April 15, 2021 • 33 mins
This week on the Pay Check, we look at the long fight for reparations for slavery in the U.S. Economists have calculated that each Black American is owed around $300,000, which would just about close the racial wealth gap. While momentum for reparations has grown, it's not likely to happen any time soon -- at least at the federal level. Meanwhile, cities and the state of California are looking into local reparations. Susan Berfield looks at how one town is repaying its Black residents for discrimination.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
One of the first Americans to lead a movement for
slave reparations was a woman named Callie House. She was
born into slavery, freed after the Civil War, married at two,
and widowed in her thirties. By the late eighteen nineties,
she was raising five children and working as a seamstress.
She was also helping to start an association for former
(00:26):
slaves that did things like pay for medical care her burials. Importantly,
it also demanded pensions from the federal government as compensation
for slavery. Callie traveled all over the South recruiting for
the association. Eventually she signed up some three thousand dues
(00:48):
paying members, and she sent petitions to Washington asking for reparations.
She also encouraged her members to do the same. They
proposed a system modeled on money that had been award
it to disabled Civil War soldiers. All ex slaves would
get a monthly pension starting at about four dollars a month.
(01:09):
That's around a hundred twenty five dollars in today's money.
Had it Washington respond the Post Office issued a fraud
order against Callie and members of the association. They said
she was using the mail to encourage people to ask
her something they'd never get. When Kelly got the letter
forbidding her from using the postal service for her campaign,
(01:32):
she was shocked. Then she got mad. The historian Mary
Francis Barry tells the story in a book called My
Face Is Black Is True Callie House and a Struggle
for ex slave reparations. Here she reads Callie's scathing reply
to the Post Office, and she said the Association acted
(01:56):
on behalf of quote four and a half million slaves
who would turn loose, ignorant, barefooted and naked, without a
dollar in their pockets, without a shelter to go under
out of the falling rain, but was forced to look
the man in the face was something to eat. Who
once had the power to whip them to death, but
now I have the power to stop them the death.
(02:18):
We the actually feel that if the government had a
right to free us, she had a right to make
some provision for us. As she did not make it
soon after our emancipation, she ought to make it now unquote.
For the next fifteen years, calling the Association continued to
petition the government. For its part, the Post Office kept
(02:42):
marking their mail fraudulent. He either returned it to senders
or destroyed it. In nineteen sixteen, Kelly was arrested and
then indicted on charges of mail fraud and all White
jury found her guilty and she went to prison for
one year. And when got out of prison, she kept
the movement up and then she got sick and she
(03:04):
eventually passed away without adequate medical treatment. At that time,
the idea of reparations was so preposterous and threatening to
the power structure in Washington, it labeled the entire effort fraudulent.
But the idea of reparations never went away. A hundred
years later, we're still debating what, when, and how to
(03:27):
talk about it. On the campaign trail, when asked about reparations,
Joe Biden said he was willing to consider what the U.
S Might owe African Americans. Reparations means making up for
things that happened in the past. Number One, there is
a study being suggested by a former presidential candidate and
(03:50):
the guy as a friend of mine from New Jersey
saying we should study reparations and make a judgment whether
or not what they should be, what they should do.
There's certain things we already know. I support that study.
Let's see ritatious. It was an unusually blunt statement for
an American presidential candidate to make about reparations. But in
(04:11):
some parts of the US politicians and policymakers are moving
from words to action. There there are a couple of things,
(04:34):
in a couple of ways to look at the whole
question of reparations. How exactly are you going to repay
the debt of slavery? And who is going to repay? Slavery?
Is the original sin? Slavery has never received an apology.
Primes have been committed, sins have been committed. There is
a blood debt. I don't think reparations for something that
(04:57):
happened a hundred fifty years ago, for whom none of
us currently of them are responsible. There's a good idea
or think brillion dollars in reparation is an appropriate statement.
It's not real reparations unless you give the descendence of
slavery actual money and let them choose how they want
to spend it as if they were adults. Welcome back
(05:30):
to the paycheck. I'm Jackie Simmons and I'm Rebecca Greenfield.
We've gone through the stats about the racial wealth gap,
and as we start to talk about reparations. What's important
to remember is that life in America has improved for
black people, but no wonder how much better it gets.
The gap has never closed. Not only that, but roundabout
(05:55):
efforts to close it, like creating more equal opportunities for
black families to build health and pass it on to
their children, haven't done enough. Either. Reparations suggest a bigger,
more direct kind of action, an admission of wrongdoing, for one,
that the US harmed its black citizens, and then money
redress in one form or another at a scale that's
(06:17):
commensurate with the harm done. Historically, as a country, we've
been reluctant to consider any of this. Thirty years ago,
John Conyers Jr. A Congressman from Michigan, introduced Legislation HR
forty to establish a commission to study and develop reparations proposals.
(06:38):
It didn't ask for reparations, It asked for commission to
study the issue. That went nowhere in Conyers introduced it
in the next Congress, and the next, and in every
session for more than two decades. After he resigned, Sheila
Jackson Lee, a black congresswoman from Texas, took up the chart.
(07:04):
Tanahasy Coats published a sixteen thousand word article in The
Atlantic magazine called the Case for Reparations. The cover of
the issue was black with white text that read two
fifty years of slavery, ninety years of Jim Crow, sixty
years of separate but equal thirty five years of state
sanction d readlining. Until we reckon with the compounding moral
(07:26):
debts of our ancestors, America will never be whole coats.
This article became the argument for reparations. Ron Daniels is
a leader of the National African American Reparations Commission, an
independent group that's fighting for reparations. He says, the piece
restarted the public dialogue, and now the idea is getting
(07:48):
more attention than it ever has, so you really have
had a almost seismic shift and support of reparations. This
is a monum mental moment in the history of these
United States of America. As we were finishing this episode,
House Committee was debating HR forty, and for the first time,
(08:10):
legislators were considering bringing the discussion to the full House.
