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Without leaving the relative comfort of home, I sat with Randall Robinson in the grandiose rotunda of the nation's Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. last week.
Such is the magic of reading his book, "The Debt: What America Owes To Blacks," (Dutton, 2000, 262 pages), a poignant argument for reparations, payment to the American descendants of African slaves who were forced into labor here for nearly 250 years.
Rather than demand cash payment as compensation for the evils of slavery, a concept that meets with more resistance today than the idea of freeing the slaves did in the cotton-growing South before the Civil War, Robinson calls for the creation of a national trust, funded for "at least two successive K-through-college educational generations throughout the United States with residential facilities for those black children who are found to be at risk in unhealthy family and neighborhood environments."
He also suggests a study funded by the trust to determine which American and foreign companies, individuals, institutions and others were unjustly enriched by the uncompensated labor of slaves or by the racial discrimination that succeeded slavery.
Robinson, perhaps the most powerful single American influence in the dismantling of South African apartheid and the restoration of democracy in Haiti, is a graduate of Harvard Law School and the president of TransAfrica Forum, a black think tank. He is only one of a growing mass of powerful black attorneys, political scientists, economists and other respected professionals that comprise the "Reparations Coordinating Committee" headed by renowned Harvard Law School Professor, Charles Ogletree Jr.
The Committee membership roster is an impressive assemblage of high-powered, high- profile sharp-shooters including J.L. Chestnutt Jr., a civil rights lawyer and activist from Selma, Ala.; Alexander Pires Jr. of Conlon, Frantz, Phelan & Pires in Washington, D.C., who worked with Chestnutt in winning the billion-dollar black farmer settlement in a case against the U.S. Agriculture Department for discrimination in their loan programs which caused black farmers to lose their farms; Stanley Chesley of Cincinnati's Waite, Schneider, Bayless & Chesley, who represented Holocaust survivors in a reparations case; the outrageously successful trial attorney Willie E. Gary of Stuart, Fla.; and, of course, the world famous Johnnie Cochran.
The Committee's arsenal also includes Cornel West of Harvard and Manning Marable of Columbia University and a cadre of other prominent economists, historians and researchers who are busy constructing a number of cases that will have some fair chance of, at the very least, being heard, if not by the courts, then certainly by Congress. Their actions have begun to stir up and attract some serious media attention, including an unprecedented week-long series in USA Today.
Robinson admits up front that the claim may not be enforceable in the courts, because the federal government has to agree to allow itself to be sued. That is not likely to happen anytime soon. Instead, he and Willie Gary agree, this may have to come through Congress. Gary takes it a step farther, saying that it should never have to go as far as court, that corporations and institutions who were unjustly enriched should simply step up and take advantage of this opportunity to do the right thing.
Pires and Gary are focusing on the legal nuts-and-bolts of the law, designing a strategy that may include several lawsuits filed simultaneously under the auspices of the umbrella organization, each one slightly different and relying on very different facts and theories of law.
At the same time, Congressman John Conyers, D-Detroit, the leading congressional advocate for reparations, has introduced a bill "to acknowledge the fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality, and inhumanity of slavery," but has not been able to get the bill out of committee. But he has not given up hope of a political solution similar to the one which resulted in a Congressional waiver of the statute of limitations defense, paving the way for the black farmers' settlement a few years ago.
Principally, these cases are won in the court of public opinion but only after the truth is known and understood by both the victims and the abusers, as is the case today in South Africa where, for nearly 50 years, the country was ruled by a whites-only government that imposed the strict policy of apartheid, punishing, many by death, those blacks who dared to defy the law.
The entire system was abolished under extreme pressure from the African National Congress (ANC), and Nelson Mandela, who had been imprisoned by the ruling white government for 27 years, was released and elected president, averting what could have been the most devastating bloodbath in modern history.
When it was finally abolished in the early 1990s, some of the black leadership wanted to punish the white officials and others who had helped kill thousands and oppress the entire black population. Instead, under the leadership of Bishop Desmond Tutu, the people decided to establish what has become known as the "Truth and Reconciliation Commission" which, since 1996, investigates atrocities and grants amnesty to those who confess their roles in full. Supporters say the commission helps the country to move toward healing rather than perpetuate endless cycles of racial madness.
Robinson's reparations vision does not aim to punish anyone, rather it seeks equitable restitution. He and other historians estimate that eight to 10 million black Africans died on the Middle Passage. Add to that the millions who survived the journey and lived long enough to work themselves to death on the plantations.
In painstaking detail, he points out the intricate architectural and engineering genius that lay behind the grand symbols of America's founding principles that proudly decorate Washington, D.C. He reminded me who actually built the huge monuments.
In this awesome place, Robinson told me in graphic detail how slaves worked with their bare hands, using all the strength they had to lift the massive marble slates into place, tearing their flesh with the ropes and pulleys.
Carrying the mortar and bricks on their backs, breathing the dust into their lungs. They were slowly killing themselves, sapping their very lives to build the great shrines to democracy, all for the paltry sum of five dollars per month, which was paid not to them but to their owners.
None of the massive monuments they helped construct acknowledge the role that they, the African slaves, played in the development of the nation, or the construction of our capitol. It is as though we never existed, as if the horrible institution of slavery never really happened.
I was reminded of Bill Feder's book, "Evolution of an Ethnic Neighborhood that Became United in Diversity: The East Side, Niagara Falls, New York 1880-1930," and its depiction of the immigrants who came to Niagara Falls to help build the underground passages designed to carry water to spin the massive turbines to power America.
Why are there no visible monuments in recognition of their labor? But for his revelations, the result of his industrious research, they and their amazing contributions to the production of electricity for the masses might well have been forgotten forever.
Robinson dwells lavishly on the apparently deliberate and incredibly successful denial of nearly 250 years of uncompensated forced labor and argues it is time to recognize everyone's contributions:
"Once and for all, America must face its past, open itself to a fair telling of all its peoples' histories, and accept full responsibility for the hardships it has occasioned for so many. It must come to grips with the increasingly indisputable reality that this is not a white nation. Therefore it must dramatically reconfigure its symbolized picture of itself, to itself. Its national parks, museums, monuments, statues, artworks must be recast in a way to include all Americans -- Native Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, African-Americans as well as European Americans. White people do not own the idea of America, and should they continue to deny others a place in the idea's iconograph, those others, who fifty years from now will form the majority of America's citizens, will be inspired to punish them for it."
In the less than two years since its publication, Robinson's book has become the cornerstone for a growing debate on the subject of reparations. Americans, even African-Americans, are divided on the issue, many asking why they should pay for the crimes of their ancestors. Many blacks deny having any African heritage, apparently believing that their history began in the South.
Are reparations necessary?
That's a good question, one that has been argued for centuries, even here in Western New York and as far back as 1905, when W.E.B. Du Bois tried to gather a collection of black intellectuals to form the Niagara Movement to ponder our collective fate.
It's still a good question. One that we in Niagara Falls need to participate in completely, as we will all be affected by the outcome, one way or another.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | March 12 2002 |