Reparations Study Bill

We, the undersigned, understand and are aware of the fact that Africans did not enslave themselves in the Americas. The European slave trade was not an African venture. It was a European enterprise in all of its dimensions: conception, insurance, outfitting of ships, sailors, factories, shackles, weapons, and the selling and buying of people in the Americas. No African benefited to the degree that Europeans did from the commerce of African people. Having said that, we are aware of Congressman John Conyers (D-Michigan) House Bill 40, also known as HR.40 which was introduced in every Congress since 1989 and has yet to be addressed. This bill merely calls for a STUDY of the impact of slavery on the United States and on the Black descendants of slavery. This petition is a bold attempt to change all that. We believe it is way past time for the Congress to address this bill and this issue.

In 1990, the U.S. Congress and the President signed the Civil Rights Redress Act which laid the framework for the $1.2 billion ($20,000 each) paid to Japanese Americans. They also received a Letter of Apology which acknowledged the human, economic, and moral damage inflicted upon them for a 3-year period. Reparations has been paid to many people including, but not limited to, :Austria paid $25 million to Jewish Holocaust survivors for its role in the Nazi regime in WWII; In 1988, Canada gave $230 million to Japanese Canadians; in 1986, the U.S. paid$32 million to the Ottawas of Michigan because of 1836 treaty violations; in 1985, the U.S. gave $105 million to the Sioux of South Dakota; in 1980, the U.S. gave $81 million to the Klamaths of Oregon; in 1971, the U.S gave $1 billion plus 44 million acres of land to honor the Alaska Natives land settlement; in 1952, Germany paid $822 million to Jewish Holocaust survivors in the German Jewish Settlement. So as we see, there is national and international legal precedence for the payment of reparations or redress for historical wrongdoings by nations.

Richard America, a Georgetown professor, estimates the U.S. government owes African-Americans $5 trillion to $10 trillion for the enslavement of Africans and stated that, Slavery produced benefits that enriched whites as a class at the expense of Blacks as a class.reparations is not about making up the past, but dealing with current problems.

The Trans-Atlantic Slave trade was the most ferocious, evil, and brutal example of inhumane treatment of any race or class of people in the annals of human history. Black people were forced to migrate to the Americas and were systematically robbed of our names, languages, culture, religions, God, and were treated with utter disrespect. Slaves were beaten, crippled, maimed, burned, whipped, sold, raped, or otherwise injured mentally, physically, and emotionally. We were forced to work from cant see morning to cant see night for a minimum of 247 years with no pay. We were not allowed to read or write or marry and didnt even own the babies we carried. Even the U.S. Constitution saw us as 3/5ths of a human being. In W.E.B. Du Bois 1920 book, Darkwater, he estimated that as many as 100 million of us lost our lives in the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

We agree that reparations in whatever form must be paid to the descendants of slaves. We need not argue the form, but suffice it to say that it should include but not be limited to: land, cash payments, free education, free healthcare, and tax exempt status for a period of no less than 100 years. In September 2001, the United Nations World Conference Against Racism, held in Durban, South Africa, declared that the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade was a crime against humanity.

So today, we the undersigned DEMAND that the U.S Congress pass Rep. Conyers legislation (HR.40 BILL) and to assign a commission to study reparations for African-Americans. They must address possible remedies and redress related to those victimized by the horrors of the slave trade and the long-term residual effects and impact of institutional racism that has persisted among African descendants through Jim Crow segregation, hate crime terrors of cross burnings and lynchings, unjust laws and abuses of law, the assassinations of Black leaders and organizations, and the disparate policies and practices of the prison industry and the system of miseducation among others.