Farrakhan, Activists and Educators Set to Convene at Reparations Summit

Date: Wednesday, March 16, 2005
By: Michael H. Cottman

A national coalition of black educators and civil rights activists, including Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, will convene today in Atlanta to advance a grassroots movement demanding reparations for the atrocities of slavery.

The Atlanta chapter of the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (N'COBRA) will host a three-day conference at Clark Atlanta University to discuss a collective strategy to attain reparations for blacks. On Saturday, Farrakhan, who has served as a strategic leader for the movement, will deliver a keynote address entitled “Reparations: Our Case and Our Demand.�

Many activists and historians have argued for years that America owes reparations to blacks for the enslavement and forced labor of their ancestors.

Demands from proponents of the movement, which is gaining momentum and national attention, have evolved from solely financial restitution to a broader more complex discussion. The debate is now focused on how to improve the overall quality of life for black Americans by acquiring resources from the U.S. government and corporations that profited from slavery.

Some blacks across the country now say apologies from U.S. companies are not enough, and that vestiges of slavery – widespread discrimination – are apparent throughout the nation.

Critics of the reparations movement maintain it would be extremely difficult to trace each black American’s African lineage, determine which blacks would receive payment, and decide who would actually make the payments.

But organizers of this weekend’s conference told BlackAmericaWeb.com they plan to work through the complexities, mobilize their supporters and talk about ways to “heal� long-standing problems in the black community. They also have the support of high-profile lawmakers and activists including U.S. Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), author Randall Robinson, historian Henry Louis Gates and Farrakhan.

“This is a process of collaboration as we try to strengthen our unity for the reparations movement,� Dr. Conrad Worrill, chairman of the National Black United Front, and an organizer of the reparations conference, told BlackAmericaWeb.com.

Worrill, a leader in the reparations movement for the past 25 years, said the sessions will also assemble black grassroots leaders and members of civil rights organizations to collaborate on ways to move their cause forward through legislation and the nation’s legal system. Worrill wrote a letter to Farrakhan in 2003, he said, asking the Muslim minister to help define the movement.

The conference’s organizers will also discuss a national petition drive to present the U.S. Congress with one million signatures from supporters of the reparations movement. The petition, he said, will be delivered in October to coincide with the 10th anniversary of the Million Man March.


“We already have over 100,000 signatures,� said Worrill, who also serves as director of inner city studies for the Jacob Carruthers Center for Inner City Studies at Northeastern Illinois University.

Mawuli Mel Davis, another organizer of the conference, said discussion over the next few days will focus on expanding the movement, both in terms of ideology and in the numbers of supporters.

“We’re placing reparations in a much broader context,� Davis, a defense attorney from Atlanta, told BlackAmericaWeb.com. “We see reparations as a way to impact the future of our children.�

Davis said through discrimination in employment, economics, education, the criminal justice system and every aspect of black life, “the vestiges of slavery still exists.�

“Some see reparations as being about the past,� Davis said, “but although it’s grounded in the past, it really speaks to contemporary issues that directly plague our communities.�

There will also be discourse this week about seeking reparations from multi-million-dollar corporations that profited from slavery, he said.

“The problems are multi-generational,� Davis said, “so the remedies must be multi-generational.�

Two months ago, J.P. Morgan, the nation’s second-largest bank, acknowledged that prior to the Civil War, thousands of slaves were accepted as collateral for loans by two banks that were later linked to the banking conglomerate.


In a company-wide letter, the New York-based bank apologized for contributing to “a brutal and unjust institution� and announced that it was setting up a $5 million college scholarship program for students living in Louisiana, the state where the events took place.

But Worrill called the $5 million scholarship “insulting,� saying J.P. Morgan’s offer doesn’t begin to calculate the bank’s profits from slavery over several hundred years.

The U.S. government's first reparations plan to compensate blacks for the legacy of slavery was to give each black person 40 acres and a mule – a broken promise to many former slaves shortly after the Civil War ended in 1865.

Davis, a managing partner with Mawuli Davis & Associates, told BlackAmericaWeb.com that today’s gathering – and the evolution of the reparations movement – is a significant, historical campaign that has far-reaching consequences for black Americans.

“We’re still questioning our own humanity to this day,� Davis said.

“If we don’t make the demand for reparations," he said, "we’re saying to our ancestors who suffered in those fields, to those ancestors who were lynched, that we’re still not willing to acknowledge our own humanity, and if we don’t recognize our own humanity, no one else will. This is a cause worth fighting for.