BackStory; Paying for the Past: Reparations and American History

major funding for backstory is provided by an anonymous donor the national endowment for the humanities and the justice and rubber cornell memorial foundation so regional unity welcome to back story so explains the history behind today's headlines amazing collie a manners and i'm bryan bell if you're new to the podcast oral historians and each week along with a colleague joint freeman we explore the history of one topic that's been in the news last month students at georgetown university accomplish something unprecedented player at a small fee to pay the descendents of slaves sold by the university in the nineteenth century in nineteen thirty eight georgetown the nation's oldest catholic and jazz were university sold two hundred and seventy two enslaved people the payoff to schools that this group is not a campus today as did she you to seventy two and now

more than a header seventy five years after the sale status of the school have approved a fun to benefit g u to seventy two descendents i thought was how do we make people care about this so we decided that people care when they're asked to invest most on shore cologne just finished her sophomore year georgetown she's a descendent of two families from the jew you to seventy two as attending the university as a non traditional student in her sixties she helped organize the student advocacy group that created the details for the referendum every student coming to georgetown university well pay an additional twenty seven dollars and twenty cents today air to wish it we decided to make it twenty seven dollars and twenty cents which symbolically represents the original two hundred and seventy two people who were

chosen to be sold out and that money will go into law find that will be collected by the university but dispersed by a board of directors made up of the descendants and students so we can form partnerships to help the descendant community in ways beyond what the university has offered chug along says that if every other grad student pays twenty seven dollars and twenty cents per semester that comes out to about four hundred thousand dollars each year but just because the state has passed the referendum doesn't guarantee the reparations will happen now the measure goes the university's board of directors if it's approved it will be the first reparations policy at a major american institution the university's position is pretty much we're proud

of you but we're not obligated or bound to do any of that so we'll see what happens of course we're sure that there will be a conversation about it but the boy is not obligated to act on the referendum immediately either the vote the referendum doesn't get the green light from the board shark along says she's proud of the africa seeking to work getting the word out on campus with nearly fifty eight percent turnout it was the highest recorded participation in a georgetown center election and voting day shore column says there was an invigorating energy radiate throughout university ah the campus but we have press spread out across the front of the school people were talking and people were voting we had a rally in red square we were passing out yes i voted button spent is very excited well

it did it take for all the boats to come in the votes came to me it was a twenty four hour window i say and god bless these children all they had to do was opened their computer and vote you know i left everybody probably around eight o'clock and unlike a ceo mater and i like it can innovate through partying on a lake the nea got to be around ten o'clock and thirty i was exhausted so i went to sleep and i was like ok find out about this in the morning but when i was in kiev so i'm not out sleep in one fifteen my telephone rings i answered the phone hello and oh i can hear me me you know

you're in it and that was it so then i had to go and i had to look at the emails and everything that was coming and i was happy and i think i cried a little bit and said thank you to my ancestors and i went back to sleep so were the people who spoke against it yes there were some people who opposed the referendum the opposition felt like it was not the responsibility of the georgetown students it is the responsibility of the administration's allies is a valid point that the administration has yet to make swift action as the advocacy team opposition was qu se university of nuts to see if there were no students year there would be no university and this sale

and enslavement of our families was also for the university and for the students so people come to georgetown university from all over the world are voluntarily because there is something to receive here that will make their lives better we're a class of students we're four classes of students or starting something that will be an encounter to georgetown university for years to come and it is more lasting then tulips the senate plan is not to spend four hundred thousand dollars a year but today that car that into an endowment yes this will be an ongoing process that cements the descendant community and the student body for the next one hundred eighty years so that

in a three hundred sixty years we were all had been able to institute a complete circle of chain chain from inflating and selling people for the benefit of an institution to investing in a common cause for the future today's digital restoration authority on college campuses democratic presidential contenders like elizabeth warren and tom what parents come out in favor of some kind of compensation for centuries revelations of a complicated often contentious issues there's also a lively discussion about how governments can

compensate for focusing on reparations for african americans specifically the african americans in florida got compensation from the destruction we'll also discuss how the slave respond to racial wealth gap that shapes the lives of millions of americans today we wouldn't even be talking about reparations today if it wasn't for kelly house in the late nineteenth century at how large the first mass reparations movement led by african americans house was a remarkable woman and here you have somebody who was a slave who only way out to education and the what we call the elementary grades we're fat mother was a washer woman and she in fact was a washer woman herself and yet she ends up having enough vision

