtyard. After
regaining her freedom, she learned
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that her sister had been murdered

while in captivity.112
Humanitarian groups in the U.S.
and overseas work to free Sudanese
slaves. The Swiss-based Christian
Solidarity International established
a Slave Redemption Program that
has helped free more than 70,000
slaves since 1995. The Boston-based
American Anti-Slavery Group also
buys slaves their freedom. The antislavery organizations work through
local Arabs who go undercover to
buy slaves from their Arab masters.
In June 2002, for instance, Christian
Solidarity International spent more
than $33,000 to buy 1,116 people
their freedom.113
Given Africas enormous
involvement in the slave trade now
and in the past, African nations
are in no position to issue demands
for an apology and money from
the Europeans and Americans
who ended the institution. And
curiously, some of the most forceful
advocates of slave reparations in the
U.S. barely mention or ignore this
glaring example of ongoing African
slavery. When President Bill Clinton
and Jesse Jackson repeatedly toured
Africa together in the 1990s, neither
mentioned slavery in Sudan.

WHITE SLAVERY
It may come as a surprise to many
that during the pre-Civil War period
in America, blacks were not the only
people enslaved or threatened with
enslavement. Whites were enslaved,
too. And this does not simply refer
to voluntary indentured servitude.
From the 1600s until the Civil War,
whites were frequently kidnapped

or captured in Europe, and sold into

slavery in the Americas.

Indentured Servants
According to historian John Van
Der Zee, from 1609 until well after
the founding of the United States,
half of all the immigrants who came
to America arrived under some form
of involuntary labor.114 The main
difference from blacks circumstance
was that most white slaves were in
this situation for a limited period of
time, typically five to eight years, and
subsequently set free. But this in no way
diminishes the significance of white
slavery. Forced, unpaid labor is slavery
pure and simple, whether it lasts a
lifetime or for many years. Moreover,
many of those white slavesas many
as a quarter of themdied before they
could be set free, so they were in fact
enslaved for life.115
And white slavery often extended
beyond eight years in cases where
runaway slaves were later caught.
Typically, the punishment was an
extra month of slavery for every hour
the white runaway was absent.
Describing white indentured servants,
Van Der Zee writes:
Except for the important
distinctions that their existence
as individuals was acknowledged
by law, and that after their term of
servitude they were to be granted
the full rights of freemen and
women, the status of these people
was essentially the same as that of
slaves. They, the work they did,
and the clothes on their backs
belonged entirely to their masters.
They could be hired out, sold,
or auctioned, even if this meant
separating them from their families.
They could be beaten, whipped,

or branded. If they ran away they

could be punished by an extension,
often a multiplication, of their
term of servitude; in some colonies,
runaways were hanged, a process
too wasteful to apply to slaves,
who retained, after all, the value of
capital.116

Indeed, it is indicative of the servile

status of indentured servants that
between 1619 and the 1680s, African
slaves in the Virginia colony were
also classified as indentured servants,
similar in legal position to the white
servants.117
Many Europeans were deceived into
indentured servitude by false promises
of prosperity in America, when in
fact they were signing themselves
into a life of extreme hardship. Still
others were abducted outright and
shipped to the colonies, particularly
beggars, paupers, orphans, vagabonds,
criminals (many of them guilty of
only minor offenses), and others
who were thought to be a burden to
England. In fact, the term kidnapping
or kid-nabbing originated from this
method of peopling the Americas.118
In London, people were kidnapped or
spiritedcaptured while drunk
and sold into slavery.119
Another type of white slaves was
prisoners of war and subjugated
peoples. Oliver Cromwell exiled
thousands of war prisoners to
Barbados and Jamaica in the 17th
century, many of whom were women
and children from Ireland.120 Many if
not most of them died, overworked
and highly vulnerable to tropical
diseases. In Barbados and other
tropical areas, to which Europeans
were not accustomed, as many as
four-fifths of a shipment of servants
died within the first year.121

The notorious middle passage

endured by Africansthe Atlantic
crossing of slaves from Africa to the
Americaswas indeed terrible, with
death and disease ever present. But
conditions on board ships transporting
Europeans to the Americas were
equally terrible. Both voluntary and
involuntary emigrants were confined
below the decks in crowded, diseaseridden conditions with insufficient
food or water.122 There is on board
these ships terrible misery, stench,
fumes, horror . . . so that many die
miserable, according to a German
passenger on one of the ships.123
For the entire two- to three-month
voyage, white slaves were typically
never permitted to go above deck.
They were crammed together in holes
and in chains. In fact, deaths on
ships coming from Europe equaled or
exceeded deaths on ships coming from
Africa. According to historian Sharon
V. Salinger, during the 1700s the
mortality rate for black slaves on these
ships was 10 to 20 percent, versus 25
percent for white slaves.124
Once the survivors reached the shores
of America, further unimaginable
cruelties were inflicted upon them.
Those who already had contracts were
turned over to their unknown masters,
and others were sold on the auction
block. Families were often separated
under these circumstances when wives
and offspring were auctioned off to the
highest bidder. Others were herded
like cattle to the backcountry to be
sold at auction.125
Particularly in the Caribbean, white
slaves and black slaves worked side
by side on the same plantations. And
because slave owners paid more for
blacks than for whites, the planters

