Posted on 03/30/2002 11:14:33 PM PST by sarcasm
AMBRIDGE, Mass. — Last Tuesday, a group of lawyers filed a federal class-action lawsuit in New York on behalf of all African-American descendants of slaves. The lawsuit seeks compensation from a number of defendants for profits earned through slave labor and the slave trade.
This lawsuit is limited to FleetBoston, Aetna, CSX and other to-be-named companies. The broader reparations movement seeks to explore the historical role that other private institutions and government played during slavery and the era of legal racial discrimination that followed. The goal of these historical investigations is to bring American society to a new reckoning with how our past affects the current conditions of African-Americans and to make America a better place by helping the truly disadvantaged.
The Reparations Coordinating Committee, of which I am a co-chairman, will proceed with its own plans to file wide-ranging reparations lawsuits late this autumn. The committee is a group of lawyers, academics, public officials and activists that has conducted extensive research and begun to identify parties to sue and claims to be raised.
The shape of a reparations strategy can already be seen. Among private defendants, corporations will be prominent, as last week's lawsuit shows. Other private institutions — Brown University, Yale University and Harvard Law School — have made headlines recently as the beneficiaries of grants and endowments traced back to slavery and are probable targets. Naming the government as a defendant is also central to any reparations strategy; public officials guaranteed the viability of slavery and the segregation that followed it.
A number of recent examples illustrate the possibilities for making reparations claims nationally and internationally. In South Africa, reparations have been part of the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which seeks to compensate people with clear material needs who suffered under apartheid because of their race. It was also in South Africa that, in the final documents of a racism conference sponsored by the United Nations, slavery was defined as a "crime against humanity," a legal determination that may enable the reparations movement to extend its reach to international forums.
In the United States, just three years ago the federal government reached a consent decree with a class of over 20,000 black farmers to compensate for years of discrimination by the Department of Agriculture. The case represents the largest civil-rights settlement by the government ever, with a likely payout of about $2 billion. Previously, the government also approved significant compensation for Japanese-Americans interned during World War II and paid reparations to black survivors of the Rosewood, Fla., race riots.
Although these precedents differ from a slavery-based reparations claim in that they involved classes of individuals who were both alive and easily identified, they nonetheless indicate government willingness to acknowledge past wrongs and remedy them. It is important that in each case the government waived its immunity from suit, thereby lifting the ordinary bar that prevents lawsuits against a sovereign.
Bringing the government into litigation will also generate a public debate on slavery and the role its legacy continues to play in our society. The opportunity to use expert witnesses and conduct extensive discovery, to get facts and documentation, makes the courtroom an ideal venue for this debate.
A full and deep conversation on slavery and its legacy has never taken place in America; reparations litigation will show what slavery meant, how it was profitable and how it has continued to affect the opportunities of millions of black Americans.
Litigation is required to promote this discussion because political accountability has not been forthcoming. In each Congressional session since 1989, Representative John Conyers has introduced a bill to study slavery reparations and it has quickly died each time.
Though claims for slavery reparations have moved near the front of national and international policy discussions in the past few years, the movement has deep historical roots. Those roots go back at least as far as the unkept promise in 1864 of "40 acres and a mule" to freed slaves, which acknowledged our country's debt to the newly emancipated.
Indeed, the civil rights movement has long been organized, in part, around the notion that slavery and the century of legal discrimination that followed have had enduring and detrimental effects on American minorities.
The reparations movement should not, I believe, focus on payments to individuals. The damage has been done to a group — African-American slaves and their descendants — but it has not been done equally within the group. The reparations movement must aim at undoing the damage where that damage has been most severe and where the history of race in America has left its most telling evidence. The legacy of slavery and racial discrimination in America is seen in well-documented racial disparities in access to education, health care, housing, insurance, employment and other social goods. The reparations movement must therefore focus on the poorest of the poor — it must finance social recovery for the bottom-stuck, providing an opportunity to address comprehensively the problems of those who have not substantially benefited from integration or affirmative action.
The root of "reparations" is "to repair." This litigation strategy could give us an opportunity to fully address the legacy of slavery in a spirit of repair.