to start a hit a pinch of movement for people like original deal people who had been slaves and ten when there was no social security mary frances berry is a historian at the university of pennsylvania an expert on telly house and to do it as a woman at a tire and aunt the late nineteenth century when men did not run organizations deadhead men and women and this is in she's just in comprehensible in a way and so we're unique and took so many risks and was so courageous did you see anything in her early life or young adulthood that might have shaped her activism tell a house was sitting in church and heard the preacher and this white man who come to that was to bomb come through and talk about people ought to join an organization that he head that was going to get pensions for the old ex

slaves and as you listen to what he said she thought didn't make any sense because first of all i don't know eyes go do that but if he can do that then we could just do that ourselves or we don't need him to come around signing up people and collect dues and there was a black man who was working with him she start talking to him about how to do this so she said oh we should just do it ourselves why don't we end she remembered that when she was in school they read the constitution and he said the cost of the constitution ellen seidman they're about to ship she said the titian in your government not petition thought we conclusion about mass out so she asked him how did they go about doing this and he said well they've said they'd paid members of congress to introduce bills they've

had lawyers look to do is they collected and what you do is you ask the congress whether they will in fact give pensions to all people and that is how she got started thinking about it so why is that in the modern moment more contemporary moment when people talk about reparations one of the things that they say is that you don't have people who are being compensated who directly experienced slavery so it makes it very muddy and murky to imagine any kind of compensation it wouldn't go directly to those who suffered the most profound grievance according to a moment in the late nineteenth century were those as you describe it for literally bearing the welds in the scars of the masters slash are themselves demanding some kind of reparations and it did give me some sense about what the mass movement you're describing that kelly houses organizing is looking like how does the movie itself really begin to pick up steam well

she traveled around baghdad hammer children were old enough that the older ones could take your the other ones cause her husband dad so she was able to leave nasa she traveled around on trains and on places they collect dues that sense whatever people head and they saw they use the money to support this movement in the transportation the other thing she did which people very much appreciated as she traveled around she had people who could write sam their names to these petitions air and to the people who couldn't write some ale to reddit for an error she said i'm going to collect the names of everybody who was a slave so that if they air mcgillis anything somebody can look back here and see you the people were there were chapters of this six les pension movement not just in those cells but there were also chapters in the north there was a chapter in new york there were chapters in ohio there are chapters out of the black towns that were

chapters everywhere they were in a black folk who had been slaves there were chapters of this abyss of movement and so it was a nationwide now the pension girl we get very concerned about the what they were doing in all the meetings and they said to you know we we have to go and do something about this moment has this woman is dangerous she i mean she has eased these minerals thinking that somebody is going to give them something for their work and we know another give them if they want to go do it if that happened would i'd given them anything so we need to stop or anna treks know the federal government prosecutes kelly house and basically dragged into court and i'm curious what their argument was in the case against her right it was the most heartbreaking and frivolous argument and they said dad bob

we're going to go after her for fraud and we're going to say bad what is a fraud at the time at a time when she knew i should have known that the federal government would never give those negroes anything she went out organizing negroes to try to get something and so therefore there's fraud ah she went out organizing people and sending petitions to congress and hiring lawyers and arguing in the public forum the public square that these negro should get a pension and she should've known that we were never really have an affection and so she was misleading these negroes and they were gullible and she might have been trying to make some money out of it cause he might've been collecting the dues to make him rich or self but the fraud was she should have known that the government would never give them anything and so she should've been telling them that they should try to get something

where there's different agencies that were collaborating with us yes the pension they're all was the agency with its lawyers of that work out more abstract and her instantly undercover be people and then the justice department was the litigation arm of doing this bringing this litigation and when they are it was the success of her movement the fact that they kept growing and their letters that they can't get them from these folks in the community is a way folks saying you know we don't know what the negroes are going to do you know whatever whatever that they decided to go after them because you just can't get bigger and bigger and bigger and they said we can't control it and saw all day put together this litigation strategy accused of that charged her in the federal district court in nashville obviously with an all white male majority are and they walk to the court and they told the court that she had no chapters that this was just something

she made up that there really wasn't any organization she had just pretended she had an organization now the court of course convicted her and on the day that they convicted her all these black people came down to the court and the press reported that they were out to singing and crying and lamentation that it was a grape say ad displayed by all the black people who came from miles around to be there to try to support her and they convicted her and they sent her off to prison in jefferson city missouri where the women were sent and those days this is what happened to the wider reparations movement while kelley houses incarcerated and isn't any sense at all that there are those rare caravan or even if she might not be on the streets well i found that the boat that continued while she was in prison and when she get out

