On Thursday, April 9, 2015 the descendants of enslaved Africans from Central, North and South America, the Caribbean and Europe gathered at the National/International Reparations Summit in New York City. The Institute of the Black World 21st Century (IBW) a leading research, policy and advocacy group hosted the National/International Reparations Summit in New York City from April 9 to12. The IBW which has offices in New York and Baltimore “emerged as an outgrowth of the State of the Black World Conference which attracted some 2,500 African American scholars, activists, organizers and concerned individuals to Atlanta in 2001.”
2. of British society and politics on the eve of the Victorian era.”
Much of the wealth in the British treasury was accumulated from the unpaid,
coerced labour of generations of enslaved Africans. At the summit we were
reminded that the 4 to 6 year ”apprenticeship” that was imposed on enslaved
Africans following the August 1, 1834 ”emancipation” was a ruse to ensure the
continued exploitation of African labour by White people. Slavery was
”abolished” on August 1, 1834 with the stipulation that the Africans who were
”field slaves” would continue working for a further 6 years without pay for
their White owners and the ”domestic slaves” continue for another 4 years under
the same conditions. Emancipated in name only on August 1, 1834, the Africans
were forced to remain on the plantations where they had been enslaved and work
as ”apprentices” until the White plantation owners had been paid reparations
with the labour of the Africans. The 6 year ”apprenticeship” for field workers
did not materialise because the Africans protested in every British colony where
the ”apprenticeship” system had been established and on August 1, 1838 the
British were forced to end the ”apprenticeship” system. A similar situation
obtained in Suriname, South America where the Dutch ended slavery on July 1,
1863 but the Africans were forced to continue working on the plantations where
they had been enslaved for a further 10 years before they were finally free to
leave in 1873. White people who enslaved Africans were compensated for the loss
of their property when slavery was abolished but the enslaved Africans did not
receive compensation for their labour while they were enslaved or after they
were ”emancipated.” The enslavement of Africans, underdevelopment of the African
continent and genocide of Africans during the horrifying Maafa has not been
addressed by any of the European governments and White people who continue to
reap the benefits of the wealth that was accumulated during those hundreds of
years.
The gathering in New York City honoured some pioneers of the Reparations
movement including African American Congressman John Conyers Jr. who in January
of 1989 introduced the bill H.R. 40 the ”Commission to Study Reparation
Proposals for African Americans Act”
(http://conyers.house.gov/index.cfm/reparations) He has re-introduced HR 40 at
every Congress since 1989 with no support from Republicans or his fellow
Democrats. The question of Reparations for Africans in America has occupied the
minds of African Americans since the ”emancipation” of enslaved Africans. Almost
a century before Conyers introduced HR 40 in Congress an African American woman
Callie House (1861-1928) born 4 years before slavery was abolished in the USA is
credited with organizing the first Reparations movement in the USA in 1894 when
she co-founded the National Ex-Slave Mutual Relief, Bounty, and Pension
Association. In her 2005 published book ”My Face Is Black Is True: Callie House
and the Struggle for Ex-Slave Reparations” African American history professor
Dr. Mary Frances Berry describes House and the early Reparations movement: ”An
African-American laundress from Tennessee, she became the leader of a turn-of-
the-twentieth-century poor people's movement that sought pensions from the
federal government as compensation for slavery. Her movement, federal officials
concluded, ”is setting the negroes wild.” They thought that if they did not stop
her, when African Americans understood that the government would never grant
pensions, the nation would ”have some very serious questions to settle in
connection with the control of the race.” Consequently, the government harassed
Callie House for exercising her constitutional right to petition the government
and to mobilize others in the cause. When she would not relent, calling her
"defiant," the Post Office Department and the Pension Bureau redoubled their
efforts to smear and confine her. Her organization was the first mass
reparations movement led by African Americans.” Similar tactics were used to
destroy the ”Universal Negro Improvement Association & African Communities”
League” (UNIA-ACL) founded by the Honourable Marcus Mosiah Garvey who was also
railroaded into a prison cell. The government of the USA seems to have a history
of seeking and destroying any African American who tries to lead their people to
a state of self-sufficiency. In her 2007 published book ”Dreams of Africa in
Alabama: The Slave Ship Clotilda and the Story of the Last Africans Brought to
America” African American historian Sylviane Diouf includes proof that African
American abolitionist Frederick Douglass supported the Reparations movement with