Maybe this time it will pass, and that commission will
study how reparations could work and most importantly, how much
they would cost. Maybe after some time, we'll have some answers.
In the meantime, academics have been coming up with answers
(08:32):
of their own, trying to calculate just how much is owed.
Susan Burfield, a reporter at Bloomberg, is going to help
us break down the map. So First, advocates argue that
reparations must ultimately be paid by the federal government. It's
(08:53):
the government that's responsible for the laws that kept African
Americans enslaved. It's the government that allowed and perpetuated discrimination
that benefited white Americans. Afterward, it's the government that can
afford to pay the debt in full when it comes
to the amount that's due. Most believed that reparations should
at least close the racial wealth gap. That's the minimum,
(09:15):
and there's different ways to get there. Sandy Darity and
Kirsten Mullen, who co wrote a book about reparations, begin
with the loss of land promised after emancipation, that forty
acres and the mule. They end up with about twelve
trillion dollars. One of their colleagues, Thomas Kramer, starts with
(09:36):
another loss, the unpaid wages African Americans could have earned
for their forced labor from American independence to the start
of the Civil War. Kramer's German. His family was close
to a Holocaust survivor who received reparations from the government
for Nazi atrocities. He says the money is important, of course,
(09:56):
but it's much more than that. It's the moral reckoning.
Mount paid is basically a symbolic gesture that the apology
is meant seriously, and that that the perpetrating side makes
a promise never to repeat what was done. Now he's
an associate professor at the University of Connecticut looking at
(10:18):
reparations in America and what they would mean. He's done
some calculations the number of enslaved people times all the
hours they could have worked each year, times the wages
they should have been paid. Then he took those lump
sums and applied to three interest rate to figure out
how much those earnings would have grown from seventeen seventy
(10:40):
six to today. He estimates that the descendants of the
enslaved are owed about twenty trillion dollars. It's an astounding amount.
It's nearly as much as the United States gross domestic
product last year. Kramer also says it's on the low
end because I'm ignoring colonial slavery, and in this calculation,
(11:02):
I'm also ignoring racial discrimination after slavery, and both of
those injustices, of course, had impact on the ability to
accumulate wealth among black families. So this is a very
conservative calculation. He says he wanted to figure the least
amount of money that could be considered fair. Assuming that
(11:24):
they're about forty two million descendants of slavery in the
US today and accounting for taxes already paid, Kramer says
each is due four hundred and twenty six thousand dollars.
Derrity and mullan slightly lower number. That twelve trillion would
work out to about three hundred thousand dollars per person,
give or take whatever the amount. The money could be
(11:47):
repaid through a national trust, community development programs, free college,
no interest loans, baby bonds, a guaranteed income, or cash.
No one is handing out checks anytime soon, but it's
an intriguing idea for most people. Three dollars isn't never
(12:08):
work again money, but it would be life changing. We
asked you to tell us what that kind of money
might change. What would I do if I were given
three hundred thousand dollars UM a lot. I think securing
a house, being able to pay the mortgage for a
while receiving reparations would give me the peace of mind
(12:29):
to do things like starting a family and making a
career change. The first thing I would probably do is
to pay off any outstanding debt UM. I would pay
off the house I bought a year ago, things that
my peers who have the safety net of generational wealth
behind them can do right now. After paying off my
student moment it, I would be able to actually afford
a home for my family. It would be actually very helpful,
(12:53):
as my other African American co founders of a startuple
working on have been in fund rate mode for quite
a while. I would allocate a hundred thousands of that
towards return any and all that I may have invest
in UM retirement fund and low costs UM index funds
(13:14):
actually get into the stock market low fee uh Crypto
used remaining one hundred thousand to allocate towards any business
or entrepreneur aspirations for one on all of my three children,
so as to continue the generational support and the a
(13:37):
forward movement of moneys through African Americans generations and through
our family. If I could find a multifamily home, maybe
a triplex or a duplex, with three hundred thousand, that
would be the thing that would provide me with some
some legacy for my children. So what would you do
(13:58):
with three hundred thousand dollars? Precisely the things that build wealth,
that fulfilled promise, and in just the way is long
denied to African Americans. That brings us back to the
other question, where would the US get that kind of money?
Kramer says that when the Haitian and British governments paid
(14:19):
reparations to slave owners, they borrowed the money, lots of
it over many decades. Ron Daniels points to a moment
where the US government had no trouble conjuring up a
couple of trillion dollars in a matter of months. The
COVID pandemic has also shown us something else. They're quite frankly,
there is no limit to the amount of money that
(14:41):
the federal government can spend. Woof is trillionaire to trillionaire.
So money is not the object. The thing is. For
a lot of people, money is exactly the problem. It's
one reason full reparations are probably a long ways off,
but for now, cities across the US and the state
(15:02):
of California are beginning to study whether there's a case
for local reparations and what that might look like. One
city has been working on this for the past few years.
It's asked the hard questions and answered them. Soon it
will begin paying what it's calling reparations to some of
its black residents. Evanston, Illinois, just north of Chicago, with
(15:30):
some seventy five thousand people living in eight square miles,
calls itself progressive. About six of the city's residents are black.
Some of their families have lived there for more than
a hundred years. There's also a legacy of housing discrimination. Evanston,
like almost every American city, made it difficult for black
people to buy their own homes and to keep the
(15:53):
homes they could buy. It deprived them of potential wealth,
of generational wealth. And it's that injustice, not slavery, that
Evanston is first attempting to repair. We were lifting up
the name of the black community and making affirmations and
commitments and ceremonial resolutions and proclamations. We were doing that
(16:16):
very very well. Um in Evanston, and yet we still
maintained a ratio divide. Robin Ruce Simmons was born and
raised in Evanston, fourth generation. She's been a real estate
broker and a bookstore owner. She started a construction firm.
She owns and manages affordable housing and commercial property in Evanston.
