The hearing this week in the House of Representatives on reparations for slavery was perhaps the most widely reported on event of the Reconstruction Sesquicentenial. It was essentially a review of matters that folks might have been arguing about 150 years ago today. What were/are black people owed for slavery? If this sounds like a new topic, I was reading William Dunning last month and came across this passage. It can be found in Essays on the Civil War and Reconstruction and Related Topics By William Archibald Dunning (1910) p. 195 in his discussion of post-Civil War race relations:
Dunning wrote that the question of allowing former slaves to make claims against “their masters for services rendered after the date of the Proclamation of Emancipation” was “mooted,” an old-fashioned way of saying “argued over.” Many African Americans were held as slaves even after slavery was ended in their states by Lincoln on January 1, 1863. According to Dunning, at least some folks argued that they should be paid for the two-an-a-half years of unpaid work they did after they were legally freed.
The question of at least this limited form of reparations came up soon after the end of the war. It was never really addressed, in fact its memory was suppressed. It will likely be a sore point in our country as long as racial inequlity persists.
You can watch part of the Reparations Hearing here Ta-Nehisis Coates :
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How can I get reparation for my family, that was slave, an was beat an sold in to slavery my family has lost everything we had my family has never been compensated.