Advocates still pushing for reparations to descendants of slaves

In 1867, Congressman Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania, a noted abolitionist, introduced a H.R. 29, a bill that outlined a plan for confiscated land in the “confederate States of America” – ensuring land to be given to former slaves, who were left penniless, after generations of slavery in the U.S.

In 2017, 150 years later, then-Rep. John Conyers of Michigan, as he had done since 1989, reintroduced bill H.R. 40, calling for the establishment of the Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act to “examine slavery and discrimination in the colonies and the United States from 1619 to the present and recommend appropriate remedies.”

Between these two congressional attempts to compensate African Americans with reparations or pensions for their labor as slaves, the federal government – including the Bureau of Pensions, the Post Office Department, the Justice Department and other agencies – has denied such payments.

The reparations movement for former slaves was stifled by unfulfilled governmental and political promises of 40 acres and a mule for their unsalaried labor. And efforts of formidable organizations, such as the National Ex-Slave Mutual Relief, Bounty, and Pension Association of the U.S. led by Isaiah Dickerson and Callie House, were compromised when leaders were falsely accused of fraud.