ah she was not involve but it continued when she got out of prison she was sick and shortly after that she bad in some places the chapters became garvey chapters marcus garvey chapters because marty lurie support of reparations i and in other places they kept their name i in atlanta for example i have a picture one of the people at the atlanta chapter they would collect money and go out and help other poor negroes as a mission that they kept up while they were there and other places all around the country where there are chapters babe they just continued on you can trace from then all the way up to be a modern reparations movement with organizations like and cobra and all the rest of them that exist you have people who came out of all those movements and have simply just perpetuated there because since that time so

it didn't back as a result of them getting her it it inhibited the move that far but the movie did that what little the things that is just so incredible about this story i mean you're you're actually describing somebody in cali house really is an architect for what becomes a longer deeper streams of black nationalism through the twentieth century so one organization literally is morphing into another one i mean you have this key precursor to the garden movement as we know the guardian would become a foundational enough to franco role but also for members of the nation of islam and there are obviously other forms of black nationalism coming out of that and yet with all that we know about people like malcolm x and marcus garvey and certainly in other activists across the south like the king and rosa parks kelly houses as you know better than most is relatively unknown i'm curious about what your research helps explain why he's so overlooked the first thing is that we have a paradigm about what different periods of black history are supposed to be

about a trip and we still think that the late nineteenth century and early twentieth centuries is about the bb and booker t ah had no matter what you say it at the club where man rice and her work in another's pushed them in the obit about basically is it still book web and also at a time when we were are pointing to great off first album negroes mainly it'll first to get educated first to do this scenario that issue was is barely educated woman who in many ways for the elites would be an embarrassment you know ah and yet here she is up speak and it you know people in big groups and gone around churches talking to people and have people believing in horror and being an honest person

who is able to do this and i have three hundred thousand dues paying members that's more than any other black organization that many have made members now you know bought a lot too is just quite extraordinary but she does not fit the story line of what black history supposed to be and also so many people don't believe in reparations or to do believe it at their of black people they're afraid to talk about it so bad so she was about pensions which convert to reparations then that means that it is black nationalism which some people think that we should talk about or that that's not really a theme we should be you know interested in so you have an effort on telly houses are too really document who exactly was enslaved where they

were their experiences obviously going to be critical to any reparations movement i'm curious about how we might be able to build directly on kelly houses labor and that of her organization which is namely to say to take the actual membership lists that were compiled by the national ex slave associations in the various chapters and begin a very concrete discussion about reparation that if we could and what would that look like well when somebody needs to go at tell people you should go down to the national archives and look at those lists yourself and find your fork i'm fat other people spoke that's a first aid bet you should do and then after you do that somebody should trace maybe wanting organizations should trace all of these people's names of the year if you fall reparations ever come to paris there is an argument for a policy that gives something to we descend slave

descendants i called the american slave descendants are that ugh what are not there on that list because she was unable to put everybody all the list that was the goal but she didn't achieve that ah but there's no reason why you can't start with people's names on there and say well ok we're not going to try to you know give her by one by one hundred dollars or whatever it is medea but at least these people we know and unless you what we do for the larger group of people mary frances berry is geraldine are siegel professor of american social thought at the universe in pennsylvania she's also the author of my face is black is true kelley house and the struggle for ex slave operations in

those years thirty or a sam ste lizzy jenkins was just five years old when her mother told her about the family's connection to rosewood my mom was a great scholar which were the equivalent to a phd my mom wasn't afraid of a day and just like it and it was a story passed down to her mother emma hold a dusty brown carrier a family member who lived through the tragic events unfolded in the first week of nineteen twenty three the most important thing she wanted was for me to their dictate what people have been saying she does not want the history forgotten she does not want to re key make sure i inform everybody keep it alive rosen was situated near the gold coast of florida about fifty miles southwest of gainesville was an african

american community with all the trappings of a typical southern town and for a half century the people of rosewood live to stay peaceful existence but in nineteen twenty three the community was thrown into racial turmoil by a false accusation one was common during the jim crow era it all started when a white woman from the neighboring town of summer claimed a black man had assaulted or dane taylor the wife was having an faa air america one when she was married to him with one side and then we had this and they he was he and i think he wanted to take a break does our relationship and the young man she was keeping company with a white lover did not want to add a fight ensued as a result she ended up like blew away bruised and she

had to explain to her husband what happened to her on this particular morning she needed an excuse and that is the same for her to say when he got home and saw her the bruises interface she said to him i was assaulted by a black man he became furious he was enraged so he made contact with the man at the workplace that worked for him a white man and told beyond what she said happened allegedly happened and of course they too became enraged because a black man touching a white woman bag liane was an unpardonable say in by sheer coincidence the kkk and held a rally in gainesville the day before and as word of the assaults bread james taylor again an army of angry white