(16:39):
She was also representing the city's fifth ward on the council,
one of nine aldermen as they're called, and she's the
one who first proposed that Evanston consider reparations. She says
that there's an average household income difference of forty six
thousand dollars between black and white Evanston, a thirteen year
difference in life expectancy, education gaps and opportunity gaps, and
(17:02):
information divides. In February twenty nineteen, Robin was about midway
through her first term on the city Council when she
wrote an email to Evanston's Equity and Empowerment Commission. The
subject line read Black Equality Policy. You opened it and
it said because reparations makes people uncomfortable. She thanked them
(17:24):
again for their efforts, but said it was time to
do more. I realized that not one policy or one
proclamation can repair the damage done to black families. But
in this four hundredth year of African American resilience, I'd
like to pursue policy and actions as radical as a
racial policies and actions that got us to this point. Later,
(17:45):
she would be more explicit that she believed reparations were
the only way to address the harm in the black
community in Evanston and beyond. Yes, it is reparations. Let's
not call it anything else to make you feel better
about your role in it or our inability to address
it before. Now, let's call it what it is. Segregation
(18:09):
began in Evanston in the years before World War One,
as black Southerners migrated north. By nine eighteen, a local
paper reported on a plan to quote unquote freeze out
black residents from all parts of Evanston except for the
fifth ward. The city began by targeting black residents in
(18:30):
other parts of town. The housing codes could change to say,
require indoor plumbing or electricity or other home improvements. A
black family might not have the cash for that, and
then wouldn't be able to get a loan to pay
for it either. Then they'd be forced to sell, sometimes
for less than what their home was worth. Afterward, real
(18:53):
estate agents would steer them to the fifth ward. Banks
if they gave mortgages, would do so only for homes
in the fifth ward. Redlining officially began in the nineteen thirties,
so did a long period of under investment by the city,
predatory loans and contract buying. That's when black residents who
(19:16):
couldn't get a mortgage had to put down a lot
of money for a house, then pay monthly installments at
high interest rates. But they didn't get the title until
the house was completely paid for. They never got equity,
and they could be evicted any time they missed a payment.
Morris Robinson Jr. Is the founder of Evanston's Shorefront Legacy Center.
(19:39):
His hundreds of documents showing how all this unfolded, including
a report written in nineteen forty by the Homeowners Loan Corporation,
a government agency. That agency was created to insure loans,
which allowed more people to purchase homes and eventually would
help develop the suburbs. It was a great deal if
(20:01):
you were white. It was in fact explicitly intended to
maintain segregated neighborhoods. He read to me. The agency's evaluation
of Black Evanson. Here lives the servants for many of
the families. All along the north Shore. There's not a
vacant house in a territory, and occupancy moreover is about
(20:21):
one for most houses have more than one family living
in them. This concentration on Negroes and Evanson is quite
a serious problem for the town, as they seem to
be growing steadily and encroaching into adjoining neighborhoods. When Robin
brought up the idea of reparations in twenty nine, one
of the first things the Equity Commission agreed to was
(20:44):
to host community meetings to ask what residents wanted from
a reparations program. Out of dozens and dozens and sences
of recommendations, housing continue to be an area of concern
and a recommendation of repair. That focus was key for
Robin and her colleagues. They knew more or less what
they were paying reparations for, at least initially. Now they
(21:07):
needed the money to pay for it. This is where
the broad conversation about reparations comes up hard against reality.
Where is the money going to come from? In this respect,
Evanston got a little lucky. It was exactly at the
time where we started doing a doal cannabis. Anne Rainey
(21:29):
was representing the eighth ward, the one closest to Chicago.
She pointed out the years of prohibition had a disproportionate
impact on black people. That is why the adult cannabis
legislation was passed to begin with, to make reparations in
that area. So that's where we're going to take the
money to support this program. It was a tax, first
(21:51):
of all, we had never realized before, so we weren't
going to be taking it from anything. The city council
estimated that the three percent sales tax on legal would
bring in about a million dollars a year. They'd set
aside the first ten million, so ten million dollars for
reparations over ten years, not all for housing. How should
the city use all that money? What other harm did
(22:14):
the community suffer? What other depths did Evanston Oh, that
first resolution didn't say they'd work out the details later.
The loose terms bothered one alderman, Thomas suffered in and
in November he was the only person to vote no.
Alright Resolution nineteen establishing a City of Evanson funding source
(22:37):
about electoral local reparations passes on a eight to one vote. Congratulations,
all right for all the hard work to get there.
There'd be lots more to come, maybe more than anyone
on the council realized. But right then I remember just
wanting to jump and scream and celebrate, and it was
(23:00):
business as usual. We went on with the agenda and
I sitting looking like, okay, we're just We're just gonna
keep one. About two weeks later, actor and activist Danny
Glover came to Evanston and spoke in front of a
very big, very excited crowd. Here's Glover, and then you'll
hear Michael Neighbors, a pastor and president of the local
(23:22):
and double a CP. It's the beginning of a process.
This is the most a tense conversation I believe that
we're going to have in the century right reparation. It
was one of the most electrifying moments that I can
ever remember having. And I've had a few of them.
I've been around, you know, I've had I've had a
(23:44):
few electrifying moments, but this one was electrifying in the
local sense. It was electrifying for the city of Evanston,
and it was particularly electrifying for the black community, and
then was back to work on all those details. When
Evanson's only dispensary began selling recreational pot on January, there
(24:08):
was a line down the street during the pandemic. The
state deemed the dispensary's essential businesses, but the city wasn't
allowed to collect taxes until July. The council decided to
start its reparations program with four hundred thousand dollars. This
is where the policy's ambitions collided with its particulars. Probably inevitably,
(24:30):
people might agree that damage has been done. They might
agree that restitution should be made, But to whom and
for how much? And who first? Even in a relatively
small progressive town like Evanston, the answers to those questions
were neither clear nor simple. First, who's eligible? The city
(24:53):
council had a mandate to initially focus on housing, so
it settled on grants to help qualified black resident buy homes,
fix up their homes, or stay in their homes all
black residents. Well. The priority is any black resident of
Evanston from nineteen nineteen to nineteen sixty nine, then any
(25:13):
of their direct descendants, and then anyone who moved to
the city after that and can show that they've faced discrimination.
