The U.S. African American Redress Network was created when the Thurgood Marshall Civil Rights Center at Howard University and the Institute for the Study of Human Rights at Columbia University teamed up to spotlight the numerous local reparations initiatives across the nation and be a resource in support of such efforts.
Howard University law professor Justin Hansford serves as the executive director of the Thurgood Marshall Civil Rights Center and he spearheaded the Redress Network along with Dr. Linda Mann, who spearheaded the project on behalf of the Institute for the Study of Human Rights.
“We’ve talked about reparations for slavery or for Jim Crow … or reparations for the war on drugs and mass incarceration. What we are doing to ensure that mass incarceration is not going to happen again? To assure that police violence is not going to happen again?” Hansford asked. “So some of that involves policies, in addition to the money, some of it will involve laws to really get to the healing,” he added.
Given the work the Thurgood Marshall Civil Rights Center has done on the reparations issue, Mann says it was the right choice for Howard and Columbia to join forces.
“In order to truly understand what communities need to secure racial justice, predominantly White universities such as Columbia must listen and work collaboratively with historically Black colleges and universities such as Howard.”
Given the racial unrest that has surfaced after the killings of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd at the hands of local law enforcement officers, Hansford thinks now is the right time to address the issue of civil injustices towards African Americans in this country.
“We’ve seen people respond in a way that we might have never seen in the history of our country, starting with the protests. They weren’t magically out there,” said Hansford. “And then you look at the corporations speaking out … the athletes speaking out. And we love seeing people make their opinion known that there’s a racial justice problem and they want to be a part of the solution.”
