1963: A century after the Emancipation Proclamation, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King calls on the government to create a massive program "of special compensatory measures," that would guarantee equality for Black Americans. "The moral justification for special measures for the Negro is rooted in the robberies ... of slavery," he wrote in his book, Why We Can't Wait. 1989: Congressman John Conyers, a Democrat from Detroit first introduces legislation calling for the examination of reparations. The bill has died in committee ever since. 2000: Randall Robinson, then-president of TransAfrica, publishes The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks. The book puts reparations back in the public debate.
Congressman Tony Hall, a Democrat from Ohio, proposes a resolution calling for a federal apology for the government's role in slavery. No action is taken on the resolution. 2002: The IRS begins warning taxpayers against filing false tax claims based on reparations. The agency is reacting to the rash of claims for the "Slave Reparations Act" or the "black inheritance tax refund" that some African-Americans had been submitting since the mid-'90s. In some cases, unscrupulous tax preparers were charging a fee for a lump-sum payment. In others, scam artists targeted senior citizens with promises of reparations in the form of additional Social Security payments. March 26, 2002: Activist Deadria Farmer-Paellmann, a legal researcher, files a class-action suit in New York targeting 100 corporations that benefited from slavery. The lawsuit claims that Fleet Boston Financial Corp., Aetna Inc., and CSX Corp., a transportation company, owe unspecified damages to millions of descendants of slaves. June 2002: New York Assemblyman Charles Barron submits a resolution calling on the City Council to support Farmer-Paellman's lawsuit. New York joins the cities of Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Atlanta and Dallas in taking up the issue of reparations. August 17, 2002: Washington. D.C. the site of a planned march in support of reparations. |