men at his disposal so the kkk other mom was already in gainesville already fired up ridicule anything but i think that in their way so he invited them to some there and of course they came in a newspaper say approximately four to five hundred monsters came to some there are to help good scale or catch the person who assaulted his wife lizzie's as hostilities were also driven by personal feud between james taylor and sylvester carrier so that's a carrier what the world would rather than that didn't play anything my mom stayed but actually how people's so it was a hostile he was not hostile he broke he was protective of his women okay he hated james taylor and james taylor hated him self against iran this was an opportune time for

him to get even with sylvester on the second day tensions culminated in a deadly shootout <unk> had descended on a rosewood in pursuit of service a carrier targeting a house where he was rumored to be staying low that they know sylvester was armed and ready so when they got to the house and what they didn't realize the best i had recruited he is near his cousins and fires to be the itunes and it did help him fight and they were they're hidden in the dark when they came here they were met with gunfire because if i say they did poorly wilkerson who was a deputy sheriff deputized it's out there and he named rose i hate her mother graders they were so bold they walk in and kick the door in then his mom lived in any

state and when they did he shot think he'll both of a like i was in the house in all of the women had gathered there because that was like aw a place where the wind when there was trouble in the community they went to a series house because she was a like a pillar of the community and they talked they were talking to find out what was going on so we would be in that house and children so they yelled after he killed all still and they were shooting in the house too somebody in the house say it's there's been shot that most of this was mom and they said that they yelled out to aaron i shoot every nation and they started shooting and it was more a whitening healed then those two no no banging old account but they were killed and the women inside house heard them yelling all hell i'm here help with at least two dead and many more injured the lynch mob staggered back to

summer in defeat but the suit reassembled it for the next few days hundreds of whites rampaged rosewood as black residents escaped with the help of sheriff bob walker the sheriff ward lamon say ninety six hours straight in an effort to get them out of roles would say annie he worked hard with the train conductor's in siddiqi he made them he pleaded in all of them told him no no no bob we can not jeopardize the lives of our family by getting involved how elmo on day every inmate dave barry that bryson brothers from brighton they'll say mom will help you but it has to be after me night or in the morning so on day four early morning between forty five

the train came from the stack and rosewood the mean women and children and elderly hiding out and many of them and said john wright house and in his mind in his store here now until the train that rosewood by the end of the week all of rosewood had been burned to the ground while the incident made national news at the time it soon faded from public memory so for the next seven years the story of rosewood was kept alive in the hearts and minds of the surviving families this latest secret because they did not want the whites did not want the truth be known that they had lost the battle ok they were embarrassed they wanted to be known as this then that would tell you this

the fire dna is next week decades later in nineteen ninety two steven hanlon was looking for a new place to take on as the head of the pro bono division at the large law firm in florida he only had two criteria and one was the wonderful index and the other was impossible indexing of the real high on a lot of those that i was really interested in that than rosewood you know one of the charts on both of those in the early nineteen nineties a man named michael or mccarthy reached out to you about a potential case can you explain who he was and how we introduce you to the rosewood massacre my golden oldie mccarthy it was awful deed her book claimed that he

had signed up the last two survivors of a rosewood massacre brenda davis in miami and many the langley in jacksonville and they are above made and geeks came into my office one day and telling me that story that he'd signed up the last two survivors of the rules would massacre and that he tried to sell that story in hollywood with they said it really needs lawsuits over that you know we can have a conflict in the end the nineties instead of in the twenties and they're so russo that's why he won the don't own movie and i didn't have an interest in a mormon interest in the case so i went down with him we met raymond davis in miami and schumer is strong and impressive woman and then i went over to jackson well and met many the langley and that's when i knew

i wanted to take it because she was literally says while most remarkable people around the lives she vividly remembers what happened and see as a kid we really compelling story to kill so slightly sounds like she was really instrumental in convincing you take it on and i'm curious what your sense of was of the challenges of the case just as it was outlined in the law in other words what was to your mind such an impossibility about a case of the rules would want the roots of america's so witnesses diane in or disappeared and i knew that we would have no chance in a court state or federal but i didn't you know from previous experience in litigation about the process and for her this call it claims bill then live several grounds for such a claim in one of those that the

state has a moral obligation to pay somebody something and i thought that was a great legal test that sounds like i can make that one you're my clients witnesses through and prosecuted merge and the state had an obligation to restore my constant justice compensate them for what then lost interest or their land to them and prosecute them bring to justice individuals involved and it statements of the governor was specifically on notice of what was about to happen in their town and crammed with all the klan and everyone else around you know about that but i think my recollection six days in advance and it was while finding and then nobody ever prosecuted so demolition in

