In 1887, ex-slaves began petitioning the federal government for pensions and compensation for the years they had labored without wages before abolition. When Congress ignored their thousands of petitions, they tried to sue for wage theft but were told they could not. At the very least, the descendants of the tens of thousands of members of the Ex-Slave Pension and Bounty movement – whose membership forms stated the number of years they had been working as slaves, along with the names of their slave owners and the plantations on which they lived – should be eligible for reparations. Other individuals...