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Overview Reparations for slavery - usually to African-Americans as a group and not to individuals - is not a new idea. It has been raised several times ever since the emancipation of slaves, and has gained some more discussion in recent years with Randall Robinson's 2000 book The Debt: What America owes to blacks. In a roundabout way, it became front-page news in early 2001 because of an anti-reparations advertisement placed by David Horowitz in some college newspapers. Reparations has made it to Congress, but not very far. The only legislative act for reparations is an annual effort by Representative John Conyers, a Democrat from Michigan. Every year since 1989, he has introduced a resolution to establish a commission that would study reparation proposals for African-Americans. The resolution is officially designated H.R. 40, so numbered after the so-called "Forty Acres and a Mule" order that General William Tecumseh Sherman issued to help free blacks secure their independence. Conyers' bill has never made it out of committee. It is worth noting that both the federal government and one state government has made explicit monetary redress for past acts of wrongdoing involving minority groups. The Civil Liberties Act of 1988, passed with considerable bipartisan support and signed by Ronald Reagan, authorized compensation for those Japanese-Americans who had been interned during World War II. At the state level, the Florida legislature acknowledged in 1994 an "equitable obligation" to make up for the destruction of the town Rosewood in 1923, when the state did nothing as whites killed at least eight blacks and razed the town. In both cases, much of the momentum for reparations came because the situations were not widely known beforehand; the extent of the Japanese-American internment was still not generally understood until a public investigation in the early 1980s and a Smithsonian exhibit in 1987. Another crucial factor distinguishing these cases from slavery is that some victims were still living, so that any reparations would compensate the very people who had actually suffered harm from the government's wrongdoing. In any case, monetary reparations are not the only form of redress for slavery. Redress can also be accomplished in nonmonetary ways such as amnesty and special government treatment, and redress need not be for individuals but can be for rehabilitating groups that had been injured. Seen this way, the United States has been providing some form of redress for more than a century. Immediately after the Civil War, the federal government enabled the Freedmen's Bureau to help provide for the economic independence of blacks, largely through land provisions that were of moderate success and through funding black colleges such as Howard University. And in the 20th century, affirmative action was initially seen as a way to make up for past discrimination long before it evolved into a means of achieving diversity. Another possible means of redress is an official apology. In 1997, Representative Tony Hall of Ohio introduced the one-sentence-long House Concurrent Resolution 96: "Resolved by the House of Representatives that the Congress apologizes to African-Americans whose ancestors suffered as slaves under the Constitution and the laws of the United States until 1865." There is no call for monetary reparations, and there are no pending lawsuits which could use such a resolution as evidence against the U.S. government. Hall's bill, like Conyers' efforts, did not get far. There is much precedent for apologies from the federal government, either through Congress or through the president. Beyond the Japanese-American internment, Congress apologized in 1990 to uranium miners and the people in Nevada affected by the nuclear tests there and in 1993 for overthrowing the native Hawaiian government a century earlier. Clinton apologized in 1997 for secret experiments conducted from 1932 to 1972 on the black men of Macon County, Alabama, who went untreated with syphilis. Other countries have been dealing with reparations and apologies issues, and a few examples are worth noting here for broader perspective. Germany signed agreements in 1952 with the State of Israel and a major Jewish organization to help make up for the Holocaust. Japan has awkwardly tried dealing with the rape and forced prostitution of Korean "comfort women" during World War II; Japan's prime minister apologized profusely on his own behalf, private citizens have donated money to compensate, and the courts have granted small victories to some "comfort women" who have sued, but the government officially has done little of note. South Africa investigated the legacy of apartheid and issued amnesties as a means of reconciliation, Australia has long debated what to do about the forced removal of Aboriginal children from their families, and the list goes on. Sources: When Sorry isn't Enough, edited by Roy L. Brooks (New York University Press, 1999). Randall N. Robinson, The Debt: What America owes to blacks (Plume, 2001). Robert Westley, Many Billions Gone: Is it time to consider the case for Black reparations, Boston College Law Review, December 1998 (40 B.C. Law Rev. 429). Mitchell T. Maki et al., Achieving the Impossible Dream: How Japanese-Americans obtained redress (University of Illinois Press, 1999).  