February 7, 2002

            Ever since I have been in Congress among the first bills introduced at the beginning of each term are bills calling for reparations for slavery.  Although I have always supported legislation dealing with the establishment of a Commission and various other efforts to examine the issue of reparations, I have not always supported other measures, many of which call for direct remuneration.  There is always the question of who can be identified as deserving and how do we determine how much they deserve? 

But the question of reparations in its traditional form aside, I believe very strongly that there is ample documentation of various forms of racial injustices that occurred very often under the color of law.  Not only can we document the injustices in many of these instances, but we can also identify those who were the subjects of the injustices.  And the time is long since past for our government to take up where we fell short in 1872 when Congress rescinded, "forty acres and a mule."

            The Associated Press recently documented some of these injustices.  They conducted an 18-month investigation into black landowners who have illegally, and sometimes legally, had their land stolen from them.  After interviewing 1,000 people and examining tens of thousands of public records, the AP documented 107 land takings in 13 Southern and border states.  In those cases alone, 406 black landowners lost more than 24,000 acres of farm and timberland, plus 85 smaller properties, including stores and city lots. 

            This research was compiled in a three-part series title Torn from the Land, which detailed how blacks were cheated out of their land or driven from it through intimidation, violence and even murder.  Some had their land foreclosed for minor debts. Still others lost their land to tricky legal maneuvers, still being used today, called partitioning, in which savvy buyers can acquire an entire family's property if just one heir agrees to sell them one parcel, however small.              

Just like many blacks with roots in the South, I grew up hearing stories of land lost by relatives and family friends.  These stories were so commonplace and pervasive that I worked with Penn Community Center for many years before I came to the Congress studying these land takings. To date, Penn Center has collected reports of 2,000 similar cases that remain uninvestigated.  And there are other institutions around the South collecting the same kind of information.  The question now is where do we go from here?  What do we do with this information?

As with most legislators, my natural inclination is to introduce a Bill.  But I do not think that is the proper response in this instance, at least not at this time.  Maybe later.  What I think is called for at this time is legal action.   Harvard professor Charles Ogletree, who has been at the forefront of the reparations movement, has expressed interest in pursuing a class action lawsuit on behalf of African Americans who can document how their families lost their property.  Such a lawsuit should be filed and it should be funded and supported by the United States government.

            I think the chances are very slim that African Americans will ever receive reparations for the ills wrought by slavery, at least in the traditional sense.  Trying to prove definitive ancestral links between contemporary African Americans and slaves going back nearly four centuries, will in most cases, be fruitless.  But in this and similar instances we can easily identify the victims and the perpetrators.    It is time for our state and federal governments to right this wrong.

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