(23 min. documentary)

Renaissance Women Productions

Renwomen99@aol.com

http://www.imdb.com/video/wab/vi1190855193/

Reparations . . . Who Should Pay?

(This is the script from the movie by the same name. It does not include interviews in the movie)

Narrator:

On November 4th, 2008, history was made. This was a long time coming . . . but it would have happened a lot sooner if a segment of society had not prevented blacks from rising to power . . .

Shortly after the end of the Civil War, 23 black men were elected to Congress and the Senate. Seven of them had been slaves. All 23 of these black congressmen belonged to the party of Lincoln. In fact, he was the first president ever to be elected from the newly formed Republican party.

What has happened all these years? Why is the Democrat Party’s web site missing 100 years of civil rights history . . . while the Republicans can show that they were founded on the issue of civil rights in 1854.

The perception in America is that all whites discriminated against blacks and that the battle over slavery was white vs. black, not right vs. wrong.

There were hundreds of outspoken white leaders who fought for the liberation of the slaves.

What would cause a white man to risk his life for black slaves that he had never met? Not only risk his life, but found an entire political party based on that very issue?

This group became known as Radical Republicans.

Thaddeus Stevens, Charles Sumner, Joshua Giddings, Benjamin Wade, Owen Lovejoy, Henry Winter Davis, George W. Julian, Benjamin Butler, Joseph Medill, Horace Greeley, Oliver Morton, John Logan, Elihu Washburne, Schuyler Colfax, Zachariah Chandler, Hannibal Hamlin, John Andrew, William Lloyd Garrison, and Henry Wilson.

They not only favored the abolition of slavery, but thought that these freed slaves should have complete equality with white citizens. They opposed the Fugitive Slave Act and the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Some were even critical of Abraham Lincoln when he was slow to recruit black soldiers into the Union Army.

In addition to these abolitionist leaders, more than 300,000 whites gave their lives in a war fought to end slavery.

It is this same passion and moral urgency, of freedom vs. oppression that compels people today to speak out against abortion today and the current genocide that is occurring in the black community.

It only took a handful of dedicated people to change the course of history in the United States, and within just 11 years of the founding of the Republican Party, they fought and won a war that liberated thousands of slaves. Then they unanimously passed the 13^th Amendment to outlaw slavery . . . the 14^th Amendment to give total equal rights to the newly liberated slaves . . . and the 15^th Amendment to give voting rights as well.

And what did they have in common besides being Republicans? They were all white men who gave their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor to fight against the evil of slavery and to free their black brothers held in captivity.

So . . . should their families have to pay reparations if a bill is presented to them? What about the families of the 300,000 whites northerners who lost their lives in the Civil War over the issue of slavery?

The battle that we see to this day on the issue of race was fought, and won over 150 years ago and racism was supposed to die.

Instead, the great liberator, Abraham Lincoln, was killed.

Lincoln's assassination left the job of Reconstruction to his Vice President, Andrew Johnson, who was an anti-abolitionist Democrat, even though Lincoln was a Republican.

Radical Republicans in Congress moved quickly to change Johnson’s poorly executed Reconstruction program. Their first step was to refuse to seat any Senator or Representative from the old Confederacy. They then passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which said freed slaves should be classified as American citizens and made discrimination illegal. A few months later Congress passed the Fourteenth Amendment, which specified that no state should "deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law."

The Radical Republicans won an overwhelming victory in Congressional elections that fall. In an early attempt at immediate reparations, Radical Republicans declared that Southern plantations should be taken from their owners and divided among the former slaves.

They also attacked President Johnson when he tried to veto the extension of the Freedman's Bureau, the Civil Rights Bill and the Reconstruction Acts. However, the Radical Republicans were able to get the Reconstruction Acts passed in 1867 and 1868. But gradually, Democrats began to take back control over Southern state governments when organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan were able to frighten blacks from voting in elections. Blacks were voting 100 percent Republican at that time and controlled many of the southern state legislatures.

The last substantial victory for the Radical Republicans in Congress was the passage of the Ku Klux Act in 1871, that gave the president the power to intervene in troubled states on behalf of blacks being harassed by this terrorist arm of the Democratic party.

Even before the end of the Civil War, there was a huge debate about what should be done to integrate ex-slaves into society, and provide them with the tools not only to survive but compete.

There were several key black leaders who had been enslaved and won their freedoms through the years. One was Frederick Douglass . . .

The government promised former slaves the opportunity to buy or lease 40 acres of unoccupied lands that had been confiscated by the Union. They also promised to loan the ex-slaves a federal government mule.

Many former slaves took advantage of the opportunity and became free farmers. During Reconstruction, however, much of the leased land was confiscated and returned to Confederate loyalists. Despite this, Black farmers persevered, and by 1910, Black farmers had acquired approximately 16 million acres of farmland. By 1920, African-Americans owned 925,000 farms in the United States.

There are many issues to consider when discussing reparations, including the fact that not one person alive today was either a slave in America, or owned a slave in America.

Slavery is now history in America. Unfortunately, this can’t be said for some other countries around the world, where slavery exists today.

Even as slavery still persists in other countries around the world, African-Americans continue to argue over their own history of slavery and civil rights. This conflict dates back more than a century to the intellectual dispute between Booker T. Washington, a former slave, and W.E.B. DuBois, a Harvard-educated northerner.

Today, the debate continues over reparations, and questions remain:

• Which blacks in America today are descendents from slaves?
• Which blacks today are immigrants, or the descendants of immigrants who were never slaves in the United States?
• Which whites today are descended from slave owners?
• Which whites are descended from Northerners who fought to end slavery?
• Which whites today are immigrants, or descendants of immigrants who arrived after slavery ended?

If anyone, or any group, should pay reparations for past racial offenses, it should be the Democratic Party.

Even though a black man -- or woman -- could have been elected president long before 2008, it serves no purpose to dwell in the past. We should celebrate those who gave their lives to end slavery, and condemn those who prevented this day from coming for more than a century. And we should look forward, not look back.