The enslavement of African-Americans (last updated 8/19/01) In the wake of the Civil War, the United States amended its constitution to abolish slavery within its borders and jurisdiction with the Thirteenth Amendment, adopted in 1865. Thus ended a trade in human lives that had gone on in the United States for decades and which formed the economic backbone of much of the country's early years. Now faced with the responsibility for thousands of freed black men and women, the federal government instituted several programs in the 1860s to help the newly freed blacks. The most important was the Freedmen's Bureau, which helped feed, house and educate freed blacks in the post-war years (its most prominent legacy today is Howard University, which it founded in 1858). The Freedmen's Bureau also tried to implement land redistribution programs and to make good on General William Tecumseh Sherman's January 16, 1865 order to provide freed blacks with land in North Carolina and Florida, but President Andrew Johnson's grant of amnesty to Southern rebels and restoration of their property prevented that from happening (read more about the "forty acres and a mule" order here). In the 20th century, particularly since the 1960s, the federal government has taken steps specifically to help blacks overcome continuing discrimination and, indirectly, the legacy of slavery. Such measures include the civil-rights laws and affirmative-action policies begun in the 1960s (see here for more on affirmative action). Still, African-Americans have called more explicitly in recent decades for reparations for slavery, usually seeking some kind of group reparations such as a trust fund, usually basing such claims on the federal government's support of slavery through legislation such as the Fugitive Slave Laws and through the government's own use of slaves such as in building the Capitol in Washington DC (these claims are usually mingled with a call to rectify continuing discrimination). These efforts have not met with much success and have not garnered widespread support outside African-American circles; even President Bill Clinton, generally considered one of the presidents most friendly towards African-Americans, opposed reparations "because the nation is so many generations removed from that era that reparations for black Americans may not be possible" and said that efforts should focus instead on other efforts to eliminate the effects of past and continuing discrimination. Politically, the most prominent and oldest effort for reparations has been a legislative bill introduced every by Representative John Conyers, a Democrat from Michigan. Every year since 1989, he has introduced a resolution to establish a commission that would study reparation proposals for African-Americans (such a commission was crucial in building public support for reparations for Japanese-Americans interned during World War II). The resolution is officially designated H.R. 40, so numbered after Sherman's 1865 order. Conyers' bill has never made it out of committee. Still, the Philadelphia Inquirer's editorial board came out in March 2001 in favor of Conyers' proposal, becoming the first non-black institution to support the reparations movement. Lawsuits seeking reparations have not gotten very far, usually because the United States cannot be sued unless it has waived such sovereign immunity, which it has done for constitutional violations only after 1945. In 1995, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals thus upheld the dismissal of a lawsuit filed by two groups of African-American plaintiffs who sought $100 million in damages for "forced, ancestral indoctrination into a foreign society; kidnapping of ancestors from Africa; forced labor; breakup of families; removal of traditional values; deprivations of freedom; and imposition of oppression, intimidation, miseducation and lack of information about various aspects of their indigenous character." In initially dismissing the lawsuit, District Judge Saundra B. Armstrong wrote: "Discrimination and bigotry of any type is inexcusable, and the enslavement of africans by this country is inexcusable. This Court, however, is unable to identify any legally cognizable basis upon which plaintiff's claims may proceed against the United States. While plaintiff may be justified in seeking redress for past and present injuries, it is not within the jurisdiction of this Court to grant the requested relief. The legislature, rather than the judiciary, is the appropriate forum for plaintiff's grievances." (emphasis added) Still, some black leaders have announced plans to file lawsuits against the government and against private companies