From the day he was sworn into office in 2006 with his hand placed on the Quran, Representative Keith Ellison (pictured left) (D-MN), the first Muslim American elected to the U.S. Congress, has exemplified political bravery.

RELATED: REPARATIONS PART I: Should Black America Get Reparations?

As previously reported by NewsOne, before entering into public service, he was an attorney with the law firm of Lindquist & Vennum, specializing in civil rights, employment, and criminal defense law. He was then appointed executive director of the Legal Rights Center in Minneapolis, a non-profit organization that specialized in representing clients living in poverty.

Rep. Ellison is also a passionate supporter of H.R. 40, the proposal to establish a Commission to Study Reparation Proposals for the African-Americans Act, authored by Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) In a pivotal moment in U.S. history, Congress officially studied the institution of slavery, its lingering ramifications, consequences, and viable methods that the United States should address during hearings by the Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. Conyers had introduced the legislation for almost two decades, and 2007, was the first year that an official hearing took place.

“For over 19 years, I have introduced H.R. 40 — not to spark controversy or promote division — but to direct attention to a historical wrong that warrants substantial consideration,” Rep.  Conyers said when he gaveled the Oversight Hearing on the Legacy of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. “With an H.R. 40 commission, this nation could come closer to racial equality and understanding. Slavery is a blemish on this nation’s history, and until it is addressed, our country’s story will remain marked.”

When we asked Rep. Ellison why he joined forces with Conyers on such a politically risky legislation, he answered simply, “It was the right thing to do.”

In an exclusive interview, NewsOne spoke with the fiery politician from Minnesota about the violent history of slavery; other dehumanizing eras in African-American history; reparations; and how, when, and to whom redress could logically be dispersed.

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NewsOne: Do you agree that reparations should be awarded to the African-American community for the economic and psychological impact of slavery, Reconstruction, Jim and Jane Crow, the Civil Rights Era, and the Reagan Era when drugs flooded our communities?

Rep. Ellison: I think the conversation is generally too simplistic. Yes, I think we need to study reparations. When there’s injury there should be redress, right? It’s a basic concept of justice, but some people automatically leap to the conclusion that the only legitimate form of redress is direct cash payments, and that might not necessarily be the case. I’m not saying that, that isn’t the right way, but it needs to be studied.

Let’s figure out what companies benefited from slavery — the shipping companies, the underwriting companies, the insurance companies. Who built the equipment? How international was it? One thing that needs to be comprehensively studied is what financial benefit the African-American community has meant for America. People need to recognize that. I think one of the reasons that we have these pervasive unkind stereotypes is many of us don’t recognize — and many others won’t acknowledge — the value we brought to this country.

When we were brought here in 1619, until, I think, after 1865, because the legal slave trade did not end with the American Civil War, we didn’t even have control over our own intellectual property. Our intellectual property was legally the property of our owners. I’ve always found it fascinating: I was born in 1963; my father was born in 1928; his father was born in 1896; and his father, Crawford Ellison, was born into slavery in 1861, in Burke County, Georgia. What does that mean?

That this is a very recent phenomenon.

I went to law school and practiced law for many years and we took courses in property, but we never had one single case on the property of all of these slaves. Take for instance, if you beat someone’s slave and they die. What’s due? What’s void? What should the family have received? They had rules against excessive force against animals, but not against slaves.

There is just an entire range of questions that need to be answered. And for America to look squarely into the eyes of her past, it would be a good thing to do.

NewsOne: So if you don’t necessarily believe that direct cash payments are the way to go, then what?

Rep. Ellison: Well, even that needs to be studied, because is that the best way? Is that the best way for redress to occur? We are talking about a multi-generational injury. The people who were in slavery are now all dead, so we want to compensate them for slavery, [but] we can’t, because they’re all gone. Now, there could be some sort of survivor benefit, but how could that be distributed?

