History of reparations
A timeline of the movement for Black Liberation
Timeline
The 1619 Project, the groundbreaking initiative published by The New York Times Magazine in 2019 and spearheaded by Nicole Hanah-Jones, opens with the lines, “In August of 1619, a ship appeared on this horizon, near Point Comfort, a coastal port in the English colony of Virginia. It carried more than 20 enslaved Africans sold to the colonists. No aspect of the country that would be formed here has been untouched by the years of slavery that followed.” By 1770, over 460,000 enslaved Africans populated the colonies, one-fifth of the total colonial population, and by 1860, less than 100 years after the United States had formally became a nation, the 1860 census listed 3,953,760 people as enslaved.Historians like Michael Guasco, who authored Slaves and Englishmen: Human Bondage in the Early Modern Atlantic World, have noted that the first example that we have of slavery in what would become the United States could be traced back to 1526 with the Spanish in the region we now call South Carolina.
As Guasco noted in an interview with History.com, “people of African descent have been ‘here’ longer than the English colonies.” While the date 1619 marks a significant point in Anglo-colonial history, the “Spanish, Portuguese and English were co-conspirators in what we would now consider a crime against humanity,” according to Guasco. The history of human bondage is long and complex, with many faces and iterations across different national, political, and social contexts. Guasco notes in Slaves and Englishmen, “if we focus our gaze too narrowly on the period after 1660 – or 1619, for that matter – we might mistakenly assume that slavery was unimportant before it manifested itself in familiar fashion.”
Our timeline acknowledges the deep and complex history of human bondage, the history of the European-spearheaded trans-Atlantic slave trade, and Africans who were held in bondage before 1619. In the Lab, we conducted a mapping activity facilitated by historian Dr. Mary Frances Berry, Dr. Akinyele Umoja, and Makani Themba. Across the map, we identified significant historical, political, cultural, and economic events and acts of resistance within the context of Black lives in this nation. This timeline aims to place the movement for reparations, arguably one of the oldest movements in this country, within the broader context of the march toward Black liberation.
1619
“The year 1619 is as important to the American story as 1776.” - Nikole Hanah-Jones
Colonists brought 20 enslaved Africans to Virginia.
1638
“For a colonized people, the most essential value, because the most concrete, is first and foremost the land: the land which will bring them bread, and, above all, dignity.” - Frantz Fanon
Sir Edwin Sandys became treasurer of the Virginia Company and created a system that incentivized wealthy people to bring indentured servants and enslaved people to Virginia to work in exchange for 50 acres of land for each person they brought.
1640
“The John Punch case is further evidence that slavery existed for Africans long before the term ever reached the statute books.” - Randolph M. McLaughlin
Runaway indentured servants, three white and one Black, were recaptured and given 30 lashes. The white men were sentenced to work for their masters an extra year, while the Black man, John Punch, was sentenced to serve his master “for the time of his natural Life here or elsewhere.”
1662
“The role of hereditary racial slavery in consolidating modern economic systems has been either overlooked or misplaced as marginal to the core text of early modern economic formations.” - Jennifer Morgan
A Virginia Court rules that children born to enslaved mothers were the property of the mother’s owner.
1739
“There was one of two things I had a right to – liberty or death. If I could not have one, I would have the other.” - Harriet Tubman
Over a hundred enslaved Africans right outside of Charleston, South Carolina, led by a man named Jemmy, took up arms, killed enslavers, and planned to march toward the Florida coast toward freedom before they were stopped.
1783
“The petition shows that even during enslavement, some legal bodies recognized the justice of reparations for unpaid labor and unjust enrichment as a crime against humanity.” - Ray Winbush
Belinda Sutton becomes the first person to successfully petition a state legislature for reparations from her former enslaver.
1791
I want Liberty and Equality to reign in San Domingo. I work to bring them into existence. Unite yourselves to us, brothers, and fight with us for the same cause.” - Toussaint L’Ourverture
Enslaved Africans initiated a collection of slave revolts and rebellions, the largest and most successful slave revolt in history, and the creation of Haiti as an independent nation.
1816
“The Black Church has influenced nearly every chapter of the African American story, and it continues to animate Black identity today, both for believers and nonbelievers.” - Henry Louis Gates Jr.
Richard Allen, a formerly enslaved Black man, started organizing other African Methodist congregations, which led to the formation of the first organized Black Christian denomination in the United States.
1843
“Think how many tears you have poured out upon the soil which you have cultivated with unrequited toil and enriched with your blood; and then go to your lordly enslavers and tell them plainly that you are determined to be free.” - Henry Highland Garnet
An assembly of Black political leaders gathered in Buffalo, New York, to discuss issues pertinent to the Black community and the material condition of their lives. Henry Highland Garnet, a pastor from Troy, New York, delivered a speech titled “An Address to the Slaves of the United States,” where he called for a massive rebellion against the institution of slavery.