Charles J. Ogletree Jr. is a professor at Harvard Law School and co-chair man of the Reparations Coordinating Committee.
Most of which will consist of white and Asian and Mexican folks, whose ancestors came to this country after Emancipation, wondering "What did I ever do to deserve having those G*d D**ed N**ers pick my pockets?"
If blacks think this will endear them to the rest of their countrymen, or in any way improve the status of the black underclass, they are quite mistaken. There will be a few despicable trial lawyers who may become very rich, and here and there we may see an ignorant monoracial jury award ridiculous sums to particular plaintiffs, but for the most part this will breed nothing but resentment and hatred and rekindled racism.
-ccm
As bad as this whole mess is, you gotta love the left turning on itself. All the libs at Harvard Law probably support reparations, but it'll be interesting to see what happens when they are targeted themselves. I hope the inevitable settlement is taken directly out of professors' salaries.
FleetBoston, Aetna,
Why, those are Northern companies?
"Other private institutions — Brown University, Yale University and Harvard Law School — have made headlines recently as the beneficiaries of grants and endowments traced back to slavery and are probable targets."
Hey, that isn't the University of Georgia or Alabama, those schools are in New England. That can't be, I thought the south was the sole entity responsible for slavery. That's why the are making them take down their flags. Right? Even though the slave trade had been going on long before America was even a country. Even though France, Spain, and Britain were heavily into the slave trade. Even though the slaves own chiefs sold them to the slavetraders.
Looks like there is gonna be a lot of flags being changed.
Even more ironic than this article was the post I was busy responding to when it got deleted.
It was by a self described "Devoted German" who had recently moved to Georgia, hated our old flag, and suggested to Jimrob that he shouldn't put the old flag on our state page because it was illegal and it offended her.
I replied, that no, it isn't against the law for freerepublic or anyone else to fly that flag.
I also pointed out that the civil war and slavery had been over for 145 years,
That ww2 and the mass murder of millions of jews, just because they were jews, happened only 55 years ago, and was commited by "Devoted Germans", just like her.
Hypocrite alert.
Something about stones and glass houses.
Let's see, we had integration begin in the late 40's (primarily military), the civil rights movements beginning in the late 50's, AA in the 60's that gave us quotas, set-asides, busing, etc., political correctness of the 70's, 80's and 90's, and now the "Shakedown" of reparations for the 21st Century.
But it's only for the bottom-stuck, Ogletree says.
And, who is going to define, substantially? You, Mr. Ogletree?
What will be the follow-on program when a "Program of Reparations" becomes just another corrupt and failed bureaucratic welfare system? Anarchy?
You, and many like you, Mr. Ogletree, are prisoners of self-inducted racism, and, in the end, are going to destroy this country.
Good Morning
Not a very positive thought on a beautiful Easter Sunday, I know.
We didn't steal it....we conquered it. To the winner go the spoils.
Granddad's words echo in slavery suit
EW YORK - Deadria Farmer-Paellmann remembers growing up in Brooklyn, listening to her grandfather rail against the government and punctuate his complaints with the refrain: ''And they still owe us our 40 acres and a mule.''
That was Lincoln's promise, still unfulfilled, to the slaves after the Emancipation Proclamation.
Now, at age 36, Farmer-Paellmann is demanding delivery.
On Tuesday, in the US district courthouse in Brooklyn, she filed the first federal class-action lawsuit seeking reparations, not from the government, but from corporations or their predecessors - including FleetBoston, Aetna, and CSX - that profited from the slave trade.
Farmer-Paellmann has spent most of her life waiting for this moment, but at first glance, she appears to be an unlikely figure to make history from it. One of six daughters raised by a stay-at-home mother in a rough section of Brooklyn, she is not a prominent activist, a professional historian, or even a lawyer. (She has a law degree, but failed her one stab at the bar exam.)
Though some legal analysts doubt her lawsuit will get far, many veterans in the reparations movement are hailing it as a ''landmark case.'' Charles J. Ogletree Jr., a Harvard Law professor who has toiled for years on a similar suit against the government, to be filed later this year, called her work ''an important aspect of the reparations effort.''
