Reparations and the African Diaspora

Reparations are compensatory mechanisms devised by victims of crimes against humanity; paid by nations, corporations, and/or individuals committing those crimes; and given to victims and/or their descendants to begin the process of reparatory justice. Currently many are pressing claims for reparations for the slave trade, slavery in the Americas, and its aftermath. These crimes began in 1441, the first year that witnessed the theft of Africans from Africa. They continued beyond the “outlawing” of enslavement, persisted during colonialism, accelerated during state-enforced apartheid, and remain to the present day. Reparations are the only global political narrative uniting Africans regardless of location. The term reparations, first used in the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, reflected the debt that the Allies imposed on Germany for instigating World War I. Following World War II, Germany and Japan paid reparations for war crimes perpetrated against a variety of groups. The newly created nation of Israel received reparations from Germany because of the Holocaust and its “crimes against humanity” stipulated at Nuremburg. Though not then called reparations, the claims for compensation for slavery have existed for centuries, being at least 250 years old with the first documented case for reparations in the newly formed United States being Belinda Royall in 1783. “The Petition of Belinda” is considered a milestone in the history of African redress for enslavement. In this document she describes her capture in Africa, the infamous voyage across the Atlantic known as the “Middle Passage,” her enslavement by Isaac Royall in both Antigua and Massachusetts, and, most notably, how her enslavement enriched her enslaver. Her petition to the Massachusetts State Legislature, concluded by saying, “Fifty years her faithful hands have been compelled to ignoble servitude for the benefit of an Isaac Royall, until, as if nations must be agitated, and the world convulsed, for the preservation of that freedom, which the Almighty Father intended for all the human race, the present war commenced . . . she prays that such allowance may be made her, out of the estate of colonel Royall, as will prevent her, and her more infirm daughter, from misery in the greatest extreme.” (see p. 22, Belinda’s Petition: A Concise History of Reparations for the Transatlantic Slave Trade, New York: Xlibris, 2009). Though the first recorded instance of African redress for enslavement, it would by no means be the last and not only in the United States. Others would follow in Belinda’s footsteps, notably David Walker in the 1820s, Callie House after the Civil War, and James Forman in the 1960s. It is important to note that reparations are not a “recently emerging” protest within the African diaspora since such thinking minimizes the historical pursuit of justice by Africans for the transatlantic slave trade. “They owe us!” “Forty acres and a mule!” and “Reparations, NOW!” are more than contemporary slogans chanted by Africans pressing for compensatory justice. In fact, they reflect a centuries-old struggle beginning with chattel slavery and with diasporic Africans attempting to repair the damage of displacement from their original homelands, being compelled to relocate to foreign countries, and enduring centuries of brutality in the form of enslavement, colonization, and apartheid.