treated the black better than did

their Christian white servant.126
Historians Carl and Roberta
Bridenbaugh go on to write that Even
the Negroes recognized this and did
not hesitate to show their contempt
for those men who, they could see,
were worse off than themselves....the
blacks ate as well as, and sometimes
better than, the mass of white servants
. . . and many freemen.127
Prior to the Civil War, there were
many white slaves in the South
who were not even indentured
servants. According to an anti-slavery
handbill for the 1856 presidential
election, a pro-slavery editorial in
the Richmond Enquirer read, Slavery
is right, natural, and necessary, and
does not depend upon difference of
complexion. The laws of the slave
states justify the holding of white men
in bondage.128
Typically, whites in the South were
enslaved because they had a tiny
percentage of black ancestry. One
woman on the auction block was one
sixty-fourth black; one of her greatgreat-great-great grandparents was
black. Many of these white slaves fled
to the North, and were pursued by
slave catchers.129
Following is an excerpt from an 1839
article in the Philanthropist titled
White Slaves:
A very large proportion of the
slave population in the South are
but slightly colored, and many
of them are so nearly white as
to require the closest scrutiny to
detect the fact of their having
the first drop of African blood. .
. . Color is becoming every day
less and less a test by which to
determine the fact of human
chattelship.130
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The African American historian

Shelby Steele points out that the
issue of white slavery has been
suppressed in America because there
probably was a time when whites,
ashamed of this fact, wanted to
suppress it. But now its probably
blacks who want to suppress it, said
Steele. Those who are grounded
in the idea of black victimization
may feel that this weakens their
argument.131
Weaken their argument it does. To
be consistent, any demand for slave
reparations for blacks would have
to include whites as well. But the
notion of reparations for blacks as
well as whites is farcical, since none
of the slaves is alive anymore. And
it would be a grave injustice to pay
for reparations by taxing people
who had nothing to do with slave
ownership, and whose ancestors
were slaves themselves.

The Muslim White Slave

Trade
Slavery flourished in the Muslim
civilization of the Middle East
and North Africa for 1,200 years.
Not long after establishing Islam
as the dominant faith in the 7th
century, the Arabs organized an
extensive African slave trade based
on Africas Indian Ocean coast that
persisted well into the 19th century.
But Africans werent the only targets.
For many centuries, Muslims engaged
in the widespread enslavement of
white European Christians, and later
Americans, who they seized through
piracy and coastal raiding expeditions.
The center of the Muslim slave trade
was the Barbary Coast of North Africa,
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located in modern-day Libya, Tunisia,

Algeria and Morocco. Piracy reached
its zenith on the Barbary Coast in the
early 16th century under the famous
Ottoman admiral, Khayr ad-Din, or
Barbarosa. He founded the pirate states
of Tunis and Algeria. Later joined by
Tripoli and Morocco, these Barbary
kingdoms formed part of the huge
Ottoman Empire that rapidly expanded
throughout the Mediterranean region
during the course of the 16th century
and threatened to consume European
civilization. A terrible feature of the
Ottoman wars against Spain, Venice,
France and other Mediterranean states
were the almost annual coastal slave
raiding expeditions led by Algiers and
other North African cities. In 1544,
for instance, the Algerians seized 7,000
people from Italys Bay of Naples. A
1554 raid on Italian Calabria yielded
6,000 captives, and in 1566 at least
4,000 men, women and children were
captured in Spanish Granada. Many of
these white slaves were used to row the
galleys of the Ottoman navy, which as
will be seen later was often a fate worse
than death.132
In 1571, a Spanish-led fleet decisively
defeated the Ottomans in the Battle
of Lepanto, ending further expansion
of the empire. Unable to sustain itself
without plunder, the inefficient and
economically backward Ottoman
tyranny gradually disintegrated over
the next 300 years.
But the Barbary city-states, which
became de facto independent
of the Ottoman government in
Constantinople, continued to engage
in piracy and slave raiding against
Europeans in the Mediterranean,
Atlantic and even the Baltic regions
for another 250 years.

The justification for these raids was

both ideological and economic.
Muslims believed that it was their
duty to wage warjihadon the
Christians and what better way to do
this than prowl the seas terrorizing
non-believers.133 Technically, the
Barbary pirates were not pirates.
Rather they saw themselves as the
subjects of four countries legally at war
with other countries and thus could
rightfully capture, enslave or ransom
enemy seaman as they saw fit. But the
Barbary rulers used the declaration
of war on the flimsiest of pretexts to
seize slaves and plunder. To the rulers
or Deys of Algiers and Tunis, a refusal
to pay tribute to maintain peace
was regarded as a hostile act justifying
war. The so-called tribute was, of
course, nothing more than extortion,
the price the Barbary rulers exacted of
Europeans and Americans who sailed
in waters they deemed their domain.
During the 17th and 18th centuries,
the European states often acquiesced
to these outrageous demands, cynically
calculating that it was cheaper to pay
bribes than wage war. Periodically
and when not distracted by frequent
continental wars, the Europeans sent
punitive expeditions to bomb North
African ports. But these raids were
sporadic and ineffectual.134
Piracy became the foundation of the
North African sea coast economy and
the white slave trade flourished. In
fact, the Muslim trade in European
slaves rivaled in some respects the
Atlantic trade in Africans. In the
1640s, the Atlantic slave trade
averaged about 1,000 blacks annually.
But the North African slave raiders
may have been enslaving almost as
many British subjects every year. In
1640 alone, Algiers seized almost

