Slaves captured and transported through the middle passage.

My own interest in the reparations movement started in the 1970’s when my teacher and mentor at Stanford, Dr. St. Clair Drake, arranged for me to attend the Sixth Pan-African Conference in Dar es Salem, Tanzania.  These conferences were held to focus on efforts to end colonial rule in Africa and to promote economic and political development within the African nations. I traveled as part of a delegation of over two hundred African Americans, but the member of our delegation who had an enormous impact on me was Audrey Moore, affectionately known as “Queen Mother Moore.”  Viewed by many as the matriarch of the reparations movement in America, she forced us to give serious attention to the issue of reparations for American descendants of African slaves at a time when many of us were focusing on economic and political reform in Africa.  Although I had studied African and African-American history, this trip was the first time that I learned anything about the struggle for reparations.

Reparations for slavery finally achieved credibility in 1988, when a bipartisan congress granted reparations to Japanese Americans interned by the government during World War II.  Congressman John Conyers of Detroit took the next step when he introduced HR 40, legislation proposing to conduct a study of slavery and to determine whether there is a basis to provide reparations to descendants of African slaves.  At the same time, a group of scholars and activists from around the United Stated created N’COBRA, the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America, which has led the push for reparations at the grassroots level.

My recent involvement in the reparations movement stems from my close friendship and working relationship with Randall Robinson, President Emeritus of TransAfrica, an African-American think tank focused on political and economic reform.  Three years ago, Randall and I were chosen to serve as co-coordinators of the Reparations Coordinating Committee and have spent the last two years engaged in legal research, political activism, and other scholarly pursuits focused on the issue of reparations.

In 1999, Randall completed his highly influential book The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks and persuasively argued why it was the right time to force the American government to provide reparations to the descendants of African slaves who now reside in the United States.  But more than the economic arguments, what most moved me about his book was the description of the slaves, captured and transported through the middle passage, who had been all but forgotten and never commemorated.  My dream for Reparations is to take up and make our own the forgotten dreams of our Africans ancestors lost during slave trade.  My dream for Reparations is to force America, and the world, to pay attention to their suffering loss of life, liberty, language, and culture.  I wish to celebrate our African diaspora, by forcing the West to come to terms with its history of discrimination, and to account for the manner it has profited at the expense of Africa and Africans everywhere.

The Reparations Coordinating Committee, consisting of legal scholars, public officials, activists, and academics from many disciplines, was formed shortly after the publication of Mr. Robinson’s book.  We have been conducting research and exploring a variety of options in the effort to make the case for reparations.  The mission of the Reparations Coordinating Committee is to ascertain, document, and report comparative repair and restitution in the United States and abroad on behalf of the contemporary victims of slavery and the century-long practice of de jure racial discrimination which followed slavery.  Our overall objectives are to detail a range of feasible relief and reform initiatives aimed at reconciliation as well restitution for the burdens of discrimination.

We have assembled an incredibly powerful group of lawyers to work on the most ambitious case involving people of African descent in American history.  Among them are a number of major figures in the litigation field, as well as others who will soon be as well-known because of their contribution to this case.  It is important to note that these individuals have agreed to work on the reparations effort on a volunteer basis and are deeply committed to the success of the reparations movement.

The best known of our volunteer lawyers is Johnnie Cochran.  Although he rose to national prominence as lead counsel for the defense during the trial of O.J. Simpson, Mr. Cochran has enjoyed significant legal success for over twenty years in California.  He has long been an advocate for civil rights, filing dozens of lawsuits and winning tens of millions of dollars to compensate the victims of police brutality in California.  Willie Gary is another integral member of the team.  Based in Florida, Mr. Gary is general counsel to Jesse Jackson.  He specializes in a variety of tort lawsuits, and has won significant victories in the areas of personal injury, product liability, wrongful death, and medical malpractice law.  His firm recently won a $240 million judgment against Walt Disney and a $500 million jury verdict against The Loewen Group.  Dennis Sweet, a prominent tort lawyer, was my intern at the D.C. Public Defenders Office before moving into private practice.  He has won a number of substantial judgments including a $400 million judgment against American Home Products for injuries sustained through use of their Fen-Phen diet pill.

Michele Roberts was rated by Washingtonian Magazine as the top lawyer in all of Washington, DC for 2002. We worked together and co-counseled cases when she was with the Public Defender Service.  She is widely recognized as one of the countries best litigators.

Among the public officials who are members of the committee, the most prominent is Representative John Conyers, himself a lawyer, and the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee.  Representative Conyers has supported the reparations movement for more than a decade, and is the principle sponsor of HR 40, legislation designed to study the issue of reparations.  The co-chairs of our Research Committee are Manning Marable, professor of history and political science and founding director of the Institute for Research in African American Studies at Columbia University, and one of America’s most influential historians and political interpreters of the black experience.  Our other co-chair is Dr. Ronald Walters, formerly a professor at Howard University, current director of the African American Leadership Institute and Scholar Practitioner Program, Distinguished Leadership Scholar at the James MacGregor Burns Academy of Leadership, and professor in government and politics at the University of Maryland.  Dr. Walters is internationally known for his expertise on the issues of African American leadership and politics.

Serving with them on the RCC are some exceptionally distinguished academics.

Cornel West, formerly professor of African-American studies and philosophy of religion at Harvard University, has been a champion for racial justice for much of his life, and is the author of the best-selling book, “Race Matters.”  Dr. Johnnetta B. Cole, is probably most famous as the highly successful former president of Spelman College, which under her leadership became the first historically African-American college to receive a number one ranking in U.S. News & World Report's annual college issue.  She is formerly the Presidential Distinguished Professor at Emory and currently serves as President of Bennett College.  Richard America, an economist, is a lecturer at the McDonough School of Business Administration at Georgetown University.  He has published two books on reparations: Paying the Social Debt:  What White America Owes Black America, and The Wealth of Races:  The Present Value of Benefits from Past Injustices.  Finally, James P. Comer is the Maurice Falk Professor of Child Psychiatry at the Yale University School of Medicine's Child Study Center.  He founded the Comer School Development Program in 1968, which promotes the collaboration of parents, educators, and community to improve social, emotional, and academic outcomes for children, has served as a consultant to the Children's Television Workshop (which produces Sesame Street and Electric Company), has been awarded 39 honorary degrees and has been recognized by many organizations, including the prestigious Heinz Award in the Human Condition for his profound influence on disadvantaged children.

Traditionally, race has been designated a "Black issue," and the responsibility for changing the racial climate in our society has been delegated primarily to African-American civil rights activists.  However, racism against African-Americans is not properly a "black" issue: while African-Americans are its victims, the perpetrators are not.  I suggest that the general moral obligation to eradicate racism from our society requires each of us to work towards undoing the chronic fragmentation along racial lines that exists in so much of our country today: to make our society whole.  The moral force of reparations-arguments is simply to suggest that the African-American community can no longer shoulder the burden of redeeming American society, as Dr. King put it, on our own.  Instead, all citizens must engage as full participants in a dialogue examining what is the cost of repairing our society to make it equally accessible to everyone.

Charles J. Ogletree, Jr. is a law professor at the Harvard Law School.