Reparations proposals are now in fashion, but have a long history

Evanston, Illinois, has been referred to as the new epicenter of the civil rights movement. In 2019, it became the first city in America to guarantee funding for reparations to black residents. In a four-part series, Reparations Nation, the Washington Examiner profiled the program’s architect, talked to recipients of $25,000 housing grants, and examined the partnership between the city and one of its largest employers, Northwestern University, as both tried to navigate the lasting legacies of a racist past.

While Evanston has made strides in reparations, there are a number of other examples of reparations made by the government, states, corporations, and universities. The list below highlights some of those cases.

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1773: The first known case of reparations in the United States took place in 1773 after Caesar Hendrick claimed in the Court of Common Pleas that Richard Greenleaf of Newburyport, MA, “detained him in slavery.” The jury freed Hendrick and awarded him £18 (about $22.50 U.S.) in damages and costs.  

1863: Working-class white New Yorkers rioted over a federal draft law that required all male citizens between 20 and 35, as well as all unmarried men between 35 and 35, to be subject to military duty. The men were chosen to go to war through a lottery system but could avoid it if they paid the government $300, which most could not afford. Black men were exempted from the Civil War draft because they were not considered citizens under the law. That led to what has been dubbed the “draft riots” and included “five days of some of the bloodiest and most destructive rioting in the U.S.” Up to 1,000 people were killed, and many more were injured. Though riots took place in other U.S. cities, the worst was in New York, where stores were looted and buildings were burned. After the destruction, white merchants raised money for those who were hurt, repaired damaged property, and supported “the legal and employment needs of the community’s Black people.” The shopkeepers raised more than $40,000 (about $825,000 now) in reparations.

1865: The short-lived promise made by Union General William Sherman on January 16, 1865, would have carved up 400,000 acres of Confederate land to be given to slaves, which came out to about 40 acres per family. Though there is no mention of the word “mule” in the order, some former slaves were given retired Army mules, which led to the phrase “40 acres and a mule.” However, the promise made during President Abraham Lincoln’s administration was rescinded by President Andrew Johnson following Lincoln’s assassination. Johnson returned the 400,000 acres, which included a strip of coastline stretching from Charleston, South Carolina to St. John’s River in Florida, to Confederate landowners. “The failed promise of “40 acres and a mule denied African Americans the ability to generate financial self-sufficiency, which was needed in order to resist as much as possible the Jim Crow policies of the local government in the South,” Roy Brooks, a professor of law at the University of San Diego School of Law, told the History Channel. “It would have provided a very timely reparation for African Americans, which would have changed the course of racial history. It would have changed the trajectory of racial inequality in our society.”

1878: Twelve white jurors in Cincinnati awarded Henrietta Wood $2,500 (nearly $65,000 today) in reparations. Wood, a former slave who had been freed in 1848, was kidnapped by Zebulon Ward, a white man who had enslaved her for 25 years prior to her release. Wood ended up on a Texas plantation until the Civil War ended. She eventually made it back to Ohio and sued Ward for $20,000. Even though the jury awarded her a fraction of the money she sought, her case remains one of the largest known settlements granted by a U.S. court in restitution for slavery, according to the Smithsonian.

1924: Congress authorized the establishment of the Pueblo Lands Board to handle land disputes along with a $1.3 million payment to the Native American tribe for the land they lost. Three years later, the Shoshone tribe, who originated in the western Great Basin and spread north and east to Idaho and Wyoming, was paid more than $6 million for land illegally taken from them. 

1946: Congress created the Indian Claims Commission to hear fraud and treaty violation claims against the U.S. government. The commission, which adjourned in 1978, awarded $818 million in judgments. 

1969: One of the first calls for reparations in the modern era came from the Black Manifesto. Written by James Forman and released at the National Black Economic Development Conference, it argued that the country was built off the backs of slave labor and demanded $500 million in reparations from white churches and synagogues for facilitating racist policies. In its August 29, 1969 issue, Time magazine reported that the “arrogantly worded” manifesto had only collected $22,000 but claimed, “Foreman’s demands have been successful, however, as a catalyst in moving churches to examine their consciences.”