And the big question how much the council decided on
grants of twenty five thousand dollars not a lot of
money in Evanston, where the average home sells for twelve
times that, and no matter what, most black residents won't
(25:35):
get anything in this first round. That four hundred thousand
dollars covers awards for sixteen people to start with. That's
a tough number. Another reality check, there's other restrictions. The
residents won't get the cash directly that might require them
to pay taxes on it. Instead, the money will go
(25:56):
to the financial institution, closing agent, or contractor the resident
is working with. Robin says she and her colleagues want
residents to be able to work with local black owned
businesses and banks that have a history of fair lending.
The fifth word, she points out, doesn't have a bank,
has never had a bank, and Black people have every
(26:16):
reason to be skeptical of a financial system that's taken
every advantage of them for centuries. If we do not
give them an introduction to a bank that has fair
banking products and other sort of consumer products, then we
have not accomplished anything. And and furthermore, if we introduce
(26:36):
them to a bank that has high fees and rates
and it is expensive to bank with them, then we
have not accomplished anything. In late March, the council took
a second crucial vote, this time on whether or not
to begin distributing the first allotment that four hundred thousand dollars.
Just a few weeks before, a group emerged on Facebook.
(26:58):
It's called Evanston rejects Racist Reparations. Up until then, there
have been some questions, some concerns about the program, but
no organized opposition. The founders of the group are black
residents of Evanston. They wanted the council to delay the
start of the program. They say it's too small, that
it shouldn't focus only in housing, It shouldn't require recipients
(27:21):
to work with banks and other financial institutions that have
discriminated against the black community. It shouldn't even be called reparations.
There are some admirable efforts made by municipalities to its
tones of the damage is caused by their own race
based policies. However, it is unfortunate when those acts of
(27:41):
atonement are confused with reparations. A limitation of the proposal
that's brought forward is that the funds are constrained to
home ownership. Home Ownership is only part of the deficit
and assets held by Black Americans. And I want you
to think about this. If any of your family members
there how was burned down, they were killed, car was crashed,
(28:02):
and then someone walks up and says, here's twenty cent
as a good start, and I promised to do better
later to give you back what you lost. That's what
that looks like, it feels like to us. That was
the author's Kirsten Mullen and Sandy Drty and Malika Gardner,
the founder of Evanston Live TV. Speaking at that city
(28:25):
council meeting, lots of others said they were proud of
their city, that the program was a good start and
one that was a long time coming. Cecily Fleming, one
of the council's three black members, had already announced her decision.
She'd opposed moving forward with what's now called the Evanston
Local Reparations Restorative Housing Program. I think reparations is, you know,
(28:49):
somewhat of a sacred term and a thing that people
have waited for four hundreds of years, and too you know,
even in the local level kind of water it down
to a housing plan, even at the first effort. I
know this is the first plan. We take these cribs
and hope that we're going to get more crumbs later
instead of just saying, you know what, we deserve a
whole piece of game. The measure passed, with Fleming the
(29:10):
only no vote. I think it is a good housing plan.
I think people will use it and need it um.
But I want them to reach hire right. I want
black votes to want freedom afterwards. The reparations experts, Kirsten
Mullen and Sandy Daity continue to argue that Evanston's program
wasn't actually reparations. In an OpEd in the Washington Post,
(29:33):
they wrote, true reparations only can come from a full
scale program of acknowledgement, redress, and closure for a grievous injustice.
This is an argument over more than just semantics. It's
an argument over what's possible and what's necessary and how
far America will go. Should reparations the word the idea
(29:56):
be reserved for that big debt owed by the federal government,
the three hundred thousand dollars or more that would close
the racial wealth gap, or can it also be smaller
efforts to redress local injustice. Evanston's answered that for itself,
Robin and our colleagues say that what they're doing has
to be just a first step. Robin decided not to
(30:19):
run for reelection, so she'll give up her seat in May,
but she'll be a community member of Evanston's new reparations Committee,
an adviser on other local initiatives, and an advocate for
HR forty. So we are moving forward knowing that this
is not going to bring us full repair. We understand
(30:40):
that more reparation programming is necessary. We understand that black
residents need access to cash and deserve it, But we
also understand that this is a process and waiting any
longer is irresponsibility. The reactions in Evanston shouldn't be surprising.
Restitution is complex and emotional, and at the local level
(31:03):
won't ever be enough. The city council expects that by
the fall it will have selected the first group of
black residents to receive the housing grants. Policymakers and citizens,
advocates and critics will be watching, evaluating, maybe hoping the
(31:31):
US were to go down the path of federal reparations,
it could look to other countries that have paid money
to populations that have been harmed. Next week on The Paycheck,
we had to the UK, where the government is in
the midst of what it's calling a compensation scheme for
its black residents. It's less of a model that a
cautionary tale. There are a number of problems with the
(31:54):
compensation scheme, and if the obvious one is that the
scheme itself lacks independence. The Hostile Environment policy was a
policy discriminated against immigrants to this country, and it was
a policy that was implemented by the UK government. So
there is a bit of a case of the government
marking its own homework. Thanks for listening to The Paycheck.
(32:21):
If you like the show, please rate, review, and subscribe
wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was hosted by
me Rebecca Greenfield and me Jackie Simmons. Today's episode was
edited by Janet Paskin and reported by Susan Berfield with
the help of Jordan Holman. We also want to thank
all of our listeners who took the time to call
(32:44):
or send in voice memos about reparations. This episode was
produced by Magnus Hendrickson. We also had production help from
Lindsay Craddowell, an editing help from francesco Leabe Rocksheeta Soluja,
Jackie Simmons, David Sheer and me. Original music is by
Leo Sidrien. Francesca Levie is Bloomberg's head of podcasts. We'll
(33:04):
see you next time, m
One of the first Americans to lead a movement for
slave reparations was a woman named Callie House. She was
born into slavery, freed after the Civil War, married at two,
and widowed in her thirties. By the late eighteen nineties,
she was raising five children and working as a seamstress.