for their profiting from slavery. The most recent and prominent effort is led by Harvard Law School Professor Charles Ogletree and Randall N. Robinson, who wrote the popular 2000 book "The Debt: What America owes to blacks." Some have sought more limited forms of redress. In 1997, Representative Tony Hall of Ohio, who is white, introduced the one-sentence-long House Concurrent Resolution 96: "Resolved by the House of Representatives that the Congress apologizes to African-Americans whose ancestors suffered as slaves under the Constitution and the laws of the United States until 1865." Hall did not call for monetary reparations and given the other legal obstacles, such a statement would not be held against the federal government in any court. Hall's bill, like Conyers' efforts, did not get far. Sources: When Sorry isn't Enough, edited by Roy L. Brooks. The Debt: What America owes to blacks, by Randall Robinson. Robert Wesley, Many Billions Gone: Is it time to consider the case for Black reparations, Boston College Law Review, December 1998 (40 B.C. Law Rev. 429). Eric K. Yamamoto, Racial Reparations: Japanese American Redress and African American Claims, Boston College Law Review, December 1998 (40 B.C. Law Rev. 477). Cato vs United States, 70 F.3d 1103 (9th Cir., 1995). The Philadelphia Inquirer's editorials can be found on-line via the newspaper's website here. Japanese internment (last updated 8/19/01) The United States' reparations made to Japanese-Americans interned during World War II is the only example of federal reparations and has given fuel to all other redress movements. It was the result of decades of effort and still nearly did not happen. Just two months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9,066, which authorized the secretary of war to designate military areas from which "any or all persons may be excluded." This order was given legal authority in March 1942, and the military quickly issued orders establishing zones from which Japanese, German and Italian aliens and "any person of Japanese ancestry" were excluded, setting a curfew, and finally removing all persons of Japanese descent from the western United States. Japanese-American citizens were then held in camps for the next few years. The War Department issued in December 1944 a proclamation removing the general exclusion orders prohibiting Japanese-Americans from the West Coast, and by March 1946 all the camps were closed. Redress efforts began slowly in the post-war years with some success. The Japanese-American Evacuations Claims Act of 1948 compensated those Japanese-Americans who could document property losses. President Gerald Ford officially rescinded Executive Order 9,066 in 1976, saying that "we now know what we should have known then - not only was that evacuation wrong but Japanese-Americans were and are loyal Americans." On the other hand, lawsuits brought by those who had been interned faced statute-of-limitation and other legal obstacles to success. The political movement for redress began in the 1970s, with the first redress legislation introduced in Congress in June 1974 (it died in committee). The movement began with Japanese-Americans but gained widespread public support through the 1980s through greater awareness of what had happened and increased recognition of Japanese-American soldiers' contributions during World War II. Public hearings held by the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Interment of Civilians, which had been created in 1980, and a Smithsonian exhibit in 1987 and still up today were particularly crucial in educating the public. The Commission's support of reparations was a crucial boon to the movement, especially since the commission had only one Japanese American on it. The House passed a reparations bill in September 1987 (the vote was 243 in favor, 141 against, and 1 "present" vote), and the Senate passed its version in April 1988 (the vote was 69 in favor, 27 opposed). President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 on August 10 of that year. Appropriating federal funds for reparations took two more years, and the first redress checks for $20,000 to surviving internees were finally issued by the Bush administration in October 1990. Some have argued that the Japanese-American claims succeeded because they fit tightly within the individual rights paradigm of the law; the claims were brought by people who had been personally and directly harmed, the link between the harm and the internment was clear, damages were limited and certain, and the reparations settled the matter. This distinguishes the case from that made on behalf of slavery reparations, wherein any claimants are several generations removed from the initial harm, any harm these claimants now feel is not necessarily caused by the initial wrong of slavery, and damages are very uncertain. Sources: Mitchell T. Maki et al., Achieving the Impossible Dream: How Japanese-Americans obtained redress (University of Illinois Press, 1999). Hawaiian natives (last updated 