Reparations for slavery gets long overdue hearing 30 years after John Conyers took up the cause

Unfinished business never goes away.

Three decades ago, former U.S. Rep. John Conyers introduced a bill that sought to establish a reparations commission. It went nowhere

But Conyers, a Michigan Democrat, re-introduced that bill every year until he retired in 2017.

In 2000, Author and political leader, Randall Robinson, made a strong case for reparations in his bestseller, “The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks.”

Robinson’s well-researched book was a bestseller that introduced the idea of reparations to a mainstream audience.

Still, it did little to push Conyers’ bill forward.

Fourteen years later, journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates was anointed the leading black intellectual on the subject after his deeply reported essay, “The Case for Reparations,” was published in the Atlantic.

And now we are back where we started.

With contenders gearing up for the presidential election, on Wednesday a house committee heard scholars, activists, religious leaders and a filmmaker whose ancestors were connected to the slave trade debate the reparations issue.

“This is actually the second hearing because Conyers called a hearing in 2007, but unfortunately, during the Obama years, the bill got no traction. However, the reparations movement has never let up pushing for this bill to be moved out of Congress to the Senate for a full hearing and a vote,” said Conrad Worrill, chairman emeritus of the Black United Front.

“A mighty tribute should be bestowed upon John Conyers for keeping this legislation before the Congress of the U.S., and additionally Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) should be commended for carrying the torch forward,” said Worrill said.

Coates was one of several witnesses who testified on Capitol Hill Wednesday.

In his opening remarks, Coates delivered a sharply worded retort to the comments made Tuesday by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who rejected reparations.

“By the time the enslaved were emancipated, they comprised the largest single asset in America. Three billion in 1860 dollars, more than all the other assets in the country combined,” Coates said.

“The method of cultivating this asset was neither gentle cajoling nor persuasion, but torture, rape and child trafficking. … And so for a century after the Civil War, black people were subjected to a relentless campaign of terror, a campaign that extended well into the lifetime of Majority Leader McConnell,” he pointed out.

McConnell had told reporters America tried to deal with slavery by “fighting a civil war, passing landmark civil rights legislation and electing Barack Obama as president in 2008.

Julianne Malveaux, an economist, commentator and former president of Bennett College, shot down that rationale, which, unfortunately is shared by a lot of people.

“Enslavement was about the devil’s work of predatory capitalism. Indeed, enslaved people had no wages. We represented capital for other people, Malveaux said.

“Enslavement was the foundation on which our country was built. So anybody who says, ‘Well I didn’t have any slaves.’ No you didn’t have to have any. What you had to do was enjoy the fact that their labor created a Wall Street and a Bond market and all of that,” she said.

For many, the hearing was long overdue.

Barbara A. Cole, an activist and founder of a mentoring program in Maywood, was ecstatic that the hearing took place, on Juneteenth Day.

Also known as “Freedom Day,” the holiday commemorates the announcement of the abolition of slavery in Texas in 1865, which was two years after the actual Emancipation Proclamation went into effect in 1863.

“What they need to do is come up with proposals for implementing reparations. I’m not for a financial handout because I don’t think it will ever get through. I’m for programs and resources,” Cole said.

The Rev. Sutton Eugene Taylor, an episcopal bishop, told Congress that reparations are not about transferring money from white people to black people.

“An act of reparation is an attempt to make whole again, to restore, to offer an atonement to make an amends to reconcile for a wrong or an injury,” he said.

“It is what this generation — our generation — will do to repair the broken pieces of the racial mess that we have all inherited,” Taylor added.

Meanwhile, chapters of the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (NCOBRA) — the organization that did the heavy lifting of organizing supporters across the country — will convene in Detroit on Thursday for its 30^th national convention.

“This hearing will bring reparations to the forefront of America’s consciousness and black people will be, hopefully, educated through this process so they realize the sacrifices that were made,” Cole said.

That’s a good place to start.