Reparations
“We’re talking about reparation. It should be in something like this. Because they really destroyed a community.”
What do you think of when Cliff says the word “reparation”? Do you think of the phrase "forty acres and a mule"?
This phrase goes back to the Civil War, when in 1865 Union General Sherman declared Field Order No. 15. This military order identified eighteen-hundred thousand acres of land to be redistributed to newly freed slaves.
After Sherman’s order, forty-acre land plots were given out to more than 40,000 free Black families across the coasts of Georgia and South Carolina. The families began to set up agricultural communities on these lands, starting new lives for themselves after generations of enslavement. Many of the communities even formed their own systems of government.
But then, six months later, President Andrew Johnson reversed Sherman's order. The army took the land back and the families were forced to leave.
Today, Cliff joins many activists, policy experts and scholars in agreement that not providing Black Americans with land after the war was a crucial mistake--one that continues to haunt the country’s record on racial equity.
What do you think of when Cliff says the word “reparation”? Do you think of the phrase "forty acres and a mule"?
This phrase goes back to the Civil War, when in 1865 Union General Sherman declared Field Order No. 15. This military order identified eighteen-hundred thousand acres of land to be redistributed to newly freed slaves.
After Sherman’s order, forty-acre land plots were given out to more than 40,000 free Black families across the coasts of Georgia and South Carolina. The families began to set up agricultural communities on these lands, starting new lives for themselves after generations of enslavement. Many of the communities even formed their own systems of government.
But then, six months later, President Andrew Johnson reversed Sherman's order. The army took the land back and the families were forced to leave.
Why does Cliff bring up reparations now, 150 years later? In reality, the economic impact of slavery, Jim Crow, racist housing policy, and most recently practices of predatory lending have led to a deeply inequitable country. Making the game of “catch up” is extraordinarily difficult. Some might even suggest the system is rigged. Conversations about reparations continue today. In a recent article in The Atlantic, for example, Ta-Nehisi Coates details the history of global reparations and the need for them in the United States.
Today, Cliff joins many activists, policy experts and scholars in agreement that not providing Black Americans with land after the war was a crucial mistake--one that continues to haunt the country’s record on racial equity.
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