Late in the Civil War, the Union general William T. Sherman confiscated four hundred thousand acres of land from Confederate planters and ordered it redistributed, in forty-acre lots, to formerly enslaved people—a promise revoked by President Andrew Johnson almost as soon as it was made. More than a hundred and fifty years later, the debate on what America owes to the descendants of slaves, or to people robbed by the legal discrimination that followed, still rages. David Remnick talks with Ta-Nehisi Coates and Susan B. Glasser about how reparations has become a major focus in the 2020 Democratic primary contest. And we’ll visit Georgetown University, where students have chosen to take reparations upon themselves.
Ta-Nehisi Coates Revisits the Case for Reparations
The writer set out to make America stop laughing at jokes about reparations. Five years later, Presidential candidates are taking his research very seriously.
“Come on and Bring on the Reparations”
Sekou Sundiata’s poem, read for us by Carl Hancock Rux, addresses the debts that white culture and society owe to African-Americans.
Reparations and the #Resistance
After decades on the fringes, the debate around reparations has moved into the political mainstream, with eight Presidential candidates interested. Why now? And is there a future for reparations?
At Georgetown, Students Vote to Pay Reparations for the University’s History with Slavery
In 1838, Georgetown administrators sold nearly three hundred enslaved people to sugarcane plantations to help fund the college. In 2019, students voted to pay reparations to their descendants.
Who Should Receive Reparations for Slavery and Discrimination?
Three prominent scholars discuss how reparations would work, and address a controversy over who would be eligible.