She was also helping to start an association for former
(00:26):
slaves that did things like pay for medical care her burials. Importantly,
it also demanded pensions from the federal government as compensation
for slavery. Callie traveled all over the South recruiting for
the association. Eventually she signed up some three thousand dues
(00:48):
paying members, and she sent petitions to Washington asking for reparations.
She also encouraged her members to do the same. They
proposed a system modeled on money that had been award
it to disabled Civil War soldiers. All ex slaves would
get a monthly pension starting at about four dollars a month.
(01:09):
That's around a hundred twenty five dollars in today's money.
Had it Washington respond the Post Office issued a fraud
order against Callie and members of the association. They said
she was using the mail to encourage people to ask
her something they'd never get. When Kelly got the letter
forbidding her from using the postal service for her campaign,
(01:32):
she was shocked. Then she got mad. The historian Mary
Francis Barry tells the story in a book called My
Face Is Black Is True Callie House and a Struggle
for ex slave reparations. Here she reads Callie's scathing reply
to the Post Office, and she said the Association acted
(01:56):
on behalf of quote four and a half million slaves
who would turn loose, ignorant, barefooted and naked, without a
dollar in their pockets, without a shelter to go under
out of the falling rain, but was forced to look
the man in the face was something to eat. Who
once had the power to whip them to death, but
now I have the power to stop them the death.
(02:18):
We the actually feel that if the government had a
right to free us, she had a right to make
some provision for us. As she did not make it
soon after our emancipation, she ought to make it now unquote.
For the next fifteen years, calling the Association continued to
petition the government. For its part, the Post Office kept
(02:42):
marking their mail fraudulent. He either returned it to senders
or destroyed it. In nineteen sixteen, Kelly was arrested and
then indicted on charges of mail fraud and all White
jury found her guilty and she went to prison for
one year. And when got out of prison, she kept
the movement up and then she got sick and she
(03:04):
eventually passed away without adequate medical treatment. At that time,
the idea of reparations was so preposterous and threatening to
the power structure in Washington, it labeled the entire effort fraudulent.
But the idea of reparations never went away. A hundred
years later, we're still debating what, when, and how to
(03:27):
talk about it. On the campaign trail, when asked about reparations,
Joe Biden said he was willing to consider what the U.
S Might owe African Americans. Reparations means making up for
things that happened in the past. Number One, there is
a study being suggested by a former presidential candidate and
(03:50):
the guy as a friend of mine from New Jersey
saying we should study reparations and make a judgment whether
or not what they should be, what they should do.
There's certain things we already know. I support that study.
Let's see ritatious. It was an unusually blunt statement for
an American presidential candidate to make about reparations. But in
(04:11):
some parts of the US politicians and policymakers are moving
from words to action. There there are a couple of things,
(04:34):
in a couple of ways to look at the whole
question of reparations. How exactly are you going to repay
the debt of slavery? And who is going to repay? Slavery?
Is the original sin? Slavery has never received an apology.
Primes have been committed, sins have been committed. There is
a blood debt. I don't think reparations for something that
(04:57):
happened a hundred fifty years ago, for whom none of
us currently of them are responsible. There's a good idea
or think brillion dollars in reparation is an appropriate statement.
It's not real reparations unless you give the descendence of
slavery actual money and let them choose how they want
to spend it as if they were adults. Welcome back
(05:30):
to the paycheck. I'm Jackie Simmons and I'm Rebecca Greenfield.
We've gone through the stats about the racial wealth gap,
and as we start to talk about reparations. What's important
to remember is that life in America has improved for
black people, but no wonder how much better it gets.
The gap has never closed. Not only that, but roundabout
(05:55):
efforts to close it, like creating more equal opportunities for
black families to build health and pass it on to
their children, haven't done enough. Either. Reparations suggest a bigger,
more direct kind of action, an admission of wrongdoing, for one,
that the US harmed its black citizens, and then money
redress in one form or another at a scale that's
(06:17):
commensurate with the harm done. Historically, as a country, we've
been reluctant to consider any of this. Thirty years ago,
John Conyers Jr. A Congressman from Michigan, introduced Legislation HR
forty to establish a commission to study and develop reparations proposals.
(06:38):
It didn't ask for reparations, It asked for commission to
study the issue. That went nowhere in Conyers introduced it
in the next Congress, and the next, and in every
session for more than two decades. After he resigned, Sheila
Jackson Lee, a black congresswoman from Texas, took up the chart.
(07:04):
Tanahasy Coats published a sixteen thousand word article in The
Atlantic magazine called the Case for Reparations. The cover of
the issue was black with white text that read two
fifty years of slavery, ninety years of Jim Crow, sixty
years of separate but equal thirty five years of state
sanction d readlining. Until we reckon with the compounding moral
(07:26):
debts of our ancestors, America will never be whole coats.
This article became the argument for reparations. Ron Daniels is
a leader of the National African American Reparations Commission, an
independent group that's fighting for reparations. He says, the piece
restarted the public dialogue, and now the idea is getting
(07:48):
more attention than it ever has, so you really have
had a almost seismic shift and support of reparations. This
is a monum mental moment in the history of these
United States of America. As we were finishing this episode,
House Committee was debating HR forty, and for the first time,
(08:10):
legislators were considering bringing the discussion to the full House.
Maybe this time it will pass, and that commission will
study how reparations could work and most importantly, how much
they would cost. Maybe after some time, we'll have some answers.
In the meantime, academics have been coming up with answers
(08:32):
of their own, trying to calculate just how much is owed.
