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In article <Ueeg6.3196$Nj5.150708@bgtnsc07-news.ops.worldnet.att.net>,
  "Harold Covington" <NSNet88@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>
> http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2001/2/6/01218.shtml
>
> Popularity of Reparations for Slavery Growing
> NewsMax.com Wires
> Tuesday, Feb. 6, 2001
>
> CHICAGO (UPI) - The sign in front of Christ Apostolic Church reads:
> "Black Reparations Now."
>
> The church is in Woodlawn, a neighborhood on the South Side where you
> don't want to be after the sun sets. Woodlawn is littered by vacant
lots
> and pockets of poverty, crime, unemployment and despair decades after
> the hopeful optimism of the '60s civil rights era faded into broken
> dreams in this part of town.
>
> "It's starting here," said Dr. Leon Finney, national co-chair of the
> National Reparations Convention, which met Feb. 1-4 at the McCormick
> Place Exposition Center.
>
> The veteran community organizer and other leaders want to see the
> reparations issue become more mainstream.
>
> "This movement is a worldwide movement. It is not a new movement. This
> is an old movement. It is as old as slavery," Finney said.
>
> Chicago Alderman Dorothy Tillman, organizer of the weekend convention,
> said reparations for slavery is the movement of the millennium.
>
> Tillman, who marched with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., sponsored City
> Council hearings last year that led Chicago in May to pass a
resolution
> supporting reparations for the descendants of black slaves. Mayor
> Richard M. Daley gave the issue his support.
>
> "It's not becoming a movement. It is a movement," Tillman told United
> Press International. "It is all over this country and the shocking
thing
> about it is it is not just a black movement. She said white students
at
> the University of Illinois-Chicago were doing research for reparations
> groups.
>
> "It's a movement that's much greater. It's going to surprise some
> folks. . We have representation from all over this country."
>
> Saturday morning's opening convention session was broadcast live on
> WVON-AM, a black-oriented talk radio station.
>
> LeGrand Cleggh, city attorney for Compton, Calif., said he and Chicago
> attorney Lewis Meyers were doing legal research on every aspect of
> reparations.
>
> "Large numbers of white men impregnated black women during slavery and
> abandoned their children. Now that's child support," said Cleggh,
"whole
> generations who were never cared for." Compton last year passed a
> reparations resolution patterned after Chicago's.
>
> About 80 organizers from around the nation met in closed session
Sunday
> to develop plans to mobilize black communities and to forge a common
> reparations agenda.
>
> Advocates, notably NCOBRA, the National Coalition of Blacks for
> Reparations in America, the National Black United Front and the
Republic
> of New Afrika, want trillions of dollars for the hundreds of years of
> free labor their ancestors provided and degradation they suffered.
Some
> favor a lump-sum, while others say reparations are about more than
money
> and should be part of initiatives to improve education, economic
> development, employment and housing.
>
> "Reparations have got to mean we take responsibility for ourselves,"
> Finney said.
>
> Tillman did not discuss what form reparations should take or put a
> dollar figure on the cost.
>
> "We have every region represented here," Tillman said. "We think we
will
> be able to present to this government, to this country, a plan for
> reparations.
>
> "There several schools of thought out here. There are people like
> [historian] Dr. Lerone Bennett who think we should have a Marshall
> Plan . and there others who think maybe we need money, others who
think
> land, others say education, others who say 'give us a ticket out of
> here.' So there's all kind of thought. When you deal with a Marshall
> Plan you almost deal with all those things people are talking about."
>
> Gen. George Marshall became U.S. secretary of state and in 1947 put
> together an economic plan to rebuild a Europe devastated by World War
> II. The United States sent about $13 billion in development aid, food
> and machinery to Europe before the plan ended in 1952.
>
> Tillman said the free labor of blacks had built America.
>
> "Had it not been for slaves, had it not been for my ancestors, people
> would not be coming to America," she said. "Black labor, white
wealth."
>
> She said the conference also discussed the whole psychological effect
of
> slavery - "post-traumatic slavery syndrome" - affecting both blacks
and
> whites.
>
> "We can move this issue of reparations to the forefront," said Rep.
> Bobby Rush, D-Ill., a former Black Panther leader and now a Baptist
> minister and U.S. congressman. "The reparations movement is a campaign
> for African-Americans that emerged 100 years ago when the newly freed
> slaves cried out for restitution for centuries of stolen labor,
cultural
> degradation and dehumanization."
>
> Rush said there are precedents for reparations, citing Germany's
> restitution to Jewish victims of the Nazi Holocaust and to slave
> laborers, and Australia's land grants to indigenous aborigines in
1976.
> In 1988, Japanese-Americans received $25,000 apiece and an apology
from
> the U.S. government for their internment during World War II.
>
> "So this isn't anything new. This is past historical precedent," he
> said.
>
> Rush said reparations debates must move beyond academia and the halls
of
> Congress, where Rep. John Conyers for years has sponsored a measure
> seeking national reparations hearings.
>
> "This reparations movement has to move into our churches, to our
barber
> shops, to our beauty shops. This reparations movement has to move into
> the agendas of everyday ordinary people," Rush said.
>
> NCOBRA spokeswoman Erline Aripo said activists were preparing a
> class-action lawsuit for reparations against the federal government
that
> would address the racial discrimination that persists today. Possible
> litigation will be discussed at the group's 12th Annual Reparations
> Convention June 22-24 at Southern University in Baton Rouge, La.
>
> A poll on the About.com Web site shows only 13 percent of 5,778 people
> who responded support reparations for slavery while 86 percent did not
> and 1 percent were undecided.
>
> Copyright 2000 by United Press International.
>
> This is a concept which may become a major issue in the next few
years.

Ralph


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