nineteen twenty three thirty three forty three don't have differences with their soul there was a theory of the basic theory of voters the roads were hearing was open to the public paint a picture for me in terms of what the scene looked like when you arrived at the capitol building on the first day of here well there were hundreds of people that were in those large capital building and there was a stage in front of their worm live to hearing officers in myself and my wife opponent jim peters of our witnesses had tables and a traditional courtroom scene in court there was the national and international press we all walk over the heavy police security and were russian him

back for a work by opposing counsel jim peters an estimated i can and talk of these foxes of question and he did and it was very gracious about it and he told me it was rather than in and out but even he had an obligation to defend the state well throughout the whole process you were careful to use the term compensation instead of reparation why would you think the difference is there for full compensation as a word that's used in the specialty soul i want a money saying well we don't hear them if i say reparations and say well when i was searching for a parisian salon for compensation and you honestly compensation but we'll have a censored for your heaviness or compensation but everybody knew what was going on was there was reparations another word john peters and the defense lawyer representing the state

where some of his arguments against compensation well you tried to censor limitations were you know that don't work because there's no special editions on capital murder ok so i thought that that are evident over it for those have dug up some witnesses somewhere ok to testify will the black peoples as they belong to do it and there was kind of silly but it is all here you know food plus a complaint that in all these urban for government officials and another to defend themselves and that's not that's unfortunate but it's not a legal argument that would work in a very difficult job to do and he did it with dignity and after many leve langley went on she was first i mean that you could hurt him ralph when she testified in i mean she's right there was still the streaker right inside the front door and he's got his left arm around

her is that is shot them on a new threat in any form and the vote was left in america are smoking breaks through the door and sylvester his loathing away and then a second deputy counsel and so western was him away and milling is here to tell that story says just stunning that story i always knew she was currently in name only and witness so in spite of how long it was in terms of years between the initial again and the case being heard on the rosewood built in fact pass in nineteen ninety four the rosewood bill stipulated that elderly survivors who experience a massacre would receive a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in a five hundred thousand dollar fund would be set up for the families and descendents who could prove that they lost property to defusing that this was a fair amount well the key

question is that i had a doctor because he was the leader on the family and him you know i went on for two more these folks live i went in there and the church's sunday n o and then the one thing i said was you what it is from early on really ask for money you know we'll just low moral or plaque alice but careful what you asked for goes money and families do not belong well together and it's present problems and because no amount of money could compensate these people for what had been taken away from them but this was the first time this was the first time so you know when you're the first one that goes through the wall in order to get as much as the next person soul when the that was announced ornette and i were alone a capitol building

and he found out what their that that number on that selma and he went through the roof and it's an always looked at it and i said well you know think about your nine and i'll think about overnight and what's and talk a month and tomorrow and we went out for lunch the next day and asinine that you are back there until i'm no deal if you wanted to work on martin do that and to uganda honestly bayer's word until your article there is that they get there and fifty thousand dollars i'm only after lunch is the new normal or if you go back and tell you tell so and then that's a result of the money nothing to survivors nothing they get to that serves it into their adherence etc as for the five hundred thousand dollar fund

lissy says the bill made it difficult for descendants to prove their family's connections to rosewood but to harm it was more about recognition in compensation some thought that two or three hundred dollars but to them it's a day we did you well how large haul it and helping with the family trees because it ought to get cause at you had to show proof that you were connected i were doing the la hard on my family tree i do not get one k through but i was rewarded in a way as a reward it i was happy to know that we accomplished respect and recognition you did was wrong you need to pay i think it's important to recognize people you destroy get there there may and their home their

property i think they need to be paid we hear in the united states three other people that we destroy their property and everybody gets paid extra by people we are not paid for anything this country basically was built on i'm not ancestors mohsen shoulders and blood soaked is reparation is a small token of appreciation very small and i think more people need to stay up for and require day it will compensate and i can't do it by myself i'm afraid to talk about rosewood and present it in it they are still afraid to go to road wouldn't tell me how creative and i go to sit on the porch is in cedar key i came to watch the white people as snack time that a train lizzy jenkins is a retired schoolteacher and the founder and president of the real

rosewood foundation steven hanlon also help tell that story he's a retired public interest lawyer currently serving as general counsel for the national association for public defense right right right church merchant i think the entire trajectory of how racial economic inequality has evolved in the united states with them completely altered had the initial land allocation been made to the formerly enslaved this is william darity is an expert on the racial wealth gap and he studied wealth inequality for

decades here he is talking about a policy from eighteen sixty five known as forty acres and a mule my suspicion as that we would not have this conversation or need a conversation about reparations of all and the initial order been implemented before the end of the civil war general william sherman's issued an order that promised ex slaves a large swath of coastal land the planned from northern florida all the way up into south carolina each family would be given up to forty acres to farm and build anew prosperous life this designation was made and actually executed up to the point where upwards of i believe four thousand slaves families were settled on the lands but the lands were subsequently taken from them and returned to the slave holders or the former slave holders by andrew johnson this shake the