3,000 British subjects. Tunis captured

another 1,500. Between 1672
and 1682, it is estimated that the
Algerians took at least 353 British
ships, which means they were still
seizing as many as 400 new British
slaves every year. There are numerous
other records indicating the awful
extent of these piratical depredations.
Tripoli, considered one of the smaller
slave states, took 75 Christian ships
with 1,085 captives between 1677
and 1685. Tunisian pirate vessels, or
corsairs, brought in 28 ships and 1,722
captives between November 1593
and August 1594. Algiers captured 80
French ships and 986 seamen between
1628 and 1634.135
The corsairs were brazen in their
attacks. They didnt just ambush ships
on the open seas but attacked on land
as well. Sicily was attacked at least
136 times between 1570 and 1606 by
raiders who often penetrated 10 to 20
miles inland to snatch slaves. In 1640,
dispatches to London reported that
roguish Turkish pirates seized 60 men,
women and children from the Cornish
coast. The next year, Algerian pirates
attacked a packet off the Irish coast,
capturing 120 passengers and putting
all the men in irons. Even Scandinavia
was not immune to the Barbary slave
raiders. In 1627, corsairs attacked
Iceland and seized 400 people.136
The white slave population in Algiers,
Tunis, Tripoli and Morocco was
huge. Robert C. Davis, a Professor
of Italian Social History at Ohio
State University, writes in his book
Christian Slavers, Muslim Masters
that between 1580 and 1680 the
number of European slaves numbered
around 27,000 in Algiers and its
dependencies, 6,000 in Tunis, and

perhaps 2,000 in Tripoli. Thus, the

average slave count was 35,000 in
any given year in that period. That
number fell in the following century,
16801780, when the slave population
of Algiers, always the largest slave city,
averaged 2,00010,000. The reasons
for the decline were both diplomatic
and structural. The European powers
were more determined to rein in
Barbary piracy; but perhaps more
importantly, there was a major
transformation in naval technology
marked by a move away from rowed
galleys to sailing vessels, which
reduced the demand for galley slaves.
On average then, the Barbary slave
population in a given year between
1680 and 1780 was about 7,000.137
But the North Africans still had
to seize substantial new captives in
both centuries to compensate for a
25 percent attrition rate in the slave
population. The main reason was, not
surprisingly, a high death rate. About
17 percent of the 25 percent attrition
rate was due to death. While Europeans
could be ransomed out of slavery, the
numbers were quite small, maybe 34
percent of the overall attrition rate.
Davis notes that the Barbary slaves died
for the same depressing reasons as did
slaves in the New World or anywhere
else: from abuse, disease, overwork, lack
of food, and despair. One Neapolitan
wrote home, we are mistreated, beaten
with sticks, starved and called faithless
dogs, [such] that I would willingly
die. The worst fate that could befall
a European slave was to be a corsair
galley rowerwhich was usually for
the rest of ones life. Typically, 35
slaves were chained by their wrists and
ankles to an oar, forced to row weeks at
a time with little opportunity for sleep
within cramped confines infested with

filth, vermin, fleas and bugs. Beatings

were frequent. Rowers were fed molded
black bread that the dogs themselves
would not eat. Often, drinking water
was so scarce that the poor wretches
were reduced to drinking sea water or
died of thirst at their benches.138 Other
horrors inflicted on slaves included
beating the bare feet with sticks,
beheading, crucifixion, impalement
and roasting alive.139
Female slaves usually had two destinies,
the relatively benign duty of house
servant or concubine in the rulers
harem. The first American woman
seized by pirates in 1784 was sent as a
gift to the harem of the Turkish sultan
in Constantinople.140
Besides the high losses from overwork
and physical abuse, the need for new
captives was compounded by the fact
that, unlike African slavery, at least
90 percent of the European slave
population was male. Rigorously denied
access to women, slave or non-slave,
the Barbary slave population could not
replenish itself.141
Given the average slave population of
35,000 in the 15801680 period, the
Barbary pirates had to seize 8,500 new
captives each year. That translates into
850,000 captives over 100 years. For
the following century, after the slave
population had fallen to one-fifth the
previous centurys level, the number
of captives still would have amounted
to 175,000. In the 1530-1570 period,
when Algiers was spearheading the
Ottoman Empires depredations
against Europes Mediterranean coast,
as many as 300,000 Europeans were
enslaved. This means that between
1530 and 1780 as many as 1.3 million
white Europeans were enslaved by
the Muslim pirates of the Barbary
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35

Coast.142 This number does not

match the much larger number of
African slaves in the Atlantic trade.
Nevertheless, the Muslim white slave
trade represents one of the modern
eras largest examples of slavery.
The Barbary pirate menace was finally
eliminated in the 19th century by the
Europeans and to a lesser extent the
Americans. Unlike the Europeans, the
young American Republic couldnt
afford to pay the tribute demanded
by the Barbary states. Furthermore,
Thomas Jefferson firmly believed
that warand not briberywas the
only way to deal with the pirates.
Following the end of the Napoleonic
Wars in 1815, the British Royal
Navy reasserted its power in the
Mediterranean and stomped out most
piracy. The North African white slave
trade was definitively ended in 1830
when the French captured Algiers and
liberated the remaining 122 slaves.
Clearly, there are tens of millions of
Europeans alive today who could make
claims to slave reparations from the
North African states that sanctioned
the enslavement of their ancestors.
Of course, affluent European Union
countries demanding compensation
from this poor, underdeveloped
region is economically and politically
ludicrous. But it serves to underscore
the folly of Africans and African
Americans seeking reparations for
injustices from nationalities and
ethnicities who have experienced
similar tragedies in their past.

