The document discusses the ongoing reparations movement for the descendants of enslaved Africans, highlighted by Reverend Jesse Jackson's keynote speech at a reparations summit in New York City. It critiques the historical injustices of slavery, where slaveholders were compensated for their lost 'property' while the enslaved received nothing, and emphasizes the need for reparations to address the lasting impacts of slavery and colonialism. The text also honors early advocates for reparations, including Callie House and Congressman John Conyers, while calling attention to the moral and biblical injunctions for restitution.

1. MURPHY BROWNE (Abena Agbetu) Copyright © by Murphy Browne
And if thy brother, a Hebrew man, or a Hebrew woman, be sold unto thee, and
serve thee six years; then in the seventh year thou shalt let him go free from
thee. And when thou sendest him out free from thee, thou shalt not let him go
away empty: thou shalt furnish him liberally out of thy flock, and out of thy
floor, and out of thy winepress: of that wherewith the LORD thy God hath blessed
thee thou shalt give unto him. And thou shalt remember that thou wast a bondman
in the land of Egypt, and the LORD thy God redeemed thee: therefore I command
thee this thing today.
From Deuteronomy Chapter 15, verses 12 to 15
On Thursday, April 9, 2015 the Reverend Jessie Jackson quoted the above
scripture as part of his keynote speech in support of Reparations. Jackson was
the keynote speaker at the recent 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.“
The attendees of the Summit included the descendants of enslaved Africans from
Central, North and South America, the Caribbean and Europe. According to the
final press release from the IBW, the goal of the Summit was: “a clear
determination to strengthen the global movement to finish the continuous, heroic
struggle of Africans on the continent and people of African descent everywhere
for reparations to repair the damages inflicted on our peoples by genocide and
enslavement at the hands of European colonial and slave-holding nations.“ This
21st century organizing is the latest effort by the descendants of enslaved
Africans to claim reparations for the hundreds of years when African labour was
exploited by and enriched Europeans. Ironically when slavery was abolished the
slave holders were paid reparations for losing their property and the Africans
were forced to work to ensure the White people who owned them received
reparations from the British and other European governments. The British slave
holders received 20 million pounds from the British treasury. Every White man
and woman who had enslaved Africans and made a claim for compensation listed the
African men, women and children that they “owned“ and were compensated for their
loss. The listed names of those slave owners who received compensation for the
loss of their property exists in archives in Britain. In the 2010 published “The
Price of Emancipation: Slave-Ownership, Compensation and British Society at the
End of Slavery“ White British historian Nicholas Draper using information from
the records of the “Commissioners of Slave Compensation“ has listed the names of
the people who owned Africans and received compensation for losing their
“slaves.“ The places where these slaveholders held Africans in slavery includes
Antigua, Barbados, British Guiana, Dominica, Grenada, Jamaica, Nevis, St. Kitts,
St. Vincent and Trinidad. Although slavery in Britain was not as prolific as in
the British colonies, many of the White men and women who lived in Britain were
absentee plantation owners and enjoyed enormously financial benefits from the
unpaid, coerced labour of enslaved Africans who toiled on plantations in the
Caribbean and in Central, North and South America. A description of the
information in “The Price of Emancipation“ states: “When colonial slavery was
abolished in 1833 the British government paid £20 million to slave-owners as
compensation: the enslaved received nothing. Drawing on the records of the
Commissioners of Slave Compensation, which represent a complete census of slave-
ownership, this book provides a comprehensive analysis of the extent and
importance of absentee slave-ownership and its impact on British society. Moving
away from the historiographical tradition of isolated case studies, it reveals
the extent of slave-ownership among metropolitan elites, and identifies
concentrations of both rentier and mercantile slave-holders, tracing their
influence in local and national politics, in business and in institutions such
as the Church. In analysing this permeation of British society by slave-owners
and their success in securing compensation from the state, the book challenges
conventional narratives of abolitionist Britain and provides a fresh perspective

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

3. this quote: “The nation as a nation has sinned against the Negro. It robbed him
of the rewards of his labor during more than two hundred years, and its
repentance will not be genuine and complete till, according to the measure of
its ability, it shall make restitution. It can never fully atone for the wrong
done to the millions who have lived and died under the galling yoke of bondage,
but it can, if it will, do justice and mercy to the living."
Most White Americans pride themselves on being devout Christians, boast of their
nation“s Christian foundation yet ignore the Bible instruction in Deuteronomy
Chapter 15, verses 13 and 14 that bondspeople should be compensated when freed:
“And when thou sendest him out free from thee, thou shalt not let him go away
empty: thou shalt furnish him liberally out of thy flock, and out of thy floor,
and out of thy winepress: of that wherewith the LORD thy God hath blessed thee
thou shalt give unto him.“ The European nations that enslaved Africans also
claim to be Christians yet the Dutch behaved in a very unChristianlike manner
when they committed one of the most horrific murders of African men, women and
children on January 1, 1738, when the captain and crew of the “Leusden“ owned by
the Dutch West India Company locked 680 African men, women and children below
deck and abandoned ship leaving the Africans to drown as the ship sank during a
storm off Suriname. The Dutch outdid the barbarity of the British captain of the
“Zong“ who on his way to Jamaica ordered 132 Africans thrown overboard to drown
knowing he would not lose money since his “cargo“ was insured. Oh yes we are
owed Reparations for the enslavement of our ancestors whose blood, sweat and
tears enriched White people who continue to benefit from White skin privilege in
every sphere!!
tiakoma@hotmail.com
Copyright © by Murphy Browne