Perhaps you have an ancestor who migrated from Africa and didn’t go through the American slave experience. Maybe one of your parents is White and the other is Black. Maybe you’re only 1/8 Black. At some point, people who say that we have to get reparations and we have to get money, I just think that is simplistic and it’s 100 times more complex that that. So we need to really plumb the depths of it. What about the African Americans who owned slaves? Do they pay? How do we differentiate between the ones who legitimately owned slaves from the those who were freed and had to buy their children’s freedom or their wives’ freedom? They’re on the books as slaves.

What about the Native-Americans, the Cherokee? Do we demand reparations from the Tribal governments?  I mean, this thing is complicated and the worse thing we can do is take a complicated subject and try to simplify it — because we do injustice one way or another.  Rhode Island was implicated in ship building during the slave trade, New York is guilty of underwriting capital used in the slave trade, and as a country, we tend to always focus on the South.

To study this thing in depth not only rights an egregious wrong, but tells us more about ourselves as Americans.

Then what about the international scope — England, the Caribbean, South America. Who would be responsible to pay? Would [it be] the Ashanti Empire, who aided and abetted the slave trade? Or would we just focus on the American government?

It might be entertaining barber shop conversation, but it’s 10 times deeper than that.

NewsOne:  When you look at the government’s integral role in the perpetuation of slavery, how governments in Germany paid reparations to the Jewish community, how the United States is even paying some form of reparations to Native Americans. Why do you think there hasn’t been more of an active push to rectify the financial and psychological subjugation of African Americans in this country?

Rep. Ellison: Well, let me tell you, in terms of “active push,” there ain’t never been reparations for anyone, for anything, unless the plaintiff made a demand. No one who inflicts injury on anyone else, they don’t volunteer reparations. If African Americans want to have a more in-depth exploration into what we’ve contributed to America, then we have to be the ones who make that call.

A lot of people think, “Oh, I voted for that guy, he’s supposed to come in here and fix my life up.” Well, democracy doesn’t work like that. You vote for people, then you have to stay engaged in the process, tell them what you want, what you expect. You have to organize, just like everyone else does. That’s how politics works, always has.

NewsOne: From your point of view, how can we address the stigma attached to the mere mention of reparations, often times from within our own communities?

Rep. Ellison: Well, you have to take into consideration that African Americans were just as complex, complicated, conflicted, intelligent, inventive, and creative as we are now. We walk around today and it’s almost impossible to imagine Black people being owned by anyone else — but four generations ago we were. Even the slaves who were freed sometimes walked around like slaves without masters.

Think about that.

Even when we weren’t owned by one person, there was still the chains of  “you can’t live here, you can’t work here, you can’t pursue that profession, you can’t educate your  kids here.” It was a horrible existence in many ways.

NewsOne: When you look at the South, specifically, and how the ramifications of slavery stand out in vivid detail — obesity, sub-par education, some towns where you can still find separate Black and White proms — in many ways it’s still a very “don’t-cross-over-the-railroad-tracks” existence. There are some people who honestly cannot believe that some places in the Deep South are still that way. You can feel slavery as with the neo-confederatism of the antebellum home tours and restaurants shaped like Mammy. Shouldn’t there be some kind of economic push, possibly in the form of financial reparations, just to begin restructuring the hub of where the degradation began?

Rep. Ellison: You know, the neo-confederacy, where they want to remember the South in a fond way, flying the rebel flag everywhere; these people took up arms against the United States and that’s called being a “traitor.”

That’s called being a “traitor.”

Jefferson Davis [President of the Confederate States of America] was a traitor. These people were traitors against the United States and the fact that they could ever hold any honor, anywhere is an outrage. What did they fight for? Did they fight for a noble cause? No, they fought to keep other human beings in bondage. They are totally disreputable, contemptible, and hold no value in the United States of America.

Still again, for there to be any kind of “active push” toward reparations for slavery, African Americans are going to have to organize and demand it.

