Six months after conservative commentator David Horowitz ignited the slavery reparations debate by placing controversial ads in campus newspapers nationwide, the University will revisit the issue with a forum tonight at the law school.
The goal of the forum, which begins at 7 p.m. in Room 175 of the law school, is to address the practice and prospects of slavery reparations.
Charles Ogletree Jr., a speaker at the forum, belongs to the Reparations Assessment Group, an association of high-profile lawyers that has made news in its quest to provide compensation to American blacks descended from slaves.
“Reparations are the central issue of race relations in America for the 21st century,” said Ogletree, a professor at Harvard Law School and a defense attorney who has represented mobster John Gotti and the Rev. Al Sharpton. “Until we address it seriously, we will continue to only make modest progress with some of the larger issues.”
Last year, the Reparations Assessment Group announced intentions to file suit against public and private institutions that benefited from slavery, which began in North America in the early 1600s and was made illegal by the 13th Amendment, ratified in 1865.
The group also includes such luminaries as Johnnie Cochran and Randall Robinson, author of “The Debt: What America Owes Blacks,” which articulated the U.S. reparations argument.
Reparations have become more commonplace for groups that have been harmed by historic wrongs, Ogletree said. For example, formal apologies were issued and cash payments were made to each Japanese American held in internment camps during World War II. Also, commissions were formed to investigate attacks on black citizens in Tulsa, Okla., and Rosewood, Fla., which also resulted in reparations.
Some leaders feel the slavery reparations issue takes attention away from more substantive race issues. Walter Williams, chairman of the economics department at George Mason University, was recently interviewed about slavery reparations for a New York Times article.
“The resources that are going into the fight for reparations would be far more valuably spent making sure that black kids have a credible education,” Williams was quoted as saying.
Ogletree welcomes debate on the issue.
“If I can be persuaded that I am wrong about history, and wrong about the facts, that is important,” he said. “But I think that vigorous debate will prove that slavery is part of America’s unfinished business.”
The group hopes that its research, and others’ including the three Yale doctoral students who found that their school’s first scholarship was funded by profits from a slave plantation may bring to light the hidden record of slavery.
“The history of African slavery is sort of distant, it’s dry and sterile, because we don’t have anyone who participated to tell us the horrors,” Ogletree said. “And I fear if we don’t talk about things like slavery, we run the risk that people will think it didn’t happen.”
John Liebhardt is the higher education editor for the Oregon Daily Emerald. He can be reached at [email protected].