Arguing her case will be an attorney who might be able to pull it off.
Edward Fagan, who practices law in New York and New Jersey, recently won an international group of clients $8 billion in settlements from European corporations that had done business with the Nazis during World War II. Fagan admits it took some convincing for him to take on slave reparations, but now he sees the two cases as ''absolutely parallel.''
For Farmer-Paellmann, the suit goes back to that refrain from her late grandfather, a construction company owner named Willie Capers.
''When I graduated from Brooklyn College in 1988,'' she said over coffee at a cafe near her East Side Manhattan apartment, ''I started reading a lot of Afrocentric literature. There was an interview where Malcolm X talks about what America owes blacks. He suggested that the country should give us land. I remember thinking, `Here's that 40 acres and a mule coming up again.'''
She enrolled in the graduate school of public management at George Washington University, with the idea of learning how to mount a lobbying campaign for reparations. A bit ahead of her time, she could find only one book on the subject.
''The problem was it was written for lawyers,'' she recalled. ''I couldn't even read the thing.''
So she applied to the New England School of Law in Boston, writing in her Statement of Purpose that she wanted to use her legal training to win slave reparations for African-Americans.
There, she took a course called ''racism and law,'' picked reparations as a research project, and, largely by chance, achieved a breakthrough.
First, she found a Tulane Law Review article about reparations by Vincene Verdun. ''There was a footnote suggesting that the children of people enslaved might sue the children of those who enslaved them,'' she said. ''So I started examining corporations and private estates as potential targets.''
Then, while trying to trace her family's roots, she read the book ''Black Genealogy'' by Charles L. Blockson. ''He suggested researching your roots by looking at insurance records,'' she said. ''It turns out some insurance companies, including Aetna, sold policies for slave property. When I came across that, I remember thinking, `OK, here we go.'''
She deepened her research into the corporate angle, finding slave trading, even when the importation of slaves was banned by the United States after 1808, was practiced by the owner of a predecessor bank to FleetBoston.
After graduating in 1999, she returned to New York. Reparations was becoming a high-profile issue among black activists, but she found little support for her corporate approach. First, she was not a big name. Second, the prevailing wisdom was that seeking reparations from the government, not from private companies, was the most politically potent strategy.
''It didn't surprise me to hear they were dismissive of her concept,'' said Robert Ward, who taught the racism and law class and became Farmer-Paellmann's mentor on the issue. ''To the extent that you look at the federal government as the culprit, you may not want to look at anybody else as culprit.''
Her most dramatic finds were some 19th-century documents that showed Aetna had sold insurance policies for slave property - in short, had profited from the slave trade. She had obtained some of the material from Aetna itself, and tried to persuade them to provide restitution voluntarily.
When that didn't work, she took action in August 2000 and released the materials to the press.
''At this point, I wasn't really interested in filing a lawsuit,'' she said. ''I was doing a media campaign. I thought if I confronted a corporation with information about their involvement in slavery, they might be willing to do something - apologize, make payment, or lobby the government to pay so they wouldn't have to.''
Farmer-Paellmann's release made headlines. Aetna issued an apology, though no money. And lawyers started to notice.
Ogletree asked her to join a committee that was coordinating legal actions on reparations. Ogletree had his case against the government. He encouraged her to develop one against corporations.
But she had no license to practice law. And she was spending much of her time at home with her infant daughter.
''I kept getting told this would be a landmark case,'' she recalled. ''The case is built on my research. But I can't participate in it as an attorney. So I asked myself, `How could I make sure I'm a part of it?' I came up with an idea - I could be the plaintiff.''
The lawsuit names three corporations and soon will add seven more, according to Fagan, who would not identify the companies. Farmer-Paellmann says she has evidence implicating 60.
Some legal scholars think the case will be dismissed before it gets underway. Melvin I. Urofsky, constitutional historian at Virginia Commonwealth University, said, ''I don't think they have a leg to stand on, frankly.''
Most courts would have a hard time, he said, recognizing Farmer-Paellmann's standing as a plaintiff in a class-action suit that could involve millions of people. Moreover, few of those complainants could prove they personally were victims of slavery, he says.