NewsOne: Malcolm X said in “By Any Means Necessary”:

“If you are the son of a man who had a wealthy estate and you inherit your father’s estate, you have to pay off the debts that your father incurred before he died. The only reason that the present generation of White Americans are in a position of economic strength…is because their fathers worked our fathers for over 400 years with no pay…. We were sold from plantation to plantation like you sell a horse, or a cow, or a chicken, or a bushel of wheat…. All that money…is what gives the present generation of American Whites the ability to walk around the earth with their chest out…like they have some kind of economic ingenuity. Your father isn’t here to pay. My father isn’t here to collect. But I’m here to collect and you’re here to pay.”

According to Harper’s magazine (November, 2000), the United States stole an estimated $100 trillion dollars for 222,505,049 hours of forced labor between 1619 and 1865 with a compounded interest of 6 percent.

Do you agree with Malcolm’s statement? That aside from the morality of reparations, the United States is legally liable to repay at least that sum to the African-American community?

Rep. Ellison: I respect Malcolm, but there are some things we don’t agree on. For instance, he said, “By any means necessary,” I say, By any moral means necessary. There’s a huge difference. So can you legally [shift] liability to the state for injuries committed against your ancestors four generations ago? There could possibly be some legal theories that support that. I don’t know them as I sit here.

That’s why I say we need to study this stuff, so we can dig into it and learn more about it. I mean, if four generations ago, your great-great-great grandmother was in an accident, through no fault of her own, that she didn’t get compensated for, can you sue for that today? The law would say no because there’s a statute of limitations on it. But if someone killed your loved one, can you sue for that? Well, yes, you possibly could, because the statute of limitation on that is quite a bit longer — if there is one.

But before people start screaming for money, saying, “Oh, look at what you did,” we need to understand slavery more. They sold slaves on the [National] Mall. Presidents and leaders were afraid that when foreign dignitaries visited, they would see that and be embarrassed. There’s documented evidence of that fact that I just stated.

I believe the collective White society is ashamed of it, and by the way, the collective Black society is ashamed of it because they don’t want to face the fact that we were that degraded.

No one wants to stare this thing in the face. From a White standpoint, it’s “look, that happened a long time ago, let’s move on.” From an African-American standpoint, it’s “it happened a long time ago and it still affects me today, but I don’t want to be reminded of the pain.”

NewsOne: African Americans are tired of being cast into the role of “victim.”

Rep. Ellison: Exactly. It’s disempowering to be the “victim.” People want to be in the role of “victor.” And it may help to realize that we were not the only ones disempowered. For instance, could poor southern Whites have been paid more if not for slavery? They probably could have. The only reason they accepted such low wages was because they were in direct competition with slave labor.

Does the White working class have a claim for reparations? I don’t know. But people want to make it simple, and it’s not simple. We know that it’s a mistake to make a simple issue complicated. It can be an even bigger mistake to make a complicated issue simple.

I’ll give you an example. If someone says, ‘What are my taxes, what’s my refund?’ And the government says, “Oh, I don’t know. We’ll just give you something; we’ll give you what we got.” Well, wait a minute, what about deductions, what about dependents? It’s an intricate, detailed process. There’s this deep injury associated with slavery that none of us have really looked at in-depth, and it would be a disservice to do otherwise.

NewsOne: As a liberal Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives, how do you answer the criticism (and address the misconception) that public welfare programs enable rather than cripple African Americans? Is there a way to restructure the system so that it is clear that welfare is not a handout, but a necessity in a nation with an inbred, imbalanced sense of economic equality?

Rep. Ellison: This is an interesting issue, and my answer would be no. And here’s why: America caring for our poor and unfortunate is something that should be done without any regard to historical injury. We should do it because it’s the right thing to do. We shouldn’t allow our senior citizens to eat dog food or have to pick between a meal and medicine. We should make sure that every child has a decent meal in the morning before they go to a decent school. We should make sure that we don’t have homeless people living under bridges. And that should be done without any regard to historical injury.

Even if there was never any historic injury, it shouldn’t be that only wealthy White males get government contracts to build highways. We should be striving for diversity for its own sake.