Susan Burfield, a reporter at Bloomberg, is going to help
us break down the map. So First, advocates argue that
reparations must ultimately be paid by the federal government. It's
(08:53):
the government that's responsible for the laws that kept African
Americans enslaved. It's the government that allowed and perpetuated discrimination
that benefited white Americans. Afterward, it's the government that can
afford to pay the debt in full when it comes
to the amount that's due. Most believed that reparations should
at least close the racial wealth gap. That's the minimum,
(09:15):
and there's different ways to get there. Sandy Darity and
Kirsten Mullen, who co wrote a book about reparations, begin
with the loss of land promised after emancipation, that forty
acres and the mule. They end up with about twelve
trillion dollars. One of their colleagues, Thomas Kramer, starts with
(09:36):
another loss, the unpaid wages African Americans could have earned
for their forced labor from American independence to the start
of the Civil War. Kramer's German. His family was close
to a Holocaust survivor who received reparations from the government
for Nazi atrocities. He says the money is important, of course,
(09:56):
but it's much more than that. It's the moral reckoning.
Mount paid is basically a symbolic gesture that the apology
is meant seriously, and that that the perpetrating side makes
a promise never to repeat what was done. Now he's
an associate professor at the University of Connecticut looking at
(10:18):
reparations in America and what they would mean. He's done
some calculations the number of enslaved people times all the
hours they could have worked each year, times the wages
they should have been paid. Then he took those lump
sums and applied to three interest rate to figure out
how much those earnings would have grown from seventeen seventy
(10:40):
six to today. He estimates that the descendants of the
enslaved are owed about twenty trillion dollars. It's an astounding amount.
It's nearly as much as the United States gross domestic
product last year. Kramer also says it's on the low
end because I'm ignoring colonial slavery, and in this calculation,
(11:02):
I'm also ignoring racial discrimination after slavery, and both of
those injustices, of course, had impact on the ability to
accumulate wealth among black families. So this is a very
conservative calculation. He says he wanted to figure the least
amount of money that could be considered fair. Assuming that
(11:24):
they're about forty two million descendants of slavery in the
US today and accounting for taxes already paid, Kramer says
each is due four hundred and twenty six thousand dollars.
Derrity and mullan slightly lower number. That twelve trillion would
work out to about three hundred thousand dollars per person,
give or take whatever the amount. The money could be
(11:47):
repaid through a national trust, community development programs, free college,
no interest loans, baby bonds, a guaranteed income, or cash.
No one is handing out checks anytime soon, but it's
an intriguing idea for most people. Three dollars isn't never
(12:08):
work again money, but it would be life changing. We
asked you to tell us what that kind of money
might change. What would I do if I were given
three hundred thousand dollars UM a lot. I think securing
a house, being able to pay the mortgage for a
while receiving reparations would give me the peace of mind
(12:29):
to do things like starting a family and making a
career change. The first thing I would probably do is
to pay off any outstanding debt UM. I would pay
off the house I bought a year ago, things that
my peers who have the safety net of generational wealth
behind them can do right now. After paying off my
student moment it, I would be able to actually afford
a home for my family. It would be actually very helpful,
(12:53):
as my other African American co founders of a startuple
working on have been in fund rate mode for quite
a while. I would allocate a hundred thousands of that
towards return any and all that I may have invest
in UM retirement fund and low costs UM index funds
(13:14):
actually get into the stock market low fee uh Crypto
used remaining one hundred thousand to allocate towards any business
or entrepreneur aspirations for one on all of my three children,
so as to continue the generational support and the a
(13:37):
forward movement of moneys through African Americans generations and through
our family. If I could find a multifamily home, maybe
a triplex or a duplex, with three hundred thousand, that
would be the thing that would provide me with some
some legacy for my children. So what would you do
(13:58):
with three hundred thousand dollars? Precisely the things that build wealth,
that fulfilled promise, and in just the way is long
denied to African Americans. That brings us back to the
other question, where would the US get that kind of money?
Kramer says that when the Haitian and British governments paid
(14:19):
reparations to slave owners, they borrowed the money, lots of
it over many decades. Ron Daniels points to a moment
where the US government had no trouble conjuring up a
couple of trillion dollars in a matter of months. The
COVID pandemic has also shown us something else. They're quite frankly,
there is no limit to the amount of money that
(14:41):
the federal government can spend. Woof is trillionaire to trillionaire.
So money is not the object. The thing is. For
a lot of people, money is exactly the problem. It's
one reason full reparations are probably a long ways off,
but for now, cities across the US and the state
(15:02):
of California are beginning to study whether there's a case
for local reparations and what that might look like. One
city has been working on this for the past few years.
It's asked the hard questions and answered them. Soon it
will begin paying what it's calling reparations to some of
its black residents. Evanston, Illinois, just north of Chicago, with
(15:30):
some seventy five thousand people living in eight square miles,
calls itself progressive. About six of the city's residents are black.
Some of their families have lived there for more than
a hundred years. There's also a legacy of housing discrimination. Evanston,
like almost every American city, made it difficult for black
people to buy their own homes and to keep the
(15:53):
homes they could buy. It deprived them of potential wealth,
of generational wealth. And it's that injustice, not slavery, that
Evanston is first attempting to repair. We were lifting up
the name of the black community and making affirmations and
commitments and ceremonial resolutions and proclamations. We were doing that
(16:16):
very very well. Um in Evanston, and yet we still
maintained a ratio divide. Robin Ruce Simmons was born and
raised in Evanston, fourth generation. She's been a real estate
broker and a bookstore owner. She started a construction firm.
She owns and manages affordable housing and commercial property in Evanston.