AMERICA HAS PAID

FOR SLAVERY
The charge that America never paid
for the sins of slavery dishonors the
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360,000 Union soldiers who died

in the Civil War (18611865) that
was fought, in large part, over the
question of slavery.143 The South paid
an even heavier price in terms of the
destruction inflicted on its territory
and the fact that more than one out of
four Confederate soldiers were killed
or wounded during the war. A total
of 258,000 Confederate soldiers died.
Combined with the Union death toll,
618,000 Americans lost their lives
in the Civil War. That exceeds the
420,000 Americans who lost their
lives in World War II, which makes
the Civil War the most destructive
war in U.S. history.
The result of this terrible suffering and
destruction was the liberation of 4
million black slaves. It is true that for
many Unionists the immediate reason
for going to war was to prevent the
breakup of the United States, but a
strong underlying reason was slavery.

The Struggle to Abolish

Slavery
The institution of slavery was by far
the most contentious political issue
in the United States for the first
70 years of the nations existence.
Most political disputes were resolved
through the normal democratic
process, but the question of slavery
was ultimately to be settled through
war. Anti-slavery sentiment ran
strong in the North. Many considered
slavery a moral abomination that
should not exist within a society
based on the principles of individual
freedom and equality enshrined in
the Declaration of Independence.
Many southerners, including some
who opposed or who were critical
of slavery, maintained that the

Constitution protected the right

of states to decide the issue for
themselves. When they seceded, the
southern states argued that they had
voluntarily joined the Union, and
therefore could voluntarily leave.
There was already political tension
between northerners and southerners
over the issue when the United
States of America was formally
established in 1789. Throughout
the 1700s, critiques of slavery and
calls to abolish the institution had
become widespread, supported by
the intellectual force of European
political thinkers such as Adam
Smith and Edmund Burke, and
Americans such as Thomas Paine. It
was obvious to many that there was
a glaring contradiction between the
ideas of liberty and human bondage.
The American Revolution, with its
ideals of freedom and inalienable rights,
generated tremendous anti-slavery
sentiment in the United States.144
Many who had never questioned its
legitimacy began to do so. In 1787,
this sentiment led the Continental
Congress to prohibit slavery in the
Northwest Territory (now consisting of
the American Midwest).145
In addition to Enlightenment ideals,
there also was a strong Christian
objection to slavery, beginning with
the Quaker claim that all men were
equal before God. In the late 1700s,
the same sentiments were voiced
by the Methodists, Presbyterians,
Evangelical Anglicans and Unitarians.
Slavery was utterly wicked in the eyes
of these Christians, a terrible stain
on those who promoted it and on
governments who permitted it. A key
work in this regard was John Wesleys
Thoughts on Slavery (1774). Wesley

had spent time in Georgia observing

slavery first-hand.146
The reformers thought that the
U.S. Constitutions outlawing of the
importation of slaves in 1808 would
bring an end to slavery. However, it
eventually became apparent that this
would not happen, since domestic
births obviously created new slaves.
Combined with the widespread
adoption of labor-intensive cotton
cultivation, the southern states became
more deeply committed to preserving
the institution. The pro-slavery
coalition spearheaded opposition to
federal anti-slavery action.147
In 1819, there was an unprecedented
groundswell of northern public
opinion against slavery, when it was
proposed that Missouri be admitted
to the Union as a slave state. It did
get admitted as a slave state, but
slavery opponents managed to bar the
institution in the vast unsettled part
of the Louisiana Territory.148
Following the Missouri Compromise,
opposition to slavery intensified such
that the debate came to permeate
nearly every aspect of political
life. As manifested by the growing
abolitionist movement, an increasing
number of northerners grew to detest
the institution of slavery. While
many northerners were indifferent to
slavery, millions were not. According
to historian Robert P. Forbes, a clear
majority of Americans opposed
slavery in the decades prior to the
Civil War.149 Northern politicians
made every effort to block the spread
of it. Meanwhile, southerners desire
to preserve and expand slavery grew
increasingly firm as well, basing their
arguments on states rights and the
sanctity of property.

Union dead at the Gettysburg battlefield. The charge that America never paid for slavery
dishonors the hundreds of thousands of Americans who died in the Civil War.

Anti-slavery sentiment was further

inflamed by the publication of Harriet
Beecher Stowes Uncle Toms Cabin
in 1852. The novel dramatically
portrayed the human costs of slavery,
bringing the issue to the attention
of hundreds of thousands of readers.
The Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854) was
another testament to the passionate
anti-slavery feelings of the North. The
Act left the question of slavery to be
decided by the settlers of the Kansas
and Nebraska territories, a process
known as popular sovereignty.
This enraged slavery opponents, and
guerrilla war broke out in Kansas
between pro-and anti-slave forces.
Northern groups promoted the
immigration of anti-slavery advocates
into Kansas, armed with rifles known
as Beechers Bibles, to fight proslavery border ruffians.
The profound anti-slavery sentiment
generated by the Kansas-Nebraska Act
was a major factor in the founding of
the Republican Party in 1854, which
endorsed John C. Fremont for president
on an explicitly anti-slavery platform.

