By Abel A. Bartley

n May 1, 2001, a Birmingham, Alabama jury found Thomas Blanton guilty of bombing the 16th Street Baptist Church and murdering four young African American girls on September 15, 1963. In a supposed Christian nation, it is strange that more people were not outraged that someone could bomb a church, killing four girls. What is even sadder is that this “Christian” community had protected and defended Blanton for years. As a native southerner, I am not surprised that people are not concerned about a day of reckoning for past crimes. Every time I hear about past racial violence, I am reminded of the words of Thomas Jefferson who said,

“Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever: that considering numbers, nature and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation, is among possible events: that it may become probable by supernatural interference! The Almighty has no attribute which can take a side with us in such a contest.”

Jefferson’s words are prophetic. It seems improbable that there will be no consequences for the many wrongs committed against African Americans during the long tragic history of slavery and racism. I cannot understand how right-thinking Americans cannot sit down at the table of brotherhood and intellectually discuss racial issues. Is race so painful, that we can’t even talk about addressing the sins of the past?

As an African American historian, I am uniquely aware of the shameful acts perpetrated against African Americans. Just thinking about the ledger of crimes and sins committed against African Americans during the 1620s through 1865 period of slavery, thousands of lynchings, bombings, and extralegal killings between 1865 and the present is frightening. As Frederick Douglass wrote,

“We claim to be a Christian country and a highly civilized Nation, yet I fearlessly affirm that there is nothing in the history of savages to surpass the blood-chilling horrors and fiendish excesses perpetrated against the colored people by the so-called enlightened and Christian people of the South.”

The responsibility for the past must be shared equally by those who committed the atrocities and those who have refused to address them. Reparations are a morally defensible way of addressing past wrongs. God endorsed it when He took the Children of Israel out of Egypt (see Exodus 12:30-38.)

A legal way to address past grievances is through financial payment. We can’t resurrect the victims of lynchings, bombings or those harmed by state-sanctioned racial pogroms. The only legal and right thing we can do is force the nation to make good all the bad checks written to African Americans from the American bank of justice.

When Ford Motor Company was forced to pay punitive damages over it’s exploding gas tanks, the jury sought to make the company more careful and deter others from acting so carelessly.

Financial payments force people to think twice before they tolerate injustice. They are a form of reimbursement for poor treatment and inadequate service. It sets a precedent that if injustice occurs, we promise to punish it. If the United States government was forced to pay a massive settlement to African Americans for the racism of the past and present, Americans would hold our leaders responsible when they ignore racism in the future.

Since 1953, Germany has been paying reparations to Israel and today pays $2 billion a year to Israel in reparations. It is their way of saying, “I am sorry for what my forefathers did to you.”

The U.S. government paid Japanese victims of World War II internment camps $1.5 billion. The victims of the 911 terrorist attack were paid $1.8 billion in compensation as our way of saying, “We failed you!”

Florida’s state legislators voted $155,000 to the survivors of the Rosewood massacre, as their way of saying, “We neglected to protect you!”

Why can’t the wealthiest, most powerful nation in the world swallow it’s pride and do the right thing for African Americans, especially when we force other countries to pay their victims?

No one can deny that America owes African Americans. Even if you ignore slavery, it is an undeniable fact that our government punished African Americans during slavery, neglected African Americans during the years of legal segregation and discrimination, and ignores African Americans and the larger black community, today. Federal policies have deliberately retarded our social, economic, and political development. The facts are undeniable. It is also undeniable that this community paid taxes, fought wars, faithfully served, and loaned money to the government while being abused. In an era when schools are failing, children have no healthcare, and the elderly are making life and death decisions about prescription drugs and food. Successive congresses have given massive trillion-dollar tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans, so it’s clear that money is not the issue. So, if money is not the reason, then what is it?

It would be good if Americans could get beyond race and talk about right. Reparations would be a good start towards healing racial wrongs. Suggestions for reparations cover the gamut from $10 trillion to $92 trillion — it all depends on your perceptions of wrongs.

If those numbers frighten you, let me make another suggestion. Since African Americans paid taxes to a government which did not protect or serve them for decades, the government could refund or reimburse us for the taxes we paid. Now I know that people don’t like reparations so let’s call this a reimbursement of the taxes our forefathers paid. State and local governments could follow suit. They would all be apologizing and making amends for past wrongs.

One way of accounting, and reckoning, would be through taxes, even if you only count the 1930-1965 period when federal income taxes applied to the general populace. A tax-free decade could make up for government’s inaction on civil rights and be a painful lesson to our leaders about neglecting its citizens.

African Americans could then use this money to fix some of the problems created by governmental neglect. We could rebuild our families, improve our schools, expand our economic base, or build up our communities destroyed by years of discriminatory governmental policies. Just imagine the racial healing that would occur if we could finally address the nation’s most prominent sin, racism.

Share with Someone Who Needs to Remember

In Matthew 5:23-24 Jesus says, “Therefore, if you bring your gift to the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go on your way. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift” (NKJV).

“If the American conscience were only half alive, if the American church and clergy were only half Christianized, if American moral sensibility were not hardened by persistent infliction of outrage and crime against colored people, a scream of horror, shame, and indignation would rise to Heaven … But alas! even crime has power to reproduce itself and create conditions favorable to its own existence. It sometimes seems we are deserted by earth and Heaven — yet we must still think, speak and work, and trust in the power of a merciful God for final deliverance.”

If you are truly a follower of Jesus Christ, you would have to agree that reparations are not just right, they are just!

ABEL BARTLEY, PH.D, is a native of Jacksonville, Florida. He came to Clemson in 2004 from the University of Akron, where he taught for ten years and helped build a vibrant Pan-African studies program. He is also the author of several essays on race, politics, and the Civil Rights movement. Professor Bartley’s most recent book, Keeping the Faith explores race, politics, and social development in Jacksonville between 1940 and 1970.