(16:39):
She was also representing the city's fifth ward on the council,
one of nine aldermen as they're called, and she's the
one who first proposed that Evanston consider reparations. She says
that there's an average household income difference of forty six
thousand dollars between black and white Evanston, a thirteen year
difference in life expectancy, education gaps and opportunity gaps, and
(17:02):
information divides. In February twenty nineteen, Robin was about midway
through her first term on the city Council when she
wrote an email to Evanston's Equity and Empowerment Commission. The
subject line read Black Equality Policy. You opened it and
it said because reparations makes people uncomfortable. She thanked them
(17:24):
again for their efforts, but said it was time to
do more. I realized that not one policy or one
proclamation can repair the damage done to black families. But
in this four hundredth year of African American resilience, I'd
like to pursue policy and actions as radical as a
racial policies and actions that got us to this point. Later,
(17:45):
she would be more explicit that she believed reparations were
the only way to address the harm in the black
community in Evanston and beyond. Yes, it is reparations. Let's
not call it anything else to make you feel better
about your role in it or our inability to address
it before. Now, let's call it what it is. Segregation
(18:09):
began in Evanston in the years before World War One,
as black Southerners migrated north. By nine eighteen, a local
paper reported on a plan to quote unquote freeze out
black residents from all parts of Evanston except for the
fifth ward. The city began by targeting black residents in
(18:30):
other parts of town. The housing codes could change to say,
require indoor plumbing or electricity or other home improvements. A
black family might not have the cash for that, and
then wouldn't be able to get a loan to pay
for it either. Then they'd be forced to sell, sometimes
for less than what their home was worth. Afterward, real
(18:53):
estate agents would steer them to the fifth ward. Banks
if they gave mortgages, would do so only for homes
in the fifth ward. Redlining officially began in the nineteen thirties,
so did a long period of under investment by the city,
predatory loans and contract buying. That's when black residents who
(19:16):
couldn't get a mortgage had to put down a lot
of money for a house, then pay monthly installments at
high interest rates. But they didn't get the title until
the house was completely paid for. They never got equity,
and they could be evicted any time they missed a payment.
Morris Robinson Jr. Is the founder of Evanston's Shorefront Legacy Center.
(19:39):
His hundreds of documents showing how all this unfolded, including
a report written in nineteen forty by the Homeowners Loan Corporation,
a government agency. That agency was created to insure loans,
which allowed more people to purchase homes and eventually would
help develop the suburbs. It was a great deal if
(20:01):
you were white. It was in fact explicitly intended to
maintain segregated neighborhoods. He read to me. The agency's evaluation
of Black Evanson. Here lives the servants for many of
the families. All along the north Shore. There's not a
vacant house in a territory, and occupancy moreover is about
(20:21):
one for most houses have more than one family living
in them. This concentration on Negroes and Evanson is quite
a serious problem for the town, as they seem to
be growing steadily and encroaching into adjoining neighborhoods. When Robin
brought up the idea of reparations in twenty nine, one
of the first things the Equity Commission agreed to was
(20:44):
to host community meetings to ask what residents wanted from
a reparations program. Out of dozens and dozens and sences
of recommendations, housing continue to be an area of concern
and a recommendation of repair. That focus was key for
Robin and her colleagues. They knew more or less what
they were paying reparations for, at least initially. Now they
(21:07):
needed the money to pay for it. This is where
the broad conversation about reparations comes up hard against reality.
Where is the money going to come from? In this respect,
Evanston got a little lucky. It was exactly at the
time where we started doing a doal cannabis. Anne Rainey
(21:29):
was representing the eighth ward, the one closest to Chicago.
She pointed out the years of prohibition had a disproportionate
impact on black people. That is why the adult cannabis
legislation was passed to begin with, to make reparations in
that area. So that's where we're going to take the
money to support this program. It was a tax, first
(21:51):
of all, we had never realized before, so we weren't
going to be taking it from anything. The city council
estimated that the three percent sales tax on legal would
bring in about a million dollars a year. They'd set
aside the first ten million, so ten million dollars for
reparations over ten years, not all for housing. How should
the city use all that money? What other harm did
(22:14):
the community suffer? What other depths did Evanston Oh, that
first resolution didn't say they'd work out the details later.
The loose terms bothered one alderman, Thomas suffered in and
in November he was the only person to vote no.
Alright Resolution nineteen establishing a City of Evanson funding source
(22:37):
about electoral local reparations passes on a eight to one vote. Congratulations,
all right for all the hard work to get there.
There'd be lots more to come, maybe more than anyone
on the council realized. But right then I remember just
wanting to jump and scream and celebrate, and it was
(23:00):
business as usual. We went on with the agenda and
I sitting looking like, okay, we're just We're just gonna
keep one. About two weeks later, actor and activist Danny
Glover came to Evanston and spoke in front of a
very big, very excited crowd. Here's Glover, and then you'll
hear Michael Neighbors, a pastor and president of the local
(23:22):
and double a CP. It's the beginning of a process.
This is the most a tense conversation I believe that
we're going to have in the century right reparation. It
was one of the most electrifying moments that I can
ever remember having. And I've had a few of them.
I've been around, you know, I've had I've had a
(23:44):
few electrifying moments, but this one was electrifying in the
local sense. It was electrifying for the city of Evanston,
and it was particularly electrifying for the black community, and
then was back to work on all those details. When
Evanson's only dispensary began selling recreational pot on January, there
(24:08):
was a line down the street during the pandemic. The
state deemed the dispensary's essential businesses, but the city wasn't
allowed to collect taxes until July. The council decided to
start its reparations program with four hundred thousand dollars. This
is where the policy's ambitions collided with its particulars. Probably inevitably,
(24:30):
people might agree that damage has been done. They might
agree that restitution should be made, But to whom and
for how much? And who first? Even in a relatively
small progressive town like Evanston, the answers to those questions
were neither clear nor simple. First, who's eligible? The city
(24:53):
council had a mandate to initially focus on housing, so
it settled on grants to help qualified black resident buy homes,
fix up their homes, or stay in their homes all
black residents. Well. The priority is any black resident of
Evanston from nineteen nineteen to nineteen sixty nine, then any
(25:13):
of their direct descendants, and then anyone who moved to
the city after that and can show that they've faced discrimination.