8/19/01) The United States has officially apologized for the military's assistance of an overthrow of the Hawaii native government in the 1880s and 1890s. In 1887, King Kalakaua was forced to sign a constitution that reduced him to a ceremonial figurehead with all power in a cabinet made up of Americans civilians. Six years later, United States troops landed in Honolulu to protect the provisional government and to prevent the king's efforts to restore his power. President Grover Cleveland said later in 1893 that the United States invasion had violated the country's honor and sense of justice and he called for the return of Hawaii, but his successor, President William McKinley, obtained Senate approval of annexation in 1898; Hawaii became the fiftieth state in 1959. In 1993, to mark the 100th anniversary of the invasion, Congress passed a joint resolution offering "an apology to native Hawaiians on behalf of the United States," but was careful to state that nothing in the resolution served as a settlement of claims or would change existing law. In 1996, about 73 percent of native Hawaiians participating in a vote favored a native Hawaiian government, and efforts are moving slowly forward in establishing such, somewhat along the lines of Indian self-government. Sources: David H. Getches et al., Cases and Materials on Federal Indian Law (Fourth Edition, West Group, 1998). Rosewood (last updated 8/19/01) In 1994, the Florida state legislature acknowledged an "equitable obligation" to make up for the destruction of the town Rosewood in 1923. This was the first time that an American government had acknowledged its responsibility for an act of racial violence committed against African-Americans. Rosewood, a small town of about 350 people in north Florida, was attacked in January 1923 when the area's white citizens believed that a white woman had been sexually assaulted by a black escaped prisoner. At least eight people were killed and the village was effectively destroyed. The Rosewood Compensation Act became law on May 4, 1994. First, it officially acknowledged the state's responsibility for failing to prevent the village's destruction; this case was distinguished from others in that the violence went on for so long that the state could have intervened. The act compensated victims who had present with up to $150,000 and victims' families for their property loss. It established scholarships for minority students, with preference given to Rosewood family members. Finally, it ordered a criminal investigation and continuing academic research. Similar investigations are underway into other violent acts tolerated by government officials. Recently, the Oklahoma Commission to Study the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 recommended that reparations be made to the victims of a riot in which maybe three hundred people were killed and 1,200 homes were destroyed over the course of a few days in the summer of 1921. Sources: When Sorry isn't Enough, edited by Roy L. Brooks (New York University Press, 1999). Korean comfort women (last updated 8/19/01) From 1932 to 1945, thousands of women (mostly aged 14 to 18) from Korea, the Phillipines, and other Asian countries that had been colonized by Japan were forced to serve in sexual servitude to the Japanese military as "comfort women." These women's claims began to emerge in the 1970s and 1980s as women's issues came to the forefront in these countries, and has given rise in the 1990s to political, legal and historical controversies that continue today. The first lawsuit by Korean comfort women was filed in Japan in December 1991. Within weeks, original wartime documents confirming the military's involvement in the conscription of comfort women resurfaced publicly (Professor Yoshimi Yoshiaki of Chuo University had reviewed such documents in the course of his academic research and then retrieved them in light of the lawsuit). Japan's prime minister Miyazawa Kiichi then publicly expressed his personal regret first in Japan and then in an address to the South Korean president in January 1992. Since then, women's groups have continued to advocate for more action by the Japanese government, including compensation, public memorials, and mandatory inclusion in history curricula; many Japanese oppose such actions and have disputed the facts alleged by former comfort women. Despite Kiichi's apology, the Japanese government itself has not apologized nor made publicly-funded reparations available to most former comfort women. In 1995, the Japanese government established the Asian Women's Fund, which raised private donations to provide compensation (about $20,000 in US currency) and medical services to former comfort women; this program has been criticized for not being publicly funded and for the ambiguous apology offered personally by Prime Minister Hashimoto Ryotaro that was sent with the fundraising letter. Court cases continue but have not been successful as of 2000. In April 1998, a Japanese court ruled that Japan must compensate