Pro and Con: Reparations for Slavery

(more) Library of Congress, Washington D.C. (LC-USZ62-76385) To access extended pro and con arguments, sources, discussion questions, and ways to take action on the issue of whether the U.S. federal government should pay reparations to descendants of enslaved people, go to ProCon.org. Reparations are payments (monetary and otherwise) given to a group that has suffered harm. For example, Japanese-Americans who were interned in the United States during World War II have received reparations. Arguments for reparations for slavery date to at least Jan. 12, 1865, when President Abraham Lincoln’s Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton and Union General William T. Sherman met with 20 African American ministers in Savannah, Georgia. Stanton and Sherman asked 12 questions, including: “State in what manner you think you can take care of yourselves, and how can you best assist the Government in maintaining your freedom.” Appointed spokesperson, Baptist minister, and former slave Garrison Frazier replied, “The way we can best take care of ourselves is to have land, and turn it and till it by our own labor … and we can soon maintain ourselves and have something to spare … We want to be placed on land until we are able to buy...