1970: Former President Richard Nixon signed into law a House resolution that returned Blue Lake and its surrounding areas in New Mexico to the Taos Pueblo after it was taken in 1906 by presidential order. 

1988: Former President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, which issued a formal apology and gave $1.2 billion to 60,000 Japanese Americans who had been held in internment camps during World War II. He also issued an apology and gave 450 Unangans, who had also been interned, $12,000 and set up a $6.4 million trust fund.

1989: Former Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) introduced legislation that would create the Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act. He re-introduced the act every congressional session for the next 30 years. In 2019, the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties conducted a hearing on the issue. Conyers died in Oct. 2019. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) and Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) have since taken up the cause. 

1994: Florida approved a $2.1 million payout for the living survivors of the 1923 riot in Rosewood, Florida, that left more than 30 black men, women, and children dead after a mob of more than 200 white men attacked the community. The incident was triggered after a white woman named Fannie Taylor claimed she had been assaulted by Jesse Hunter, a black man who had escaped prison. A group of white men then kidnapped, tortured, and lynched Sam Carter, a black craftsman, who they claimed without evidence he helped Hunter escape. As the men continued to search the town, a black man named Sylvester Carrier fought back. He was killed in a shootout, but not before killing two white men. News spread, and soon hundreds of white Floridians descended on the town, burning businesses, churches, and homes. 

1999: A class action lawsuit by black farmers was settled by a consent decree, leading to $1 billion in payments. The suit argued that the farmers seeking loans experienced systemic racial discrimination between 1981 and 1996. Another $1.2 billion was appropriated by Congress. 

2001: The Oklahoma legislature passed a bill to pay reparations for the Tulsa Race Massacre, which took place over an 18-hour period when a white mob attacked black residents, their homes, and businesses in the Greenwood neighborhood. Hundreds were killed, and thousands were left homeless. The Oklahoma reparations came in the form of low-income student scholarships, an economic development authority, a memorial, and a medal given to 118 living survivors of the riots. 

2002: A $503 million settlement was reached in a lawsuit that alleged Mississippi systematically underfunded and neglected black universities. 

2005: Billionaire media investor John Kluge and Virginia teamed up to apologize and offer reparations in the form of scholarships to any state resident who was denied a proper education after Prince Edward County and its surrounding areas shut down its schools in support of segregation five decades earlier. 

2005: Banking giant JP Morgan Chase issued an apology for its role in the slave trade and set up a $5 million scholarship fund for black students to attend college. 

2007-2008: State legislatures in New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, Alabama, and Florida passed measures apologizing for slavery and segregation policies. 

2014: North Carolina set aside $10 million in reparation payments for the living survivors of the state’s eugenics program, which forcibly sterilized 7,600 people between 1929 and 1974. 

2015: Chicago signed off on giving cash payments, free college, and a range of other social services to nearly 60 living survivors of police torture, totaling $5.5 million. 

2019: The Virginia Theological Seminary earmarked $1.7 million to pay reparations to the descendants of slaves who were forced to work on the school’s campus.

2019: Georgetown University announced it would raise $400,000 a year to benefit the descendants of 272 slaves who were sold to keep the college afloat financially. The money will go toward community projects. 

2019: Evanston, Illinois, city council voted to use $10 million from its cannabis tax to fund reparations for black residents.

2020: Ashville, North Carolina, voted to publicly apologize and invest in its black communities. 

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2021: The Jesuit Conference of Priests pledged to raise $100 million for the descendants of slaves, the largest monetary effort of the Roman Catholic Church for its role in slavery. 

2022: Harvard University pledged $100 million to study its ties to slavery and develop programs of reconciliation and redress. The historic pledge was announced by President Larry Bacow along with the release of a 100+ page report that included recommendations for reparations. Bacow noted that the Ivy League school once had more than 70 slaves and that several of the university’s presidents owned slaves.