In my view, reparations has everything to do with slavery and African Americans being denied their God-given right to own themselves.

If there was an African slave who ran away, he would have been found guilty of theft — theft of himself. They said we had no more legal rights than a chicken or a cow, and yet, if a chicken were to peck its master, the master would say, “Oh, that’s just a chicken, chickens peck sometimes.” But if a slave were to strike his or her master, they would be held morally culpable.

They didn’t have any laws saying that chickens couldn’t read and write, but they had laws saying that Black people couldn’t read and write.

This was a system of oppression. It’s important to know what slavery means in our lives not just historically, but how it affects us as Americans today. It’s important, a basic matter of arithmetic. We were a legal slave-owning society from 1619 to 1865.

We were held in slavery longer than we’ve been free: There are whole generations who lived their whole lives, had kids and died. Those kids lived their whole lives in slavery, had kids and died. Their kids lived their whole lives in slavery and died again. In slavery. There have only been about four generations after slavery.

And we have to look at White society as well, how this institution of oppression made good, decent human beings that God created into cruel despots. It supported patriarchy and sexism. It created this myth around White womanhood. These people became cruel and mean in order to preserve this institution.

Everyone was affected.

We have to go through the work to figure out what reparations is, that’s what I’m arguing for. I think it would be an important journey for our nation. Bottom line: We’re all Americans today, but you can’t heal a dirty wound, you have to clean it out first.

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Rep  Ellison provided powerful, comprehensive insight into the complexity of reparations, and there are still many questions that can be asked: Can the U.S. government, even though they recently unsigned the “Rome Statute” that governs the International Criminal Court, be charged with ”crimes against humanity” for the atrocities of slavery, Reconstruction, Jim/Jane Crow, and the Civil Rights and Reagan Eras?

Recently, a U.S. judge ruled that Iran and Syria owed one family $323 million for the death of their son in Israel by a suicide bomber, citing terrorism.

Should/can this decision set the precedent for domestic terrorism as well — and could it be argued that slavery and the aforementioned deadly eras were time periods where domestic terrorism reigned specifically against African Americans?

Check back next week as NewsOne delves even further into the complicated issue of reparations.

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Reparations

That single word has the power to bring forth memories of slave screams, blood-shed, lynching, raping and the unrepentant theft of generations of successful Black families by the United States of America.

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It also has the power to breed resentment, as the 40 acres and a mule that Black Americans were promised by General William Sherman at the close of the American Civil War were snatched away by President Andrew Johnson and returned to their White owners.

Watch the 2008 presidential hopefuls debate whether African Americans should receive reparations here:

Primarily left landless, fragmented, disconnected from our culture, and uneducated with little-to-no chance of gainful employment, the dregs of slavery and Jim and Jane Crow continue to poison our communities in both tangible and intangible ways.

During her investigation into the wealth — or lack thereof — in the African-American community, CNN’s Soledad O’Brien spoke with Rev. DeForest B. Soaries of First Baptist Church in Lincoln, New Jersey, who made the sharp correlation that “debt is slavery”:

“When I’m paying last month’s bills with next month’s check, that’s slavery. When I ‘m writing a check hoping that it doesn’t bounce, or when I pull out my credit card praying that it’s not rejected, then I’m living in financial bondage.”

Watch Minister Louis Farrakhan discuss what America and Europe owe to Blacks here:

What becomes clear when the imbalanced economic scales in this country are tilted further by institutionalized racism, is that we are still very much living within a system that profited immensely from the blood, sweat, and tears of slave labor, while refusing to make good on the loan of our livelihoods and collective economic value. According to Harper’s magazine (November, 2000), the United States stole an estimated $100 trillion dollars for 222,505,049 hours of forced labor between 1619 and 1865 with a compounded interest of 6 percent.
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In lieu of these tragic numbers, Dr. John Hope Franklin, renowned historian and author of “From Slavery to Freedom,” voices his contempt for the pseudo-apologies that the U.S. government has given for an institution that has left Black America in a perpetual race, with many having no idea why we seem to never make significant and collective economic strides:

People are running around apologizing for slavery, he said. What about that awful period since slavery — Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and all the rest? And what about the enormous wealth that was built up by Black labor? I think that’s little to pay for the gazillions that Black people built up — the wealth of this country — with their labor, and now you’re going to say, ‘I’m sorry I beat the hell out of you for all these years’? That’s not enough.