1857
“All I ask of the American people is that they live up to the Constitution, adopt its principles, imbibe its spirit, and enforce its provisions. When this is done, the wounds of my bleeding people will be healed, the chain will no longer rust on their ankles, their backs will no longer be torn by the bloody lash, and liberty, the glorious birthright of our common humanity, will become the inheritance of all the inhabitants of this highly favored country.” - Frederick Douglass
The Supreme Court upheld slavery in U.S. territories, ruled that Black people, whether enslaved or free, were not citizens of the United States and therefore not protected by rights afforded by the Constitution, and that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional.
1862
“That is the story of this country, the story that has brought me to this stage tonight, the story of generations of people who felt the lash of bondage, the shame of servitude, the sting of segregation, but who kept on striving and hoping and doing what needed to be done so that today I wake up every morning in a house that was built by slaves. And I watch my daughters, two beautiful, intelligent, black young women playing with their dogs on the White House lawn.” - Michelle Obama
Congress passed the District of Columbia Compensated Emancipation Act, which freed close to 3,000 formerly enslaved people and provided compensation to enslavers for each person they freed.
1864
"The slave went free; stood a brief moment in the sun; then moved back again toward slavery." - W.E.B. DuBois
At the request of 20 Black civil leaders within the newly freed community, William T. Sherman, a general in the Union army, issued Special Field Order No. 15, which sought to redistribute 400,000 acres of land, to newly freed people in 40-acre allotments – the order is the origin of the phrase “40 acres and a mule.” Less than a year after the proclamation, President Johnson ordered most of the land to be returned to its former owners.
1870
“Twice enslaved and twice freed, Wood knew how easily a doom could follow dawn.” - William Caleb McDaniel
After gaining her freedom, Henrietta Wood, a formerly enslaved Black woman, took the person who sold her into slavery to court for $20,000 in lost wages. Wood’s case is often considered one of the earliest examples of reparations to a formerly enslaved person.
1896
“The only thing can be is an inherent determination that the people who were formerly in slavery, regardless of anything else, shall be kept as near that stage as is possible, and now is the time, we submit, that this Court should make it clear that that is not what our Constitution stands for.” - Thurgood Marshall
The Supreme Court ruled that segregation on the basis of race was constitutional. This decision would create the precedent for segregated facilities, transportation, classrooms, and more, which would come to be known as “Jim Crow” laws.
1898
“We are organizing ourselves together as a race of people who feel that they have been wronged.” - Callie House
Callie House and Isaiah Dickerson created a member-based mutual aid organization that pushed Congress to pass legislation that would deliver reparations to the formerly enslaved.
1909
I cannot help wondering sometimes what I might have become and might have done if I had lived in a country which had not circumscribed and handicapped me on account of my race, that had allowed me to reach any height I was able to attain." - Mary Church Terrell
A multiracial group of civil rights leaders, including Ida B. Wells, Mary Church Terrell, W.E.B DuBois, and Mary White Ovington, founded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, dedicated to championing equal rights and eliminating racial prejudice.”
1919
“The Great Fire is going to burn the city they built / and we will watch from the stone tower / and we will wait for it to finish / and we can wait a long time / and the Fire can too.” - Eve Ewing
During a period marked by a significant rise in white supremacist terrorism, Black individuals faced heightened racial violence. This era, known as the “Red Summer,” saw thousands of Black people being brutally attacked and lynched in cities across the nation.
1921
“Please, do not let me leave this Earth without justice, like all the other massacre survivors.” - Hughes Van Ellis
A violent white mob engaged in a two-day riot and burned down and terrorized the Black neighborhood of Greenwood, one of the most thriving Black communities in the United States.
1957
“Most of our people don’t know who they are. They don’t know they think in European. They don’t have a mind of their own. They got to get their right mind back.” - Audley (Queen Mother) Moore
On behalf of the Universal Association of Ethiopian Women, Audley (Queen Mother) Moore presented a petition to the United Nations calling for repatriation to Africa (for those who wanted) and $200 billion for the injury as the result of enslavement.
1964
“We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” - Martin Luther King Jr.
Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, ending segregation in public places and employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin.
1968
“This revolution isn’t designed to avoid, to reform or to collaborate with white supremacy and imperialism but to destroy these evils.” - Chokwe Lumumba
Alongside dozens of other Black nationalists, Faidi and Imari Obadele founded the Republic of New Afrika with the goal of creating an independent Black country in the Southeastern United States, securing reparations for African people, and the choice of whether to become citizens of the United States.
