The contentious issue of reparations for the descendants of African slaves is being revisited both in and outside of the academy.
Last year, journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates penned a 15,000-word article that appeared in The Atlantic titled “The Case for Reparations.” An 1865 letter by an ex-slave named Jordan Anderson to his former master gained traction when it went viral a few years ago and was published in several U.S. news outlets.
Further, this November, several dozen academics, activists and former political leaders from across the globe traveled to Western Europe to take up the controversial issue.
Sponsored by the University of Edinburgh and Wheelock College in Boston, the three-day, interdisciplinary Reparations for Slavery Conference focused on the legal and moral imperative for reparations. Scholars and activists discussed the groundwork being laid for campaigns being waged to pressure countries around the world to take responsibility for the harm that was done as a result of the Atlantic slave trade.
In other parts of the world, such as the Caribbean, the fight for reparations has been steady and ongoing for decades. For example, in 2013, Caribbean heads of governments founded the CARICOM Reparations Commission (CRC), with a mandate to formulate the case for reparations for the region’s indigenous and African descendants.
CARICOM established a 10-point reparations plan that demanded, among other things, a full formal apology, the establishment of cultural institutions and a repatriation program.
“I think it’s important to have an international perspective,” says Dr. V.P. Franklin, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of History at the University of California, Riverside and an editor of The Journal of African American History. “What’s happening around the world should inform the movement in the United States. We need to educate people about the reparations movement taking place around the world and make connections.”