John Brown, sentenced to death for

raiding the Harpers Ferry armory in
1859 in an effort to capture arms and
distribute them to slaves for a violent
uprising, offered prophetic words.
Although considered an extremist
in his time, Brown wrote in his final
message that he is now quite certain
that the crimes of this guilty land will
never be purged away but with blood.
The election in 1860 of Republican
Abraham Lincoln made southerners
even more fearful of abolition. Lincoln
campaigned on a platform of outlawing
slavery in new states and the western
territories. Arguing that the Founding
Fathers considered slavery wrong, he
firmly expected it to die a natural death
and did not want to see the Union
break up because of it.
When he took office, Lincoln sought to
avoid war with the South, emphasizing
that he did not have the intention or
the legal right to end slavery. But while
Lincoln wanted to keep the Union
intact, he was not going to do so by
giving into demands that slavery be
allowed to expand beyond the southern
www.nlpc.org

37

A Capitol of Freedom
Randall Robinson, founder and
president of TransAfrica, published
a book in 2000 called The Debt:
What America Owes to Blacks. It is
a national best-seller, and has been
instrumental in building support
among African Americans for slave
reparations.
In the beginning of the book,
Robinson describes a tour he took
of the U.S. Capitol, pointing out
that it was built with slave labor.
He then launches a vicious attack
on what the Capital stands for,
essentially saying it is based on a
lie. I thought, then, what a fitting
metaphor the Capitol Rotunda
was for Americas racial sorrows.
In the magnificence of its boast,
in the tragedy of its truth, in the
effrontery of its deceit.
Slavery was unfortunately a fact of
life when the Capitol was built, so
it is not surprising that it was built
in part with slave labor. So, too,
were many other buildings. When
slavery was abolished in 1865, what
was America to do? Tear down the
Capitol just because it was partially
constructed with slave labor?
Many of the ancient worlds great
architectural monuments in Rome,
Athens and elsewhere in Europe were
also built with slave labor. Should they
be torn down too?
What is truly remarkableand a
testament to how far this nation has
progressedis that the descendents
of the slaves who helped build the
Capitol can now enjoy such freedom
and prosperity. Robinson is evidently
blind to the irony that slaves
constructed the building within
whose rooms statesmen enacted the
laws that secured freedom for their
descendants.
38

www.nlpc.org

region. This was unacceptable to the

South and war ensued.
In late 1860, southern states began to
declare their independence, eventually
forming the Confederate States
of America on February 4, 1861.
Two months later the Confederacy
fired upon Fort Sumter, a federal
installation in South Carolina, setting
off the Civil War.
Lincoln reacted by calling for 75,000
volunteers to suppress the rebellion.
His stated reason was to keep the
Union intact, but slavery always
loomed in the background. The goal
of abolishing slavery later became an
explicit reason for justifying the war,
as manifested by the Emancipation
Proclamation, signed by President
Lincoln on January 1, 1863. Notes
one historian, Emancipation,
then, became a political device
for winning the war . . . Although
ostensibly absent at the beginning,
emancipation had become the
leading aim of the war.150
True, there were some in the North
who opposed waging war on the South
to eradicate slavery. These antiwar northerners, mainly Democrats
known as Copperhead Democrats,
thought the untold suffering and
death of American soldiers was
not worth it, and believed that the
Confederacy should be able to have
its independence and keep its slaves.
Gen. George B. McClellan, the
former commander of the Union
armies, was one such person. In 1864,
he secured the Democratic Partys
nomination for president. That
platform called for an immediate
armistice, urging all warring parties
to secure peace without further
bloodshed. An armistice would have

resulted in a Union pullback from

the South and given the Confederacy
its independence. Not surprisingly,
southerners overwhelmingly hoped
McClellan would win the election,
confident that he would negotiate an
armistice favorable to their interests.
Abraham Lincoln, of course, won reelection in 1864 and the Union went
on to win the war. After it regained
control of the South, the Union
proceeded with its plan to eradicate
slavery. The Union restored to
southerners their full rights and liberties
as guaranteed under the Constitution,
and readmitted the 11 former
Confederate states. But the major
change imposed on the South was the
abolition of slavery. The Union granted
no compensation whatsoever to the
former slave owners. The Thirteenth
Amendment, made possible by Union
victory, formally outlawed slavery in
the United States in 1865.
After four bloody years of fighting and
618,000 dead, the Union won the Civil
War and 4 million black slaves became
free. America has paid for slavery.

CONCLUSION
In 1911, Booker T. Washington wrote,
There is a class of colored people
who make a business of keeping
the troubles, the wrongs, and the
hardships of the Negro race before the
public . . . Some of these people do not
want the Negro to lose his grievances,
because they do not want to lose their
jobs. There is a certain class of raceproblem solvers who dont want the
patient to get well.
Reparations certainly would not
make the patient well. Far from
solving racial problems in America,

reparations would exacerbate them.

The reparations issue is a smoke
screen for those unwilling to tackle
the real problems affecting blacks,
such as failing schools, crumbling
inner cities and family disunity. It is
an attempt at easy moneyby taxing
the innocent, by litigation, or by
shakedown. The American people,
as well as the various corporations
and other institutions targeted by
reparations advocates, must not
give in to such injustices. If they
do, expect the floodgates of more
reparations demands to open wide.
Each argument presented throughout
this report is a sufficient reason in
and of itself not to support slave
reparations: innocents would be
forced to pay; money would go to
non-victims; race relations would be
exacerbated; a bad precedent would be
set for other groups; reparations would
play into greed; the list goes on.
Common sense should rule out the
possibility of slave reparations. But
unfortunately, in todays political and
legal climate, common sense all too
often is ignored. If enough people
make enough noise about something,
regardless of how absurd their idea,
politicians will respond. Randall
Robinson, author of The Debt, wants
a thousand African Americans per
day walking the halls of Congress so
that politicians would never stop
seeing our faces, never stop hearing
our demands.151 As the momentum
for slave reparations intensifies
among blacks and a growing number
of whites, politicians may one day
succeed in forcing the American
taxpayer to pay reparations. And the
trial lawyers may meet with success
even sooner.