foundations for racial wealth inequality in the united states a foundation that is experienced today in a quite dramatic fashion perhaps it's the most extreme expression of economic inequality between blacks and whites in the united states of any other measure that's available to us can you share with us your knowledge about what happened to some of these self formerly enslaved people that had their land stripped from them it could've had implications not only for opportunities to engage in farming but also other kinds of possibilities that a future point including real estate development including the prospect of establishing rental properties for retail activity some of the in the land that was initially allocated to the formerly enslaved on the islands along the

coast of south carolina and georgia has become some of the most treasured recreational property is in the united states today hilton head island and the like you know we would have had a very different kind of flow of potential for black economic development have to have the forty acres actually been delivered and what we haven't stirred was wealth the operation yet in spite of all the barriers and they range from lynching to the chest terror average americans were able to acquire land of their own could you give us a sense of the scope the number of african americans how much land they owned and what some of the barriers they faced war in the aftermath of the reconstruction where the formerly enslaved community in the south managed

to acquire upwards of fifteen million acres of land by dint of their own effort and actually their high levels of motivation that fifteen million acres of land was black owned property at the start of the twenty twenty a century in the course of the first sixty to seventy years of the twentieth century that land was seized appropriated owners were driven off of the land and as you mentioned in some instances the owners were alleged as a mechanism for taking over their property and so by the time we get into the nineteen eighties the best estimate is about one million acres of song land was still in the hands of black americans so this is a dramatic change and was a dramatic change that was associated with state essentially a white terror campaign

for the purposes of wealth stripping of the property themselves by blacks let's talk economics explain to us in simple terms why land is so crucial to wealth accumulation well i always like to say that you know she had an acre of land of manhattan you probably wouldn't have to bother asking that question but obviously properties and other parts of the country are typically not as valuable as the land in manhattan but i do want to emphasize that the value of land is not exclusively weight to the purposes of farming that land is significant because it's the site on which we engage in virtually all of our commercial activities as well as being the sites where we have residences

and so as a consequence ownership of land that can be transformed into a variety of purposes gives you a significant foundation for wealth yes i think one of the ridges landholders in the united states is probably ted turner and i think somebody is estimated at some stage that ted turner's landholdings or one quarter of all of the land that help collectively by black americans so when people get wrong in their understanding or a lack of understanding of the racial wealth gap maybe it might be helpful to illustrate how larger issue of governance as a starting point here so if you were to look at the middle black household and the little white households in the united states you would find that the little black household had a net worth it's estimated at seventeen thousand six hundred dollars and the metal

white house will would have learned that worse estimated eight hundred seventy one thousand dollars and so at the median or at the middle of the distributions for each group of black households have about ten cents to the dollar or that sold by white house so i think the days saying that folks get most wrong is related to the perception of blacks as being dysfunctional and the united states and i i mean specifically black americans who are descendants of folks who were enslaved in the united states so one specific is is an observation that frequently is made that the racial wealth gap is a consequence of educational differences between blacks and whites there's no evidence to support this in fact black heads of household with a college degree have two thirds of the net worth of white heads of household never finished high school while that's one argument the second argument we frequently hears that the racial wealth gap has

consequences of family structure differences between blacks and why it's a complex have less stable families more female headed families and that explains why this gap exists in fact white families worse a single parent actually have more than two times the wealth of black families with two parents another argument has frequently made is that it must be because black folks are two prof levitt the widow save enough or spent first but if you look at the systematic evidence on savings behavior you find that if you take into account households income level whites actually spend one point three times as much as blacks and i think that that's pending differential was facilitated by the fact that whites have greater levels of wealth the foundation for the wealth gap in my estimation has to be intergenerational transmission effects that black parents black grandparents have far fewer resources and far less so the

capacity to provide financial support for the subsequent generations because of their own experiences and being deprived of wealth are being stripped of wealth let me ask about the biggest myth about reparations want without pay the thing about notes here and the science of arguments against one of the statements as frequently made is that there are no living victims so this is not something that should be should be bothered with at all it's absolutely true there are no direct living victims of some of enslavement in the united states however the case for reparations is not predicated exclusively on slavery and i i really recoil when people sometimes talk about slavery reparations the motivation for reparations program is actually three tears or phrases and justice and their cumulative consequences to the present moment so the