three South Korean women the equivalent of $2,300 each. Both sides appealed, the plaintiffs to increase compensation and the Japanese government to avoid paying any, and no money had been paid as of 2000. Other courts have rejected former comfort women's lawsuits as being without any legal basis. One legal hurdle for the Korean comfort women is the 1965 treaty that settled Korea's wartime claims against Japan. Invaded in 1910, Korea served as Japan's colony until the end of World War II in 1945 and, due to the Korean War, did not regain its full sovereignty until a peace treaty signed by the Allies and Japan in 1952. South Korea and Japan then negotiated a settlement of Korean wartime claims in 1965. Under the treaty, South Korea received various forms of monetary relief and Japan was released from further claims, though some have argued the treaty did not settle individuals' claims. Sources: Yoshimi Yoshiaki, Comfort Women: Sexual slavery in the Japanese military during World War II (translated by Suzanne O'Brien, Columbia University Press, 2000). George Hicks, The Comfort Women: Japan's brutal regime of enforced prostitution in the Second World War (W.W. Norton & Co., 1997). Jewish victims of the Holocaust (last updated 8/19/01) Since World War II, the Federal Republic of Germany has enacted several laws to compensate those who had been persecuted by the National Socialist Party. Over the decades since the war ended, Germany has paid more than $60 billion in compensation to hundreds of thousands of individuals. In September 1952, Germany signed two sets of agreements, one with the State of Israel to provide goods and services, the other with the Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany (CJMC), which represented 23 Jewish organizations around the world. Under the CJMC agreement, Germany provided compensation through the 1950s and 1960s. Germany also created hardship funds to provide pensions to Jewish victims of persecution now living in difficult circumstances. In 1995, Germany signed an agreement with the United States to compensate victims who were U.S. nationals at the time they suffered persecution. Claims by such persons are handled by the Foreign Claims Settlement Commission, which received a final sum payment of $18 million in June 1999 to distribute to any remaining claimants. While the German government has legally settled its claims, actions have emerged in recent years against private institutions such as Swiss banks. Also, property that had been seized from Jews, such as paintings (read more here, is still being recovered today. The United States and other countries have helped locate property such as seized paintings and attempted to return them to their original owners. Sources: Foreign Claims Settlement Commission, U.S. Department of Labor, German Compensation for Nationalist Socialist Crimes (March 6, 1996), available online here. When Sorry isn't Enough, edited by Roy L. Brooks (New York University Press, 1999). Forty acres and a mule (last updated 8/19/01) It has become a legend in African-American circles, a symbol of the debt that many African-Americans feel the United States government owes them for decades of slavery. It was a rallying cry for some in the riots of the 1960s and it inspired the name of filmmaker Spike Lee's production company. Shortly after the Civil War ended, the United States government struggled to determine what to do with the now-freed blacks. Both the military under the War Department as well as the Treasury Department claimed some jurisdiction over the freedmen, and it was unclear what the government should do. With his authority unclear, General William Tecumseh Sherman issued Special Field Orders No. 15 on January 16, 1865, later known popularly as the order for "forty acres and a mule." First, the order set aside for freedmen settlement the Sea Islands in Georgia south of Charleston, the abandoned rice fields on the river banks for 30 miles along the coast, and the country bordering the St. John's River. These lands were "reserved and set apart for the settlement of the negroes now made free by the acts of war and the proclamation of the President of the United States." Each family of free blacks that chooses to live there "shall have a plot of not more than forty acres of tillable ground," as long as the overall area is managed by three "respectable negroes" who are "heads of families." Second, freedmen in this territory were to govern themselves subject only to military and Congressional rules. "The negro is free, and must be dealt with as such," according to the order. Finally, the order stated that the black man could not be drafted, though he "must be encouraged" to enlist for pay. Whenever a black man enlists, he can locate his family in any of the settlements at his leisure and acquire a homestead as if he was present. The Freedmen's Bureau, enacted by Congress in 1865 as a way to help freed blacks after the Civil War, attempted to implement land redistribution programs and to make good on Sherman's