And the big question how much the council decided on
grants of twenty five thousand dollars not a lot of
money in Evanston, where the average home sells for twelve
times that, and no matter what, most black residents won't
(25:35):
get anything in this first round. That four hundred thousand
dollars covers awards for sixteen people to start with. That's
a tough number. Another reality check, there's other restrictions. The
residents won't get the cash directly that might require them
to pay taxes on it. Instead, the money will go
(25:56):
to the financial institution, closing agent, or contractor the resident
is working with. Robin says she and her colleagues want
residents to be able to work with local black owned
businesses and banks that have a history of fair lending.
The fifth word, she points out, doesn't have a bank,
has never had a bank, and Black people have every
(26:16):
reason to be skeptical of a financial system that's taken
every advantage of them for centuries. If we do not
give them an introduction to a bank that has fair
banking products and other sort of consumer products, then we
have not accomplished anything. And and furthermore, if we introduce
(26:36):
them to a bank that has high fees and rates
and it is expensive to bank with them, then we
have not accomplished anything. In late March, the council took
a second crucial vote, this time on whether or not
to begin distributing the first allotment that four hundred thousand dollars.
Just a few weeks before, a group emerged on Facebook.
(26:58):
It's called Evanston rejects Racist Reparations. Up until then, there
have been some questions, some concerns about the program, but
no organized opposition. The founders of the group are black
residents of Evanston. They wanted the council to delay the
start of the program. They say it's too small, that
it shouldn't focus only in housing, It shouldn't require recipients
(27:21):
to work with banks and other financial institutions that have
discriminated against the black community. It shouldn't even be called reparations.
There are some admirable efforts made by municipalities to its
tones of the damage is caused by their own race
based policies. However, it is unfortunate when those acts of
(27:41):
atonement are confused with reparations. A limitation of the proposal
that's brought forward is that the funds are constrained to
home ownership. Home Ownership is only part of the deficit
and assets held by Black Americans. And I want you
to think about this. If any of your family members
there how was burned down, they were killed, car was crashed,
(28:02):
and then someone walks up and says, here's twenty cent
as a good start, and I promised to do better
later to give you back what you lost. That's what
that looks like, it feels like to us. That was
the author's Kirsten Mullen and Sandy Drty and Malika Gardner,
the founder of Evanston Live TV. Speaking at that city
(28:25):
council meeting, lots of others said they were proud of
their city, that the program was a good start and
one that was a long time coming. Cecily Fleming, one
of the council's three black members, had already announced her decision.
She'd opposed moving forward with what's now called the Evanston
Local Reparations Restorative Housing Program. I think reparations is, you know,
(28:49):
somewhat of a sacred term and a thing that people
have waited for four hundreds of years, and too you know,
even in the local level kind of water it down
to a housing plan, even at the first effort. I
know this is the first plan. We take these cribs
and hope that we're going to get more crumbs later
instead of just saying, you know what, we deserve a
whole piece of game. The measure passed, with Fleming the
(29:10):
only no vote. I think it is a good housing plan.
I think people will use it and need it um.
But I want them to reach hire right. I want
black votes to want freedom afterwards. The reparations experts, Kirsten
Mullen and Sandy Daity continue to argue that Evanston's program
wasn't actually reparations. In an OpEd in the Washington Post,
(29:33):
they wrote, true reparations only can come from a full
scale program of acknowledgement, redress, and closure for a grievous injustice.
This is an argument over more than just semantics. It's
an argument over what's possible and what's necessary and how
far America will go. Should reparations the word the idea
(29:56):
be reserved for that big debt owed by the federal government,
the three hundred thousand dollars or more that would close
the racial wealth gap, or can it also be smaller
efforts to redress local injustice. Evanston's answered that for itself,
Robin and our colleagues say that what they're doing has
to be just a first step. Robin decided not to
(30:19):
run for reelection, so she'll give up her seat in May,
but she'll be a community member of Evanston's new reparations Committee,
an adviser on other local initiatives, and an advocate for
HR forty. So we are moving forward knowing that this
is not going to bring us full repair. We understand
(30:40):
that more reparation programming is necessary. We understand that black
residents need access to cash and deserve it, But we
also understand that this is a process and waiting any
longer is irresponsibility. The reactions in Evanston shouldn't be surprising.
Restitution is complex and emotional, and at the local level
(31:03):
won't ever be enough. The city council expects that by
the fall it will have selected the first group of
black residents to receive the housing grants. Policymakers and citizens,
advocates and critics will be watching, evaluating, maybe hoping the
(31:31):
US were to go down the path of federal reparations,
it could look to other countries that have paid money
to populations that have been harmed. Next week on The Paycheck,
we had to the UK, where the government is in
the midst of what it's calling a compensation scheme for
its black residents. It's less of a model that a
cautionary tale. There are a number of problems with the
(31:54):
compensation scheme, and if the obvious one is that the
scheme itself lacks independence. The Hostile Environment policy was a
policy discriminated against immigrants to this country, and it was
a policy that was implemented by the UK government. So
there is a bit of a case of the government
marking its own homework. Thanks for listening to The Paycheck.
(32:21):
If you like the show, please rate, review, and subscribe
wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was hosted by
me Rebecca Greenfield and me Jackie Simmons. Today's episode was
edited by Janet Paskin and reported by Susan Berfield with
the help of Jordan Holman. We also want to thank
all of our listeners who took the time to call
(32:44):
or send in voice memos about reparations. This episode was
produced by Magnus Hendrickson. We also had production help from
Lindsay Craddowell, an editing help from francesco Leabe Rocksheeta Soluja,
Jackie Simmons, David Sheer and me. Original music is by
Leo Sidrien. Francesca Levie is Bloomberg's head of podcasts. We'll
(33:04):
see you next time, m
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