first phase it is slavery itself but then we have to take into account the jim crow period as well and also ongoing racism and discrimination the united states all those are things that have to be part of the compensation package well you're sadly away are there today a number of democratic candidates for president who are running are talking about reparations does this give you hope by there any specific plans that you think would make a good start he ain't carrying out operations i think that were actually it's a rather remarkable moment perhaps this is the first moment since the reconstruction or where major political candidates or even uttering the term reparations or having to respond to questions about what their position was on reparations so there's one candidate who has actually talked about a numerical

value and that is marianne williamson initially she talked about the restitution that would amount to about a hundred billion dollars and i think i immediately complying that that's almost poultry in terms of the best estimates i've seen of what the compensation should be as she's adjusted to say it should be between two hundred to five hundred billion dollars i am absolutely convinced that your minimum arrange estimates have to be in the trillions of dollars but she is the only one i'm aware of who's actually talked about an amount there's several candidates who have said that they are in support of the formation of the commission to study reparations and to develop a program of restitution and i think i'm personally very pleased with that that that seems like a critical step because i think it's essential as a prelude to the development of a full reparation to

program so to the extent that there are political candidates are saying that they're in favor of that step i think that this is eight for more positive moment than any other i've seen in my lifetime so professor gaddy you've referred to this positive moment we're at how do you explain how and why we've arrived at this moment i think it may be important because of a certain degree of ferment that has been generated organically from within black america where there is now an inclination on the part of a significant number of black americans to actually push presidential candidate to say where they stand on the reparations question that this is becoming more and more of a litmus test in terms of their commitment to the needs of black america william

darity is a professor of public policy african and african american studies and economics at duke university oh geez i'm not sure they consider just for a second the big long history of reparations and really how diverse different reparations claims are it might surprise us to hear the following clip from one of our most decorated twentieth century civil rights activists you do and the way the moment well

colleges it was really cool now we occasionally and again today so that was from nineteen sixty eight the mamas and king jr is the last formal political action as for the poor peoples campaign there were things are so powerful that the king quote is how much he reminds us that it is about repair

that mistakes or blindness is at the beginning may seem invisible out of sight when that the homestead act doesn't feel racial lies to her two white people when they're doing that but now anything that making amends for in those blind this is hass a somewhat repair rather than something positive and so it gets the language itself in some ways is pulling against that the sense of justice that king was talking about right to you to point out that there's no preparation without understanding what was damage and so it's not merely labor that was lost wealth that was not a crude but acts of the government that actively undercut average american effort at economic improvement so i think that the one way to think about this is that rather than making reparations just about all of the past little make it the government addressing things that the government had done in an earlier time it sees me that would kind of focus

that the debate in a way that people would have a clearer sense of just exactly what was a stay the line that i think was really just galvanizing for me was when you had the founder of rosewood foundation lizzy jenkins talking about it not being about compensation the recognition and in some ways this is not in any way to foreclose a discussion of financial payments or compensation but i do think there is something to be said about the need to at least begin a discussion that acknowledges that there was an immoral act that you know claim people's lives foreclose futures statue in when they did acquire it means a lot that can be done just that the level of reiterating a public facing way the history of slavery reconstruction and jim crow that simply has not happened i absolutely agree with you on that nathan but i would also add what i consider to be the other half of the obstacle which is paying reparations kind of acknowledge

is that we haven't closed the gap that we haven't made up for that history that you just referred to end the willingness to acknowledge the disadvantage that millions of americans face today because of x in the past is the other half of that calculation that in my opinion leads people to resist reparations now i disagree with that position but i think we have to confront both the history and the egg knowledge made their that history has produced the kinds of inequalities we face today before we can really effectively expect to win a reparations debate and part of this too is that this is not just one big sin that it's a series of thriller tells coping since you think about the georgetown to seventy two effort and what they're directing their money toward are the communities in louisiana where the descendants lived for so

long and doing things like providing eyeglasses for and that the people there who otherwise would have been you know if you think about this immoral set of hacks unfold across the entire landscape united states across the entire expanse of american history it's almost as if we need to take it apart before we can name each particular part of their morality so i think you know people in the twentieth century can look at housing market to realize that was across the entire united states they can look at school segregation but then a large part of the nation's history was imbedded in the south and not only slavery but then the century of segregation with the sanction of the state is also uniquely southern so in some ways the e think about to whom should reparation be paid and it's interesting for me to think about the georgetown example that they are paying it not only to individuals but to the communities where those individuals' lives and where they're this avengers are made manifest so some ways to understand the promise