1969
“We recognize that in issuing this manifesto we must prepare for a long range educational campaign in all communities of this country, but we know that the Christian churches have contributed to our oppression in white America.” - The Black Manifesto
James Forman, the former Executive Secretary of the Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), disrupted a service at The Riverside Church in New York City. There, he read the Black Manifesto, a document formulated at the National Black Economic Development Conference in Detroit, which demanded $500 million in reparations from white churches and synagogues.
1987
“To see reparations as only a remedy for the wrongs of slavery is to not only weaken the ability to build the movement, it is a fiction that supports blaming us totally for our current status in the United States.” - Adjoa A. Aiyetoro
The National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America held its founding meeting on September 26, 1987, with the goal of broadening the base for the reparations movement and to win full reparations for Black African Descendants residing in the United States and its territories.
1988
“On behalf of the federal government, President Ronald Reagan gave the entire Japanese American population a meaningful apology. In that one act alone, we learned that our democracy is resilient enough to right a wrong.” - Norman Y. Mineta
Congress passed the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, which provided formal recognition of the unlawful incarceration of Japanese-Americans during World War II, issued a formal apology, created a public education fund, and provided monetary reparations to those whose lives had been damaged and civil liberties trampled on.
1989
“ In January 1989, I first introduced the bill H.R. 40, Commission to Study Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act. I have re-introduced HR 40 every Congress since 1989 and will continue to do so until it’s passed into law.” - Rep. John Conyers
John Conyers, a Congressman from Detroit, introduced the first piece of federal legislation that would provide recommendations for remedies for slavery and subsequent racial discrimination against Black people.
1994
“During my lifetime, I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.” - Nelson Mandela
After spending 27 years in jail, many of them in isolation, Nelson Mandela, a leader in South Africa’s anti-apartheid movement and key figure in the African National Congress, won the country’s first-ever democratic elections in which all South Africans could vote.
1994
“I will say for me, as a descendant and a grandchild, I’m grateful because it was able to help me finish my degree, and, as a single parent, it allowed me to send two more to school.” - Natasha Twiggs
Seventy years after the deadly massacre in the Black community of Rosewood in 1923, the state of Florida passed legislation that created a $2 million reparations fund and tuition-free scholarship program for descendants of the massacre.
2001
“I am human because you are human. My humanity is caught up in yours. If you are dehumanized, then I am dehumanized.” - Desmond Tutu
The United Nations hosted a conference in Durban, South Africa, where member nations adopted the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action, a framework that emphasized the duty of states to repair the harms of colonialism and slavery.
2013
“The pain was unimaginable. Of all the possibilities, I could not conceive that something as ordinary as a walk from the local 7-Eleven would end in my son’s death.” - Sybrina Fulton
George Zimmerman, the man who killed Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old Black child walking home, was acquitted of second-degree murder and manslaughter. The acquittal spurred the #BlackLivesMatter movement, which has since grown to be one of the largest Black political movements of the 21st century.
2014
“Reparations would mean a revolution of the American consciousness, a reconciling of our self-image as the great democratizer with the facts of our history.” - Ta-Nehisi Coates
Writer Ta-Nehisi Coates, a former National Correspondent for The Atlantic, published an essay titled “The Case for Reparations.” The article goes on to become an internationally recognized piece of work due to its powerful storytelling that makes a strong case for reparations to Black people for slavery and subsequent discrimination.
2015
Our stories need to be told. This curriculum needs to be taught because people need to know what happened.” - Gregory Banks
In 2015, after a years-long campaign launched by survivors, families, and grassroots organizers, the city of Chicago passed the ‘Reparations for Burge Torture Victims’ ordinance. This ordinance compelled the city to provide monetary reparations, issue a formal apology, provide waived tuition for city colleges, modify the curriculum in Chicago public schools, and establish a public monument.
2019
“We decided to take this first step. Not perfect, not complete, certainly a first step, but we said yes to reparations, and yes to repair.” - Robin Rue Simmons
The City of Evanston, Illinois, passed a resolution that established the “City of Evanston Reparations Fund and the Reparations Subcommittee” and committed $10 million from local marijuana revenue to fund local reparations efforts.
2020
“Daddy changed the world.” - Gianna Floyd
A Black man named George Floyd was handcuffed and choked to death by police officers in broad daylight, sparking the largest multiracial wave of global protests against police brutality and anti-Blackness the world has ever seen.
2020
“The effects of 400 years of compounding governmental and private acts of racial violence and discrimination described in this report have resulted in disparities between African American and white Californians in almost every corner of life.” - California Reparations Taskforce
California passed legislation that created the ‘Task Force to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals, with a Special Consideration for African Americans Who are Descendants of Persons Enslaved in the United States.” The nine member taskforce held hearings, public testimonies, and issued its final report and recommendations to the California legislature in 2023.