It’s definitely not enough.

In a system that relies heavily on what many consider to be Dixiecratic handouts, vilifying those who are forced to accept them, while simultaneously and condescendingly stating that, “Rising tides lift all boats,” this country has to reach a point where reparations is not viewed as a joke or some unimaginable occurrence. If the boats have historical, psychological, and economic holes blown through them by Jim Crow and Uncle Sam, rising tides without life rafts do nothing but drown us deeper into debt.

In his 1970 book, “By Any Means Necessary,” Malcolm X (aka El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz) spoke of reparations not as a choice, or a last resort, but as the only way to rectify the inhumane atrocities committed against Black Americans:

If you are the son of a man who had a wealthy estate and you inherit your father’s estate, you have to pay off the debts that your father incurred before he died. The only reason that the present generation of White Americans are in a position of economic strength…is because their fathers worked our fathers for over 400 years with no pay…. We were sold from plantation to plantation like you sell a horse, or a cow, or a chicken, or a bushel of wheat…. All that money…is what gives the present generation of American Whites the ability to walk around the earth with their chest out…like they have some kind of economic ingenuity. Your father isn’t here to pay. My father isn’t here to collect. But I’m here to collect and you’re here to pay.

In the next weeks, NewsOne will speak with Black leaders on the topic of reparations and how exactly the concept can be contextualized in a contemporary narrative. More importantly, we will ask for feedback from our readers on the possibility of reparations and what we are willing to do – if anything — to ensure that it comes to fruition.

What do you think?

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As a result, families were torn apart by addiction, homicide rates flew through the roof, and Black America has been at the receiving end of a mass incarceration epidemic of holocaust proportions.

Given that it has been proven that government officials played a direct role in the creation of this madness, I say that there is a logical argument for reparations.

I spoke with Ohio State University Law Professor Michelle Alexander (pictured), author of the book, “The New Jim Crow,” and she agrees with this assessment.  Alexander’s book is a telling and riveting reminder of the horrific impact that mass incarceration has had on Black America.

“I think it’s a powerful point you’re making,” she said.  “Also, I think it’s worth noting that the United States has spent more than one trillion dollars waging the drug war since it began — funds that could have been used for education, job creation, etc.  It is reasonable that at least a trillion dollars be paid to repair the damage that has been done, reparations that could take the form of massive investments in the schools and community hardest hit by the drug war, as well as payments to individuals and families that have been destroyed.”

Are reparations practical?  I am not sure, given that we live in a nation that has refused to even apologize for slavery.

But the fact that an entity refuses to take responsibility for its actions does not mean that you should not accurately highlight such accountability.   Those who expect America to calm itself into a sweet, kind “post-racial society” must be made aware that an unforgivable amount of damage has been done as a result of the war on drugs, and any post-racial society must be built on accepting responsibility for wrongs that have been committed in the past.

The war on drugs is not like slavery, which affected our great, great, great grandparents. Many children today have parents who’ve received 60-year prison sentences for drug possession.   Families are mourning the loss of loved ones who’ve been murdered by weapons allowed to enter Black communities as a result of the drug trade.   I run into countless young people who are traumatized after growing up with parents who were addicted to drugs.  The pain and misery is all around us, so it’s very simple to prove that the damage has been nothing short of crippling.

It’s time to address this matter in a series of public forums, legislation, petitions, and even protests.  It’s also time for all of us to promote awareness in our own communities about the dangers of drugs and mentor our young people to create better lives for themselves.  Like a town that’s been ravaged by a violent tornado, it’s going to take a consistent effort by all of us to clean up the mess in our community.  It’s time to start making things right.