The reparations movement also

grows stronger because of political
necessity. Having won the battle
against segregation in the 1960s,
the civil rights establishment
needs a new foe to justify staying
in business. The slave reparations
cause, unjust and illogical though it
may be, fulfills that purpose.
Ultimately, paying slave reparations
is immoral. African Americans do
not have a monopoly on historical
grievance. America is a mosaic
of national, ethnic and religious
entities that each experienced some
form of oppression or hardship in
the past. And each year, millions
of immigrants with similarly
tragic histories from all corners of
the globe continue to pour into
the nation. These people come
to America to seek prosperity,
happiness and the American
Dream. They do not come here to
subsidize groups claiming that their
historical injustices entitle them to
special treatment.
Thomas Jefferson once said: I am
captivated more by the dreams of
the future than by the history of the
past. Slave reparations advocates
would do well to heed those words.
The author of the Declaration of
Independence understood, perhaps
better than any other Founding
Father, that the essence of American
Democracy lies in transcending
the bitter animosities of the Old
World to embrace the boundless
opportunities of the New.
Peter Flaherty is President of the
National Legal and Policy Center.
John Carlisle is the Director of Policy
at NLPC.
www.nlpc.org

39

End Notes
www.democrats.org/about/
2000platform.html

www.directblackaction.com/repara_
form.html

Parker, Jay, Reparations

or Rip Off? Issues & Views,
www.issues-views.com/index.
php?print=1&article=2005

Decker, Bret M., The Coming

Reparations Boondoggle, National
Review Online, June 18, 2000; and
www.house.gov/conyers/news_
reparations.htm

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query

Suit Seeks Billions in Slave

Reparations, CNN.com, March 27,
2002

Daniels, Ron, Call for Reparations

Growing Among Whites, The
New Journal & Guide, August
10, 2000, www.njournalg.com/
editorial/2000/08/daniels-callreparations.html

Charm of a Snake, Investors

Business Daily, October 17, 2005

Decker

Kong, Deborah, The Associated

Press/Salt Lake Tribune, August 13,
2002
10

Parker, J.A., The

Huntsville Chronicle, www.
thehuntsvillechronicle.com/
Chicago/reparation.htm
11

www.greenpartyus.org/
platform/2000/index.html
12

http://greens.org/platform/us/draftsocial-justice.doc
13

www.newsmax.com/showinside.
shtml?a=2002/4/25/114836
14

www.freep.com/news/politics/gov420021004.htm
15

Kerry Opposes Reparations,

Washington Times, April 16, 2004
16

40

www.nlpc.org

17

Speeches Show Winners, Losers

at Convention, The Atlanta JournalConstitution, July 31, 2004

Rotenberk, Lori, Slavery

Reparations Lawsuit Dismissed, The
Boston Globe, January 27, 2004

18

Kong, Deborah, 2nd Lawsuit

Filed Asking for Reparations, The
Associated Press/The Washington
Times, May 2, 2002

Hobbs, Chuck, Slavery

Reparations More Divisive for
Blacks, Whites, Capital Outlook,
April 15, 2004

Source: e-mail communication

with Berry

Students to Boycott Slavery

Banks, U.S. Newswire Press
Release, December 5, 2005

19

Slave-Related Companies Forced

to Fess Up in Chicago, FOXNews.
com, October 7, 2002; City
Contractors Must Reveal Slavery
Ties, United Press International,
October 3, 2002
20

Price, Joyce, Detroit Joins 2

Cities on Slave Disclosures, The
Washington Times, July 1, 2004
21

Wolfe, Matthew, Slavery

Disclosure Bill: Pandering while
Rome Burns, Center Citys Weekly
Press, April 2, 2005
22

Edozien, Frankie, Council

Looking for Biz Links to Slavery,
New York Post, February 10, 2005
23

Michaels, Cash, Rep. Womble

Defends Slavery Info Bill, The
Wilmington Journal, May 27, 2005
24

Muhammad, Cedric, Do We
Really Want Class-Action Lawyers
Leading The Movement For
Reparations?, www.blackelectorate.
com/articles.asp?ID=70, February 5,
2001
25

Worrill, Conrad, The Tactic

of Lawsuits and the Reparations
Movement, Jackson Advocate,
January 8, 2004
26

Teicher, Stacy, Should

Corporations be Held Accountable
for Slavery, Christian Science
Monitor, January 30, 2004
27

Hoedeman, John, Refund

Reparations are Unethical, Illegal,
Daily Trojan, Univ. of Southern
California, April 20, 2004
28

29

30

31

Korecki, Natasha, Judge Says No

to Reparations, Chicago Sun-Times,
July 7, 2005
32

Cox, James, Judge Rejects Lawsuit

Seeking Reparations, USA Today,
January 27, 2004
33

Spielman, Fran, Reparations

Leaders Rip Banks Scholarship
Offer, Chicago Sun-Times, January
23, 2005
34

Wisniewski, Mary, Bank of

America Admits Ties to Slavery,
Chicago Sun-Times, August 25, 2005
35

Smitherman, Laura, Wachovia

Apologizes for Slavery Ties of
Predecessors, Baltimore Sun, June 2,
2005
36

Spielman, Fran, Aldermen May

Punish Firm for Concealing Slavery
Ties, June 5, 2005
37

Wachovia Pledges $1 Billion

to Auto Dealers of Color,
DiversityInc.com, June 27, 2005
38

Spielman, Fran, Company Admits

Slave History, Chicago Sun-Times,
September 13, 2005
39

Spielman, Fran, Lehman Takes

a Hit over Ties to Slavery, Chicago
Sun-Times, October 2, 2005
40

Cusido, Carmen, Three Banks

Targeted by Reparations Activists,
DiversityInc.com, December 14,
2005
41

Corporations Challenged by
Reparations Activists, USA Today,
February 21, 2002
42

Foster, Andrea, Brown University

to Explore Slavery, Reparations, The
Chronicle of Higher Education, March
26, 2004
43

Fridman, Leora, Slavery, Justice

Research at Brown Influences Other
Institutions, Brown Daily Herald,
February 6, 2006
44

Nevin, Will, Historical

Commission Needed, The Crimson
White, January 27, 2006
45

Gott, Natalie, University of

North Carolina Details Past Slavery
Ties, Associated Press Wire Story,
November 2, 2005
46

The American-Israeli Cooperative

Enterprise, Jewish Virtual Library,
Holocaust Assets & Reparations,
www.us-israel.org/jscource/Holocaust/
assettoc.html
47

Sage, Adam, and Boyes, Roger,

Swiss Holocaust Cash Revealed to
be a Myth, The Times, October 13,
2002
48

Masci, David, Reparations, Issues

in Race, Ethnicity and Gender:
Selections from the CQ Researcher,
Congressional Quarterly, Washington,
D.C., 2001; p. 23
49

The Wall Street Journal, December

4, 1998; also: www.adl.org/opinion/
holocaust_restitution.asp
50

51

Masci, p. 26

Sensitivity Toward European

Americans: Diversity Within
Diversity, January 2000, published by
Resisting Defamation
52

The Willimantic Irish: A

Case Study, The Irish Club of
Willimantic, www.threadcity.com/
irishclub/casestudy.html
53

Hane, Clay, Irish Immigration

Experience Through Ellis Island,
project1.caryacademy.org/ireland4/
Historical%20Essay.htm
54

Olmstead, Frederick Law, A

Journey in the Seaboard Slave States
in the Years 1853-1854, (G. P.
Putnams Sons, New York, London,
1904, originally issued in 1856); Also
see: Roedeger, David R., The Wages of
Whiteness: Race and the Making of the
American Working Class (Verso, New
York, 1991), p. 113, 146, 150
55

College and the National Bureau for

Economic Research, May 21, 2002
Kramer, Lance, Study: Slaverys
Effects Lasted Just 2 Generations,
The Dartmouth, November 6, 2002
69

www.finalcall.com/perspectives/
reparations-rally07-16-2002.htm
70

56

Slave-Related Companies Forced

to Fess Up in Chicago, FOXNews.
com, October 7, 2002

57

Bateman, Fred, and Weiss, Thomas,

A Deplorable Scarcity: The Failure of
Industrialization in the Slave Economy
(The University of North Carolina
Press, Chapel Hill, 1981)

Chinese Immigration to the

United States, www.needham.mec.
edu/high-school/cur/kane98/kane-p3immig/China/china.html
Kong

Population of the United States,

1860, www.civilwarhome.com/
population1860.htm
58

Antebellum South, Image vs.

Reality, http://history.sandiego.edu/
gen/filmnotes/gwtnotes.html
59

http://uscis.gov/graphics/shared/
aboutus/statistics/IMM02yrbk/
IMMExcel/table1.xls
60

Robinson, Randall, The Debt: What

America Owes to Blacks (Penguin
Books, New York, 2000) p. 8
61

62

p. 204

Cited in Williams, Brandt, The

Case for Slave Reparations,
Minnesota Public Radio,
November 13, 2000, news.mpr.
org/features/200011/13-williamsreparations
63

64

Cited in Williams

Bombardieri, Marcella, Theory

Links Slavery, Stress Disorder, The
Boston Globe, November 12, 2002

71

72

73

Bateman and Weiss, p. 16

74

p. 20

Majewski, John, A House Dividing:

Economic Development in Pennsylvania
and Virginia Before the Civil War
(Cambridge University Press, 2000)
p. 1
75

76

Bateman and Weiss, p. 30

77

Cited in Majewski, p. 5

Tocqueville, Alexis de, Democracy

in America, http://xroads.virginia.
edu/HYPER/DETOC/1_ch18.htm
78

Hanson, Victor Davis, The Soul of

Battle, (Anchor Books, New York,
1999) p. 200
79

80

Majewski, p. 3

81

p. 3

82

Bateman and Weiss, p. 18

83

Majewski, p. 3, 10

84

p. 11

85

p. 172

86

p. 172

65

Best of the Web Today, November

25, 2002
66

Williams, Walter, Creators

Syndicate/The Washington Times,
November 24, 2002
67

Sacerdote, Bruce, Slavery and

the Intergenerational Transmission
of Human Capital, Dartmouth
68

Icemoglu, Daron; Johnson, Simon;

and Robinson, James K., The
Colonial Origins of Comparative
Development: An Empirical
Investigation, The American
Economic Review, December 2001
87

www.nlpc.org

41

http://www.civilwarhome.com/
kingcotton.htm

Ramshaw, Emily, Buying Freedom

in Sudan, The Boston Globe, July 9,
2002

88

113

Klein, Herbert S., The Atlantic Slave

Trade, (Cambridge University Press,
1999) p. 99

114

89

90

Icemoglu, p. 26

Lubinskas, James, Racial Myths

and Realities, FrontPageMag.com,
October 3, 2002
91

Van Der Zee, John, Bound Over:

Indentured Servitude and American
Conscience (Simon and Schuster,
New York, 1985) p. 33

Davis

Van Der Zee, pp. 29-30

137

Davis

http://www.apva.org/history

138

Davis

139

Leckie, p. 31

140

Leckie, p. 33

141

Davis

142

Davis

Klein, p. 58

118

94

Klein, pp. 106-107

95

Klein, p. 155

96

Klein, p. 59

Oliver, Roland, ed., The Middle Age

of African History, (Oxford University
Press, London, 1967) pp. 36-38
99

Dulles, Foster Rhea, Labor

in America: A History (AHM
Publishing, Arlington Heights, Ill.,
1966) p. 7

119

Bridenbaugh, Carl and Roberta,

No Peace Beyond the Line: The
English and the Caribbean, 1642-1690
(Oxford University Press, New York,
1972) p. 110; also: George Novack,
Slavery in Colonial America, Americas
Revolutionary Heritage, p. 142

145

Van Der Zee, pp. 29-30

146

Dulles, p. 7

101

Klein, p. 57

123

102

Klein, p. 129

124

103

Klein, p. 165

104

Klein, p. 129

http://www.arm.arc.co.uk/FAQs.
html

Salinger, Sharon V., To Serve Well

and Faithfully: Labor and Indentured
Servants in Pennsylvania, 1682-1800
(Cambridge University Press, New
York, 1987) p. 92

125

Dulles, p. 7

126

Bridenbaugh, p. 118
Bridenbaugh, p. 119

107

BBC World Service

127

108

BBC World Service

128

Forum Focuses on Modern-Day

Slavery in Africa, CNN.com,
February 26, 1999

109

Eibner, John and Jacobs, Charles,

Old Europe and Sudans Jihad, The
Boston Globe, March 15, 2003

110

Abolish: The Anti-Slavery Portal,

http://www.iabolish.com/today/
features/sudan/overview1.htm

111

112

www.iabolish.com

42

www.nlpc.org

Drescher, Seymour, and Engerman,

Stanley L. (eds), A Historical Guide
to World Slavery (Oxford University
Press, New York, 1998) p. 22

144

Van Der Zee, p. 41

Klein, p. 117

106

http://www/geobop.com/World/
NA/Topics/History/Civil-War/
reference/compare

143

121
122

Lubinskas

Van Der Zee, p. 38

120

100

105

Davis

136

Lubinskas

Klein, pp. 106-107

135

Van Der Zee, p. 38

93

98

Leckie, p. 32

116
117

BBC World Service, The Story

of Africa: Slavery, www.bbc.
co.uk/worldservice/africa/features/
storyofafrica/9generic2.shtml

134

115

92

97

Leckie, Robert, From Sea to Shining

Sea: From the War of 1812 to the
Mexican War, The Saga of Americas
Expansion (Harper Perennial, 1993)
p. 30

133

http://www.scholarspublishing.
com/plate.htm

129

www.scholarspublishing.com

http://www.multiracial.com/
readers/tenzer4.html

130

Quoted in Talty, Stephen, Slaves

of a Different Color, Salon.com,
June 9, 2000

131

Davis, Robert C., Christian Slavers,

Muslim Masters (Palgrave Macmillan,
London, 2003), p. 6

132

Drescher, p. 22

Bush, M.L., Servitude in Modern

Times (Polity Press, Cambridge, UK,
2000) p. 187

147

Drescher, p. 22

148

Drescher, p. 23

149

Drescher, p. 25

150

Bush, p. 194

151

Robinson, p. 247

Key Facts from The Case Against Slave Reparations

One estimate puts the total cost of reparations for the African American descendants
of slaves at $97 trillion.
The charge that America has never paid for slavery ignores the 618,000 Americans
who died in the Civil War.
In Americas colonial era, half of all the white immigrants arrived under some form of
involuntary labor.
At the height of the slave trade around 1800, there were nearly as many slaves within
Africa, 2.5 million, as the number of slaves in the Americas, 2.9 million.
The vast majority of Americans are descended from immigrants who came to
America after slavery was abolished in 1865.
Unlike reparations paid to Holocaust survivors, slavery reparations would not go to
the actual victims.

Did You Know?

During the 1700s, the death rate on ships carrying white indentured servants from
Europe averaged 25 percent. The mortality rate on the African slave ships averaged
10 to 20 percent.
In the 1700s, the African kingdom of Dahomey became a major player in the
slave trade, enslaving 10,000 captives from a rival kingdom and selling most to the
Europeans.
When the British destroyed the slave ports on the west coast of Africa in the 19th
century, blacks rioted against the British.
Free blacks often owned black slaves. In 1860, about one-third of the 10,600 free
blacks in New Orleans were slave owners.
Prior to the Civil War in the South, Irish immigrants rather than black slaves were
often employed for the most hazardous jobs, since the lives of Irish immigrants were
often considered expendable.