A more fundamental issue is the status of slavery, Urofsky argues. ''At the time the actions took place,'' he said, ''slavery was legal everywhere in the United States.''
To that argument, Fagan replied, ''Death camps were legal in Germany, too.''
That didn't stop the Nuremberg court after World War II from hanging Nazis for ''crimes against humanity'' - or Fagan from suing Nazi-abetting corporations 50 years later.
In the end, the debate may be moot. Fagan thinks the companies will settle out of court, as the companies in the Holocaust cases did, if just to avoid nasty public relations.
''It would be the dumbest thing they could do to put their slave-histories on trial,'' he said. ''They can't afford to win this case.''
Globe correspondent Lyle Denniston in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.
It's the fuzzy, open-endedness of the words that folks like Ogletree use that bothers me. I have yet to hear any so-called responsible person articulate what they would envision as the theoretical end to the need for such things as AA, black studies programs, Congressional Black Caucuses, BET, etc., etc.
RAPE A NATION
As I've said before. Most descendents of slaves will not get a nickel. All the money will go to various black organizations to spend, wisely no doubt, on improving the lives of blacks. IOW, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, etc.
There is one very good reason for this. Just imagine the backlash if individual blacks were to receive large amounts of money while others saw their taxes go up to pay for it.
Actually that was Sherman's promise and was not authorized or ever approved by the administration. So go sue him.
Don't forget Democrat trial lawyers. They'll make a bundle.
What abuot our reparations? What about the murder of over 250,000 Blackfeet including women and children using smallpox infected blankets as a biological genocide weapon? What about the long pattern of refusal by the U.S. government to pay for Native American real property stolen by the U.S. Army?
So when do I get title to all my real property including Yellowstone Park ? All you nasty Americans will have to be evicted ..... When will I get my uranium and gold and silver and oil royalties?
This lawsuit on behalf of blacks is outrageous! If the blacks had not been brought here as slaves they would still be in Africa .... DUH!
However, since we're listing all thouse aggrieved groups who would also deserve to get some form of reparations, how about the slaves that exist in America today? You know, the wage-slaves that were created in 1913. Half of the product of our labor is no longer our own. That sure doesn't sound like freedom to me.
The proper response would be:
1. Cut a hole in the litigants legal documents large enough to fit over their head;
2. Strip them naked;
3. Drape the legal documents over their heads
4. Then parade them through the courts and out on to the streets all while laying a whip to their backs:
5. All the above accompanied with peals of Homeric laughter:
6. Of course the above would require a degree of spiritual strength NOT presently exhibited by public officers and the American public.
They will get something from the taxpayers.
From original article,"Other private institutions — Brown University, Yale University and Harvard Law School — have made headlines recently as the beneficiaries of grants and endowments traced back to slavery and are probable targets."
Are you gonna sue your own boss, Mr. Ogeltree?
"''When I graduated from Brooklyn College in 1988,'' she said over coffee at a cafe near her East Side Manhattan apartment, ''I started reading a lot of Afrocentric literature. There was an interview where Malcolm X talks about what America owes blacks. He suggested that the country should give us land. I remember thinking, `Here's that 40 acres and a mule coming up again.'''
She enrolled in the graduate school of public management at George Washington University, with the idea of learning how to mount a lobbying campaign for reparations. A bit ahead of her time, she could find only one book on the subject.
''The problem was it was written for lawyers,'' she recalled. ''I couldn't even read the thing.''
Does anyone else here notice something strange in these statements?
1) Graduated from Brooklynn College.
2) Attending Graduate school.
3) Is praised in the article for her insightful research..
Then this,''The problem was it was written for lawyers,'' she recalled. ''I couldn't even read the thing.''
Hmmmm. I wonder how much we paid for that degree.
Please take your briefcase and do something with it usually considered physically impossible.
And please do it publicly, at one of the many military cemetaries throught the USA, making sure that some of the about 300,000 Union soldiers and sailors who died in the Civil War are buried there.
Most sincerely and warmly yours,
M. Snavely
You can start by suing your history teacher. The Battle of Hastings was in 1066.
-ccm
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.