Yes, slavery in the U.S. did not happen yesterday (1619-1865) but harms to Americans of African descent continue. The period after the Civil War known as Reconstruction, which included some types of reparations for Black Americans, only lasted about twelve years. It was followed by many decades of Jim Crow, lynchings, the debt peonage of sharecropping along with other land and housing disparities, racially biased mass incarceration, and other laws and policies that to this day sustain white supremacy and hamper upward mobility.

As the National African Americans Reparations Commission explains, “The living legacy of enslavement is manifested in today’s society in persistent poverty and widening disparities in every socio-economic index (health, education, housing, unemployment etc.) and in the growing economic inequalities in both income and wealth.”

Generally, people who are not descendants of enslaved people have had wealth and other advantages passed down to them for generations; people who are descendants of enslaved people have been handed the opposite.

During slavery, people of African descent were of course deprived of vast amounts of wages by working for free. Due to white supremacy their work afterwards was also poorly compensated, and just as wealth is handed down through generations, so too is poverty. As a result, the median wealth of today’s White households is nine times larger than that of Black households (as reported by the Pew Research Center).

Surely we should not pretend that the past is over—indeed, it isn’t even past yet. As the National African American Reparations Commission explains, “America owes an historical debt to Black people, and reparations means repaying that debt, a debt so large as to defy accurate accounting. . . . Consider for a moment the essential nature of chattel slavery as was practiced throughout the Americas for centuries—that is, human beings as property, to be bought, sold, auctioned, used as collateral—the wholesale theft of vast amounts of wealth produced by coerced and oppressed black labor and re-enforced by an ethos of antiblack violence rooted in White Supremacy.”

Subscribing to the bootstrap theory, that we can all get ahead if we simply try, conveniently ignores the economic value of the tangible and intangible benefits white people have received, such as historic land grants, New Deal programs, and GI Bill entitlements. For example, domestic and farm workers were excluded from 1935 Social Security legislation, thereby effectively excluding 60% of Black people across the United States. This omission was not rectified until the 1950s.

"It is a cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he should lift himself up by his own bootstraps. It is even worse to tell a man to lift himself up by his own bootstraps when someone is standing on the boot. " -- Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1968)

Reparations4Slavery answers this question well: “Nearly every ethnicity, Black or white, has endured historic trauma of some sort; many have arrived on our shores precisely because of this trauma. However, today, most immigrants of European descent have overcome the obstacles that brought them here, entered the middle class and attained at least the median net worth. This is effectively because policies and laws affecting our economies have always favored white-skinned people. African Americans to this day are still held back by historic policies and their current-day corollaries that have resulted in the 10:1 racial wealth gap.”

The Champaign-Urbana Reparations Coalition is working for reparations to Americans of African descent, as we recognize especially harmful conditions inflicted for generations upon Black members of our own community. Our doing so is not to deny the need for redress for other harmed groups in our country, but that is not our focus.

The idea of reparations is not “all about the money.” The United Nations has defined adequate reparations as taking five distinct forms: cessation and guarantees of non-repetition, restitution, compensation, satisfaction, and rehabilitation. Reparations can take the form of individual payments, but they more often take a collective approach. The latter emphasizes the building of powerful community-based economic institutions that benefit the entire African American community in a fair and equitable manner. Reparations are not the same as social programs that are based on current individual need.

Reparations are instead based on historical wrongs and the resulting harm to a specific group.

A serious, ethical conception of reparations assumes that control over what happens with them rests with the receiver, not the giver. People may be hesitant to support reparations because of a prevailing racist belief that African Americans are inherently irresponsible people who would not know how to handle new resources. It is important to examine and call out this belittling belief.

Yes, reparations is not a new concept. The Federal Republic of Germany has paid reparations to the State of Israel and continues to pay reparations to Holocaust survivors. The U.S. government has paid reparations to Americans of Japanese descent interned during World War II, to victims of nuclear weapons testing, and to victims of the syphilis experiments at Tuskegee University. As this timeline demonstrates, many groups in the U.S., black and otherwise, have received a wide array of different forms of reparations.

The Champaign-Urbana Reparations Coalition is by no means alone—dozens of similar organizations exist around the country. Evanston, IL in 2021 became the first municipality in the country to undertake a government-funded reparations program. First Repair maintains a current interactive United States map of 52 local initiatives and 109 movement partners.

Like many similar organizations around the country, CURC has a local emphasis, focused on creating a culture of repair in our own community. We seek redress from our government entities—local, state, and federal—but there is also a need for institutions and individuals to reckon with their participation in or profit from slavery and its legacy.

Thanks in part to CURC’s efforts, the City of Urbana and Champaign County have committed funds and members to form a Champaign County Reparations Commission for African Americans. This commission’s duties will include preparing a comprehensive harms report, undertaking further community education, identifying potential models of repair, locating funding sources, and presenting legislation to enact repair. We seek partnership also with the City of Champaign and the University of Illinois.

For many, working for reparations is emancipating work that restores humanity and dignity, both for the recipients and for themselves. Many have a heart for justice and fairness, compelled by religious belief or moral codes. In social terms, healing one part of the body benefits the whole.

The fact is that laws and policies in Champaign County have systematically contributed to and exacerbated today’s racial inequalities. Absent an honest look at our history and its repercussions in our present, we cannot reach our potential for the future. Roles that promote reparative justice exist for individuals, institutions, local and state governments, and the U.S. government.

In conclusion, the words of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. from his Washington, D.C. “I Have a Dream” speech, words that ring as true today as they did in 1963:

We have come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. . . . It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked “insufficient funds.” But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt.