Page 4 - Volume 3 2016

Reparative Justice
By Elaine Parker Adams

The Center for the Healing of Racism took a busload of members and

friends to visit Whitney Plantation (Wallace, LA) and St. Joseph

Plantation (Vacherie, LA) one weekend this spring. Riding down the

interstate, Executive Director Cherry Steinwender did not limit the

focus of her passengers to the plantations of the Deep South. She

shared the film—“Traces of the Trade: a Story from the Deep North,”

the story of the De Wolf family, Rhode Islanders that were one of the

largest slave-trading families in U. S. history. This film follows current

heirs of the DeWolf fortune as they retrace the Triangle Trade from

An African American soldier in Union uniform with wife and New England to Africa to the Americas. The film presents provocative
daughters between 1863 - the year of the Emancipation ideas about the roles of the north and the south in sustaining this
Proclamation - and 1865. American tragedy.

Katrina Browne, the filmmaker, states that she and her colleagues

“wanted to ask the question: What is our responsibility?” It was not long before the dialogue on reparations glided to the

surface in the film and on the bus. How does one correct the injustices of slavery—the economic exploitation, the horrific

physical and mental abuse, and the brutal vindictiveness that lingered long after slavery ended? The idea of reparations for the

evils endured by the slaves and their ancestors is not new. The monetary debt is huge when one considers that the unfulfilled

promised forty acres and a mule payment to former slaves would have been worth “6.4 trillion in today’s dollars.” (Roots: a

History Revealed television series)

Black Methodists have long been involved in the slavery reparation efforts. Henry Louis Gates reports in The Root (January 7,
2013) that twenty black ministers met with General W.T. Sherman and Secretary of War Edwin Stanton in 1865 and proposed
the allocations of forty acres. The mules were war surplus thrown in by Sherman. The meeting represented a historically
significant step on the part of the government to include blacks in negotiating their
post-war future. Participating black Methodists included: William Bentley, Charles
Bradwell, William Gaines, Jacob Godfrey, John Johnson, Glasgow Taylor, and Robert
N. Taylor, all of Andrew’s Chapel, Savannah, GA, and James Lynch their presiding
elder. (New York Daily Tribune, February 13, 1865, p. 5) Although President
Abraham Lincoln approved the field order, it was later overturned by President
Andrew Johnson, his successor.

Other types of reparations have also been proposed over the years. Financial

demands have been common, such as the $500 million proposed by James Forman

of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee in a 1969 Black Manifesto. In

1989, Detroit City Councilman Ray Jenkins asked for the establishment of a $40

billion federal education fund supporting black college and trade school students.

The National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (N’COBRA) insists that An 1868 sketch by A. R. Waud illustrates the
an apology is required, but insufficient—there must be material forms of difficulties faced by the Freedmen's Bureau,

reparation. N’COBRA is flexible about the forms---suggesting cash payments, land caught between white planters on one side (left)
grants, support for community and economic development, scholarships, and emancipated slaves on the other (right). The
educational media and textbooks, historical monuments and museums, refinement bureau was established in 1865 after Union
of the legal system, and health relief. general William T. Sherman issued his Field Order
No. 15, which called for the resettlement of

U.S. Representative John Conyers, Jr. first introduced legislation in 1989 urging the freedpeople on confiscated lands.

establishment of a commission to acknowledge “the fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality and inhumanity of slavery” and

recommend appropriate remedies. Conyers resubmits his bill in every session of Congress, hoping for a vote. Meanwhile,

Americans need to consider the issue and construct careful responses. What do you believe would achieve reparative justice for

the unpaid service and relentless suffering of African Americans in this country? “Never thought about it” is not an acceptable

answer for blacks or whites. Be aware that obtaining reparations won’t be easy. Many white Americans feel that their families

were not involved in slavery and that they therefore have no obligations to African Americans. (Note: Following the Civil War,

Andrew Chapel was transferred by the Southern Methodists to the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church. Today, it is known as

Saint Paul CME Church.)

Elaine Parker Adams (epadams@aol.com) is author of “The Reverend Peter W. Clark: Sweet Preacher and Steadfast Reformer.”

Photo Credits: Page 1, All photos, courtesy of the family of Esau and Janie Jenkins. Contact Ms. Elaine
Jenkins, ejenkins@gbhm.org, for more information; Page 2, 100 year old book, Methodism and the
Negro written by Isaac Lemuel Thomas, donated by the family of the late Rev. Irvin C. Lockman.