Acknowledgement of past wrongs may help put African-American reparations in the spotlight

By Crystal L. Keels

The simple mention of reparations for African-Americans in the United States can be counted on to generate a firestorm. When it comes to the issue of recompense for injustices Black Americans have suffered throughout U.S. history — slavery, Jim Crow segregation and other political and social mechanisms designed to maintain racial inequality — the question of accountability is one the nation has historically ignored. The United States has customarily denied the need for restitution for the “peculiar institution” of slavery and its aftermath, and the legendary post-civil war promise of “40 acres and a mule” still remains elusive.

But in the 21st century, avoiding the issue is becoming increasingly difficult as activists, scholars, politicians and grass-roots organizations work diligently to ensure that the issue of reparations for African-Americans and all people of African descent is one the country — indeed the world —  must at least consider.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS AND APOLOGIES
A spate of recent public apologies for connections to the crime of slavery and other racial injustices have surprised many, considering a cultural context that for centuries maintained an adamant disavowal of responsibility for the degradation of millions of people of African descent.

“We are beginning to look back and correct the past,” says Harvard law professor Charles  J. Ogletree Jr. “The good news is that things we never imagined would happen last year happened.” He notes this year’s conviction of Edgar Ray Killen for the 1964 murders of civil rights workers James Earl Chaney, Andrew Goodwin and Michael Schwerner; the reinvestigation of the 1955 kidnapping, torture and murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till; and the recent apology for the crime of lynching issued by the U.S. Senate. “These are major steps,” he says.