is if we have to take it apart i gather that was what was so powerful that keen is he was taking apart and talking have very specific things that people did i think maybe there might be a way for people to comprehend exactly what the repairs are four and two yeah i would agree i mean it's impossible to compensate a family that was broken apart by the internal slave trade to compensate me turn that into a dollar amount how do you even talk about the you know hundreds of thousands of people who were say killed under terrorism then as you know went for reclaiming the south after the end of me construction is actually incalculable summer that i do appreciate someone like you know professor derek who was trying to take say the forty acres and you'll get a certain interest rate you know flash forties it does come with some kind of dollar amount but i do think as with any form of financial compensation is largely going to be symbolic in and i do think that the symbolism is something that we have a very hard time

wrestling with and grappling with and i wonder if one of things about this moment now relative to electoral politics is actually about that symbolism and we know how you know political parties have used phrases the idea of a nascar dad or the silent majority or the welfare queen a million people speak in symbolic terms all the time when they're trying to mobilize different parts of the electorate that and i wonder if one of the challenges here is that you would have in your mind you know a kind of faint or you know the image of the black family that is simply going to get quote unquote the check in the mail and that is not something that everybody can really get behind is now rallying cry or a symbol that really helps animate people in twenty twenty or twenty twenty four what have you nathan i certainly hope that we're not going to have to choose between getting the history right and financial compensation i hope that we can have both of them together but i'd love for you to elaborate on a genuine concern

that sometimes stroking it shaq care and make it seem like we've resolved the whole problem and we don't really have to talk about it anymore yeah i mean and this is not even an abstract a philosophical debate i mean when you look at the politics of the nineteen eighties and nineties when people were asking for affirmative action it should be censured for the record that affirmative action is in many ways an effort to redress history when it was first concession out what the opposing affirmative action would say things like you guys got the civil rights act and the voting rights act you have nothing left to say you know no other claims to make there's no other argument one can make about inequality mean it literally was the argument about telling people to stay quiet because they got something from the government in major legislation and and i have to imagine anything that would be formally identified as you know on the nose way as reparations would have as one of the consequence is the same assumption that if you get something from us by way of redress or compensation that that means in return we get her

silence about the history about further claims in the present day and that's always a very dangerous proposition to find oneself it because i think one of the most powerful relationships that african americans have to the country is a claim on his history as a claim to the founding as a claim to the prosperity it's a claim to the workings of the evolution of democracy you know certainly it on your cultural claims of political claims and economic claims all bounded together that is all way in which i think people would be much more inclined to vacate its them guarantee that you know black folk would be quiet about the past in ways that don't fit a mainstream vision that they be very much inclined to just give a kind of token gesture the end and call it reparations in the meantime so in that regard it would look almost like a private legal settlement with a non disclosure act included absolutely absolutely for anybody i also would say to him you know there's something that i think you know ed mentioned that the housing issue in the twentieth

century and then it's easier for that then maybe this way reassure the american century but i do think there are ways that we could absolutely reverse engineer some of the most discriminatory practices twentieth century and to simply say like look we're going to concentrate resources in areas that are concentrated african american poverty and institutions that historically moved against admitting people of african americans into their you know an education institutions are no employment situations in the like there are ways where we can concentrate and think through mass incarceration evasions and in all of these all these are so concentrated and identifiable public health outcomes we can give you increase spending to areas that are suffering from diabetes and high blood pressure again on poverty recently correlate but there are ways to think about isolating the variables of race geographically that could be part of a reparations policy but again it would require a level of intentionality that would

also then require building in moving the political apparatus through congress necessarily to get to do that it is a historic have to be heartened by the fact that history doesn't really fade away and the significance of things that we're talking about are not the things of just most proximate to us in time but things that are most foundational slavery reconstruction segregation those things are not just gonna fade away with the passage of time appears instead they come back and you guys is so you know those of us who think about the past for a living have to be perverse lee encouraged that people tended to know the details it actually matter what forty acres and you'll actually was what did it mean for us to be able to have these conversations so it just shows us that there's always going to be the need for us to have a clear eyed understanding of the history that got us to this place and that history in this case a month way back in american history

that's going to address that but you can keep a conversation going on not let us know what you thought of the episode whereas this your questions about history you'll find us at backstory radio or send an email or fax story at virginia tech geeky and we're also on facebook and twitter and factory radios whenever you get a strange special thanks this week to the johns hopkins years involving factories produce please support provided by an anonymous donor joseph and robert cornell memorial foundation the johns hopkins university and the national endowment for the humanities any views findings conclusions for recommendations expressed in this podcast are not necessarily represent those of the national endowment for the humanities additional support provided by the tomato phone call them eating fresh

ideas to the arts and humanities in the environment brian balogh is a professor of history at the reston virginia and is this professor of the humanities and president emeritus of the west of richmond john freeman is a professor of history and american studies at yale university nathan connolly is that provides jobs associate professor of history of the johns hopkins university it actually was