EDINBURGH, U.K. — Several dozen academics, activists and former political leaders from across the globe traveled to Western Europe this week to take up the controversial issue of reparations for the descendants of enslaved African people.
Sponsored by professors at the University of Edinburgh and Wheelock College in Boston, the three-day interdisciplinary conference focused on the legal and moral imperative for reparations, as scholars and activists discussed the groundwork being laid for campaigns being waged to pressure countries around the world to take responsibility for the harm that was done as a result of the Atlantic Slave trade.
While reparations has been considered a fringe issue for some, it’s not a new topic in the ongoing dialogue about racial justice. According to scholars, as far back as the 1700s, enslaved African people were calling for reparations for themselves and their ancestors. The controversial issue was revived in the United States last year thanks to Ta-Nehisi Coates’ 15,000-word article that appeared in The Atlantic titled “The Case for Reparations.” An 1865 letter by an ex-slave named Jourdan Anderson to his master gained traction when it went viral last year and was published in several U.S. news outlets. In addition, well-known scholars like Dr. Mary Frances Berry, a historian at the University of Pennsylvania, and Charles Ogletree, a law professor at Harvard University, are fierce supporters of the movement.
But in other parts of the world, such as the Caribbean, the fight for reparations has been steady and ongoing for decades. For example, in 2013 Caribbean heads of governments established the Caricom Reparations Commission [CRC] with a mandate to prepare the case for reparatory justice for the region’s indigenous and African descendants. Caricom established a 10-point Reparations Plan that demanded, among other things, a full formal apology, the establishment of cultural institutions and a repatriation program.
“I think it’s as important to have an international perspective,” said Dr. V.P. Franklin, the Distinguished Professor Emeritus of History at the University of California, Riverside and an editor of The Journal of African American History. “What’s happening around the world should inform the movement in the U.S. We need to educate people about the reparations movement taking place around the world and make connections.”
Franklin said there is a mass effort by some scholars to push President Obama to create the Dr. John Hope Franklin Commission on Reparative Justice, which would be similar in scope to the One America Initiative that President Clinton established on race. Dr. John Hope Franklin, the preeminent historian, was selected by Clinton to chair the commission’s advisory board.
“I think the issue is experiencing a resurgence,” said Dr. Jennifer Page, a post-doctoral fellow in the Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice at Brown University. “I think people are looking at reparations.”