Tell us what you think.

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Dr. Boyce Watkins is a Professor at Syracuse University and author of the forthcoming book, “The RAPP Sheet: Rising Above Psychological Poison.” To have Dr. Boyce commenttary delivered to your email, please click here.

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Some people might believe that Jamaica is not the only country where its citizens deserve reparations for slavery.

African Americans continue to endure the consequences of the slave trade to this day:  Whites have a wealth level that is several times higher than our own, we don’t have the tax base to afford quality schools, and most of the major institutions in the United States are run by Whites.  In fact, most African Americans work for predominantly White-owned companies, and the majority of them don’t get the opportunities they deserve.

These institutional disparities didn’t create themselves.

And in spite of what White Supremacy 101 teaches us, inequality is not the result of laziness or a lack of discipline on the part of African Americans.  Instead, the disparities are the result of a nation’s 400-year commitment toward creating a society in which one group lives in a way that is superior to another.

The United Nations and other parts of the world have noted the impact of slavery on American racial disparities, but the United States, a country that regularly claims the moral high ground on human rights violations around the world, is unable to see violations of its own: Not only have reparations not been paid to people of color, whose families experienced undeniable abuse at the hands of slavery and Jim Crow, but our nation has even refused to apologize.

Another atrocity for which reparations should be demanded is the CIA’s role in looking the other way as crack cocaine was allowed to flood the Black community during the 1980s.

It is well-documented that the CIA allowed puppet rebel groups in South America to fund their wars by selling crack in Black communities.  The rise in crack distribution, along with the loss of jobs, the presence of high-powered weapons, and a weakened educational system turned many prosperous Black neighborhoods into instant war zones.

The U.S. government’s role in allowing for crack cocaine distribution, in conjunction with mandatory sentencing during the ineffective War on Drugs, has created a mass-incarceration epidemic that has destroyed millions of Black families across America.  As a result, millions of children grew up without their Fathers, and many of them never made it to adulthood. Our communities are not always good places to live, and there are elitist government officials who were never held accountable in the same way they would be if they were young Black men carrying crack through the hood.

Some would even say that it’s as if the powers-that-be sprayed our community with a virus and then burned us alive to kill the infection.   That’s what happens when you plant billions of dollars worth of drugs and weapons into a community and then lock up a large percentage of its citizens for the possession of the very same items you’ve planted.  Yes, we have legitimate reason to be outraged.

All of these issues must be laid on the table if we are to truly discuss racial healing in America.

Any talk about a post-racial America can never occur if our government refuses to even apologize for what it’s done and help to repair the damage.  But America is a country that is largely built on lies, and perhaps it’s high time that we start telling the truth.

Sound off here:

Watch the University of California, Santa Barbara discuss the legacy of slavery and reparations here:

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Dr. Boyce Watkins is a Professor at Syracuse University. To have Dr. Boyce commentary delivered to your email, please click here.

Simpson addressed the exploitation of Africans sent to Jamaica as slaves and the enormous profits that slavery brought the ruling class in Britain.

According to the UK Morning Star, Simpson-Miller said:

“If Britain wishes to apologise, fine with us, no problem at all.

Whether Britain will be able to pay compensation I don’t know.

“We have heard the calls, but I’m not making any calls on the British government.”

Read More At The UK Morning Star

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From the AFP:

PARIS — Historians and anti-racism campaigners are to urge the countries that oversaw and profited from the Atlantic slave trade to recognise it as a crime against humanity, opening the way for reparations.

Next week, activists are to send a letter to the leaders of Britain, Denmark, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain asking them to recognise the trade as an historic injustice a century and a half after it ended.

They have already convinced France to do so.

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The European Memorial Foundation for the Slave Trade will launch the appeal at the French Senate on May 10, backed by the French historian Louis Sala-Molins and John Franklin from the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington.

