Redemption song: An analysis of the reparations movement

University of Memphis Law Review, The, Winter 2003 by Jones, Christopher C

B. Dr, Martin Luther King, Jr.

Many reparations supporters find validation for their viewpoints in the writings of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the "patron saint" of the civil rights movement. Although one usually associates integration with Dr. King's efforts rather than reparations, he was not silent on the issue. Proponents of the view that Dr. King supported reparations point to a passage in his book Why We Can't Wait. Dr. King writes:

No amount of gold could provide an adequate compensation for the exploitation and humiliation of the Negro in America (or the Caribbean, or Brazil) down through the centuries. Not all the wealth of this affluent (American) society could meet the bill. Yet a price can be placed upon unpaid wages. The ancient common law has always provided a remedy for the appropriation of one human being by another. The law should be made to apply for American (Caribbean and Brazilian) Negroes. The payment should be in the form of a massive program by the government of special, compensatory measures, which could be regarded as a settlement in accordance with the accepted practice of common law. Such measures would certainly be less expensive than any computation based on two centuries of unpaid wages and accumulated interest. I am proposing, therefore, that just as we granted a G.I. Bill of Rights to war veterans, America launch a broad-based and gigantic Bill of Rights for the Disadvantaged, our veterans of the long siege of denial.22

To many current supporters of reparations, this passage serves as an endorsement of their efforts. Although not the center of Dr. King's efforts, this passage is evidence that the concept of reparations was neither foreign nor implausible to the slain civil rights leader.

C. Reparations in the United States for Other Injured Groups

Although the remedies sought by the current proponents of the reparations movement would only redress the harms done to African Americans, many of the mechanisms, legal theories, and strategies being employed are borrowed from the actions brought by other groups of injured people.23 Past cases involving reparations serve to inform potential litigants of the possible arguments for and in opposition to a claim for slavery reparations. Additionally, these cases could stand as persuasive, if not binding, authority in the reparations struggle. Finally, examples in which the government has voluntarily paid reparations to other groups, such as those disbursed to Japanese Americans detained during World War II, can be used as precedent to justify reparations to descendents of slavery.

1. The Tulsa and Rosewood Race Riots

The cities of Tulsa, Oklahoma and Rosewood, Florida were both sites of vicious racial riots in the 1920s that resulted in the loss of hundreds of African American lives and thousands of dollars of damage to striving African American communities.24 In an effort to repair the damage of the 1921 Tulsa riot, the Oklahoma Legislature established the Tulsa Race Riot Commission, a group designed to research the incident and make recommendations for reparatory measures.25 The commission found over $15,300,000 of property damage and recommended reparatory measures, including direct payments to the survivors of the riot and their descendents.26 The legislature, however, failed to implement those recommendations in any meaningful way.27 The only gesture was the Tulsa Reconciliation Education and Scholarship Act,28 which provided 300 scholarships for Tulsa residents at state universities.29 This, however, was useless to the survivors of the riots, as most of them were in their nineties at the time the act was passed.30