order. However, just as it was starting its work, on May 29, 1865, President Andrew Johnson granted amnesty to rebels "with restoration of all rights of property, except as to slaves." Such amnesty ultimately deprived the Freedmen's Bureau of many of the lands it sought to give freed blacks. Assistant Bureau Commissioner and former General Rufus Saxton had been implementing Sherman's order when Johnson reversed policy. Saxton had already given possessory titles to 40,000 freed blacks for 485,000 acres, and he initially refused to return these lands to their former owners. He finally conceded to Johnson's orders and allowed dispossessed owners to return to their lands, although he refused to let such owners evict any freedmen holding valid grants under the Sherman order. Ultimately, however, military authorities forced the freedmen in the Sea Islands to contract or leave. General Sherman himself said that his order had not been meant to be permanent. In a letter to Johnson in February 1866, he wrote: "I knew of course we could not convey title to land and merely provided 'possessory titles' to be good so long as war and our Military Power lasted. I merely aimed to make provision for the negroes ... leaving the value of their possessions to be determined by after events or legislation." Sources: George R. Bentley, A History of the Freedmen's Bureau (Octagon Books, 1974; originally published 1944). Nazi art (last updated 8/19/01) From 1939 to 1945, the Nazi government collected thousands of works of art from museums and private collections in occupied Europe. Inspired by Hitler's own interest in art and his own failed ambitions there (he had applied to study at the School of Fine Arts in Vienna and been rejected), the seizure was part of an overall plan to build an art museum in the Austrian city of Linz dedicated to Europe's old masters. Perhaps the most famous seized work was Vermeer's the Astronomer. This painting by the seventeenth-century Dutch painter was seized from the Rothschild family in 1940 by the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR), the Nazi government branch responsible for art confiscation, from the Rothschild family's collection. It was stored with thousands of other art pieces and returned after the war. It now is displayed in the Louvre. Other paintings have given rise to legal battles over ownership or simply disappeared without a trace. Most notable was the protracted controversy over two paintings by Austrian Expressionist painter Egon Schiele that had been on display at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In 1997, two families claimed that "Portrait of Wally" and "Dead City," which had been loaned with other paintings to MOMA by the Austrian-government financed Leopold Foundation, had once belonged to them. On their behalf, the Manhattan District Attorney's office stopped MOMA from returning the paintings to the Leopold Foundation while the claims were being resolved. In September 1999, the New York State Court of Appeals ruled that New York state law barred any seizure of art loaned to New York institutions and thus allowed MOMA to return the paintings to the Leopold Foundation; the Manhattan District Attorney's office criticized the ruling as making New York a "safe haven for stolen art." Federal prosecutors then tried to forbid the return to Austria, but a federal judge finally ruled in July 2000 that the paintings could be returned to Austria. Disputes over other paintings have been resolved without such public controversy. In 1998, a Degas painting, "Landscape with Smokestacks," was resolved more or less amicably in 1998; the Art Institute of Chicago agreed to reimburse the original owners for half the value of the painting and to continue to display the painting.. Similarly, a Monet waterlily that was part of the "Monet in the 20th Century" exhibition that had toured at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and the Art Institute of Chicago was discovered in November 1998 to have been plundered by the Nazis in 1941. The painting was reportedly returned to the heirs of the original owners. Thousands of works were recovered by the United States and French governments after World War II. Many were returned to the original owners or their heirs, but thousands of lesser works are still in storage with governments or various museums. Some people have called for the sale of these paintings to raise funds for Holocaust survivors. Sources: Hector Feliciano, The Lost Museum: The Nazi conspiracy to steal the world's greatest works of art (1997). Lynn H. Nichols, The Rape of Europa: The fate of Europe's treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War (1994). Jonathan Petropoulos, Art as Politics in the Third Reich (University of North Carolina Press, 1996). United States v. Portrait of Wally, 105 F.Supp.2d 288 (SDNY 2000), In the Matter of the Grand Jury Subpoena Duces Tecum served on the Museum of Modern Art, 697 N.Y.S.2d 538 (N.Y. 1999). |
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