“There are several reasons for this, including its symbolic value, to restore the memory of this crime against humanity,” Karfa Diallo, chairman of the foundation, told AFP.

“There’s also a question, shall we say, of justice,” he said.

The continuing problem of racism in a Europe that now has an ethnically diverse population that could be precisely traced back to the 16th and 17th century texts justifying and codifying slavery, he argued.

“Racism and discrimination persists in Europe. Young people of Caribbean and African ancestry are victims of it. And we know, historians have shown this, that racism was born in this story.”

Diallo’s group was founded in the former French slave port of Bordeaux in 1998.

It has found allies in other cities of Western Europe that grew wealthy on the profits of the trade, from Bristol in England to Porto in Portugal.

Click here to read more.

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From AOL Black Voices:

Last week, Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., made the controversial claim that black Africans were as much to blame for slavery as white Europeans and Americans. According to Gates the implication of Africans makes the messy issue of reparations for the descendants of slaves even messier. But is he missing the point?

In Gates’ mind, the people who profited most from the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade (Europeans and Americans) are no more or less guilty than those who first sold slaves into captivity (the African elite). That’s like saying the people who referred clients to Bernie Madoff are just as guilty as the man who made billions off of his marks.

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In Gates’ New York Times op-ed “Ending the Slavery Blame Game”, he reminds us that “90 percent of those shipped to the New World were enslaved by Africans and then sold to European traders.” The debate over reparations, Gates argues, is at best irresolvable because black people were just as complicit in the slave trade as were white people. But following this logic misses two main points: one, that identifying the original sinner doesn’t absolve all other guilty parties of their sins; and two, the profits gained from the original sin are alone grounds for some form of compensation.

For years, Gates has made it his business to shed light on the fact that the institution of chattel slavery was made possible, in part, by early Africans who both enslaved other Africans and sold them into captivity. Whether or not his motivations for this historical muck-raking are purely scholarly or more about assuaging the guilt of white America is still up for debate. However, he does provide a necessary counterpoint to the lopsided view of history many black romantics have.

Click here to read more.

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Not So Fast, Senate: How Slavery Reparations Might Work

From the Daily Comet:

A bill before the legislature would require some of Massachusetts oldest banking, financial and insurance companies to look deep into their history – and the histories of subsidiaries and predecessor companies – to uncover links to the slave trade, as a condition of doing business with the state.

It also would authorize the secretary of state to produce a book documenting to what extent the state, since the times of the Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth colonies, benefited from slavery, whether through taxes or economic growth.

RELATED: Not So Fast, Senate: How Slavery Reparations Might Work

The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Byron Rushing, D-Boston, said understanding that difficult history is key to any future discussion of apologies or reparation claims tied to slavery. He said most people underestimate the economic significance of slavery to the growth of the country and the state.

“Part of the problem is that people are ignorant of what slavery actually was,” he said. “Most people’s views of slavery are attached to abolition – not the ongoing horror of slavery, but the end of slavery.”

The focus on Massachusetts may seem misplaced at first. The state was the first to abolish slavery, recording no slaves in a 1790 federal census, Rushing said. Massachusetts also was a center of abolitionist activity in the years leading up to the Civil War.

A monument to the famed 54th Massachusetts regiment, the band of black soldiers who charged entrenched Confederates during an attack on South Carolina’s Battery Wagner, sits opposite the Statehouse.

But while the state distanced itself from slavery early in the nation’s history, some Massachusetts residents and institutions continued to profit from the trade up to and even after the Civil War when the trade continued to flourish outside the country, Rushing said.

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One prime target is insurance companies that offered policies to slave owners covering their slaves.

Massachusetts isn’t the first state to consider untangling its historic economic ties to the slave trade.

California passed the nation’s first law forcing insurance companies that do business with the state to disclose their slavery ties. Illinois passed a similar insurance law in 2003, and Iowa has also begun requesting the same disclosures.

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