Reparations means making amends for a wrong by paying money to or otherwise helping those who have been wronged. The act of repairing something. Reparations for slavery is the application of the concept of reparations to the victims of chattel slavery and their descendants.
I am LaWann Stribling, born LaWann Pendleton. I’ve been on an 11-year journey to trace my family heritage via Ancestry.com. I come from a broken family, a broken home. I saw my mother twice before I turned 18. Reading microfilm, I saw my ancestors amounted to the recording of an age, sex and skin tone (black or mulatto). My ancestors were farm hands, laborers, oystermen and servants enslaved in Charles County, Petersville and Frederick, Md.; in Accomack County and Madison and Orange, Va.; and in North Carolina and Florida.
Current Environment
In August 2019 The New York Times, marking the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery, began an initiative called the 1619 Project, which centers on the consequences of slavery and contributions of Black Americans. The next year, in 2020, after George Floyd and Breonna Taylor were murdered, I felt a shift in the environment and hoped it would cause residents to pause and reflect on what’s going on in the nation. Descendants of the enslaved are still living marginalized lives, not respected and suffering emotionally, mentally, educationally and financially from the effects of chattel slavery. We deserve the benefits of everything our ancestors built, and the ability to search for our ancestors should be free of charge, included with reparations. This information was also taken from us by the individuals who stole, enslaved and imprisoned us.
Below are the stories of some women who have led the way for reparations.
Henrietta Wood
Henrietta Wood was born into slavery in Northern Tennessee in approximately 1819. In 1848, Jane Cirode, the wife of her enslaver, granted Henrietta freedom and registered her as a free woman. Five years later Deputy Sheriff Zebulon Ward of Kentucky kidnapped Wood at the request of the son and daughter-in-law of her former enslaver. Wood spent a year imprisoned at a slave pen in Lexington, Ky. Due to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, she could not defend herself by trial or by testimony. An innkeeper who felt empathy for Wood filed on her behalf but the claim was unsuccessful because her original freedom paperwork had burned in a fire and Wood’s kidnappers stole her copy. She was sold to the son of the former Governor of Mississippi, Gerard Brandon, and subsequently toiled, enslaved, on cotton plantations, then in Brandon’s house. She was among hundreds of slaves he moved to Texas to keep them enslaved after the Civil War.
In 1866, Brandon moved to Mississippi, and Wood’s enslavement was replaced by an employment contract, though she was never paid.
When Wood moved to Ohio as a free woman she sued her kidnapper, Ward. Wood v Ward was litigated in 1879 and she was awarded $2,500 of the $20,000 restitution she requested. Worth over $65,000 today it was the largest settlement of its kind and a reparation that had generational impact. She moved to Chicago with her son Arthur and used the restitution money to help him enroll in Union College of Law, now Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law. Arthur Simms practiced law for approximately 62 years in Chicago.
Belinda Sutton
Belinda (Royal) Sutton was born in 1712 in Ghana. She was abandoned by her enslaver, who had offered emancipation upon his death or her transfer to his daughter. If she chose freedom he provided 30 pounds for three years so she wouldn’t be a public charge. In 1783, at 63 years old, Sutton filed a petition to the Massachusetts General Court requesting a pension from the estate of her former enslaver. In her petition she recalled her life in Africa as a joyful one full of love prior to her captivity and enslavement. Sutton’s testimony describing the happy times with family in Africa contradicted the narrative that the enslaved were happy in their captivity. She won her claim and was awarded 15 pounds and 12 shillings annually. She had to fight continuously for that award to be honored and paid.
Callie House
Callie House was born enslaved in Rutherford County, Tennessee, in 1861. In 1897, at 36 years old, she founded the National Ex-Slave Mutual Bounty and Pension Association (MB&PA) to seek financial support for former slaves left without resources. With Isiah Dickerson she traveled to former slave states to encourage others to join the organization. The organization was eager to petition Congress for a bill that would grant payments (reparations) and mutual aid for burial expenses. Their grass-roots advocacy grew in membership to hundreds of thousands of formerly enslaved residents all over the country. The government used three agencies to try to stop this movement: the Federal Bureau of Pensions, the Department of Justice and the Post Office Department. On September 1899, the Post Office issued a fraud order, without evidence, against MB&PA, which made it illegal for them to send mail, cash or money orders. House resisted by invoking the 1st, 14th and 15th amendments and hiring an attorney.
Congress rejected the pensions petition, as if it was not to be taken seriously, and postponed it indefinitely.
In 1909, when Dickerson died, House became the leader of the MB&PA. In 1915, under House’s leadership, the class action lawsuit Johnson v McAdoo was filed in U.S. Federal Court requesting reparations for slavery in the amount of $68 million. This amount was cotton tax money collected from 1862 to 1868 and held by the U.S. Treasury Department. A former slave, H. N. Johnson, led the charge as the plaintiff against U.S. Secretary of the Treasury William G. McAdoo. The U.S. Supreme Court denied the claim. This was the first documented litigation for reparations for American chattel slavery in a U.S. federal court.
The following year, House was arrested on charges of fraud from the Post Office, convicted by an all-white, all-male jury and sentenced to a year in jail, deliberately hampering the reparations movement.
Local Leaders
In 2020 Maryland House Delegate Wanika Fisher, of Prince George’s County, with the support of 45 other Delegates, sponsored House Bill 1201, Maryland Reparations Commission – Establishment (the Harriet Tubman Community Investment Act) to establish a Reparations Commission for African American descendants of chattel slavery in Maryland. The bill was referred to committee after first reading. In January 2022 Fisher along with 27 other delegates sponsored House Bill 0594, Maryland Reparations Commission – Establishment (the Harriet Tubman Community Investment Act) to develop a program to provide compensation to descendants of individuals enslaved by the state. This bill was also referred to committee after a first reading. This month House Bill 0875 Maryland Reparations Commission – Establishment was introduced, sponsored by Delegates McCaskill, Ruth, Addison, Charkoudian, Crutchfield, Kaiser, Lopez, Phillips and White. It would establish a State of Maryland Reparations Commission seeking to address the generational financial repercussions of slavery, assist with college tuition and encourage home ownership. It has been referred to committee.
Greenbelt Reparations
The 21-person Greenbelt Reparations commission recently began its monthly meetings. They have determined the best meeting times based on group members’ availability but have yet to decide on their structure. Their work is just beginning and recommendations will be a way off.
Generational Implications
The effects of slavery, post-Reconstruction, Jim Crow laws, redlining communities, marginalized banking and education and the war on drugs have created generations of poverty, generational trauma, curses, PTSD and lost hope. Reparations will begin to repair the effects of over 400 years of unimaginable living conditions. It is my opinion that every descendant of chattel slavery is owed reparations. Addressing the foundations of why I and other descendants like me are living paycheck to paycheck after decades of employment is essential for reparative justice.
I come from generations of brokenness and found myself homeless and alone on my 17th birthday. I had my first child at 18 years old and raised him in a single-parent household with no community or family support. He is 27 now, and he asked me why I didn’t set him up for his future. He is comparing his life to the lives of some of his peers who grew up in financially stable home environments. Reparations would provide a way for families living in disenfranchised environments to afford a better education, better living arrangements, better choices in food and health care as well as freedom in an unequal society.
Last year Greenbelt voters passed a referendum in November directing the city to create a commission to “review and discuss the issue of reparations for African Americans and Native Americans in the City of Greenbelt and make recommendations.” The vote was 1,522 in favor and 910 against.
LaWann Stribling, a Greenbelt resident and descendent of slaves and one of the advocates for the commission’s creation, asks our readers to remember some of the women pioneers of reparations this Women’s History Month.