Momentum continues to build and excitement is on the rise as we approach the National/International Reparations Summit slated for New York, hosted by the Institute of the Black World 21st Century (IBW). Scores of people from across the United States, the Caribbean, Central and South America, Great Britain, France, Sweden and other parts of Europe have already pre-registered for the Summit via IBW’s Web site (ibw21.org).

Calls and emails requesting information about registration, hotel accommodations, Summit agenda items etc. are streaming into IBW’s office. Sisters and Brothers are calling and writing to inform us that activists and university students in Virginia, California, Georgia and other states are busy organizing discussion groups and study circles to explore various aspects of the growing reparations movement in the United States, the Caribbean and parts of Latin America.

More and more people are beginning to recognize that the call for reparations is a viable and critical dimension of the #blacklivesmatter movement, the campaign to end the ‘War on Drugs’ and the ongoing movement for civil and human rights and for racial and social justice in the USA and across the world.

The time for reparatory justice for centuries of the African slave trade, (the greatest crime against humanity in all of human history) and for genocide perpetrated against the native peoples of the Americas is NOW. In the name of our ancestors, let us seize this moment.

Forward Ever, Backward Never!

Professor Sir Hilary is the Vice Chancellor designate of the University of the West Indies (UWI) and currently is the Principal and Pro-Vice Chancellor of The Cave Hill , Barbados campus of UWI. He is regarded by many as the leading public intellectual in the Caribbean region and as Chairman of the CAICOM Reparations Commission he is recognized and respected as the de facto leader of the growing reparations movement in the Western Hemisphere.

Dr. Beckles is a distinguished University administrator, economic historian and specialist in higher education and development thinking and practice; and an internationally reputed historian.He is Vice President of the International Task Force for the UNESCO Slave Route Project;a consultant for the UNESCO Cities for Peace Global Program; an advisor to the UN World Culture Report; and member of Secretary-General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-Moon’s Science Advisory Board on Sustainable Development.

Sir Hilary has received numerous awards including Honorary Doctor of Letters from the University of Glasgow, University of Hull, and the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana, in recognition of his major contribution to academic researchinto transatlantic slavery, popular culture, and sport.He is an editor of the UNESCO General History of Africa series.

He has lectured extensively in Europe, Africa, Asia and the Americasand has published more than ten academic booksincludingBritain’s Black Debt: Reparations for Slavery in the Caribbean (2013); Centering Woman: Gender Discourses in Caribbean Slave Society (1999); White Servitude and Black Slavery in Barbados 1627-1715 (1990); The History of Barbados(1990); Natural Rebels: A History of Enslaved Black Women in the Caribbean (1989); The Development of West Indies Cricket: Volume One, The Age of Nationalism; and Volume Two, The Age of Globalisation, (1999);A Nation Imagined: The First West Indies Test Team: The 1928 Tour (2003). He is Chairman of the Caribbean Community [CARICOM] Commission on Reparation and Social Justice.

Sir Hilary is founder and Director of the CLR James Centre for Cricket Research at Cave Hill Campus, and a former member of the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB). He is founder and inaugural Chairman of the High Performance Cricket Academy of the WICB.He is also Vice President of the Commonwealth Sports Ministers advisory body on Sport and Development.

On Dec. 10, 2014, Sir Hilary delivered the keynote address in New York at the launch of the United Nations Decade for People of African Descent. (Click here to listen to his address).

Fresh off a July, 2014 speech on reparations delivered to the House of Commons in Great Britain, Sir Hilary Beckles spoke at the Congressional Black Caucus’s (CBC) Annual Conference in late September where he passionately detailed crimes against Native People and enslaved Africans committed by European colonialists and the gross exploitation that is directly responsible for the underdevelopment of Caribbean nations today.

CARICOM’s Ten Point Reparations Program is designed to compel former colonialists to “clean up the mess” they left as a burden for “independent” Caribbean nations. He paid tribute to Cong.John Conyers, dean of the CBC and author of HR40, the landmark Reparations bill which he introduced in the US Congress in 1989 for his leadership on reparations, Professor Beckles brought the audience to its feet by proclaiming a “Conyers’ Decade of Reparatory Justice” as a theme to galvanize the Reparations Movement in the U.S. and beyond.

VIEW SIR HILLARY'S SPEECH AT THE CBC EVENT

VIEW OTHER RECENT REPARATION SPEECHES BY SIR HILLARY

Actor, humanitarian and human rights activist Danny Glover has agreed to be Honorary Chairman of the Host Committee for the Benefit Tribute to Congressman John Conyers, Jr., Friday, April 10th, 6:00 – 9:00 PM at the Martin Luther King Labor Center of 1199 of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). Congressman Conyers is the Dean of the Congressional Black Caucus and longest serving member of the U.S. Congress. He is recognized as the “legislative champion” of the U.S. Reparations Movement, having introduced HR-40, the Reparations Study Bill in the House of Representatives since 1989. HR-40, which would establish an official commission to study the damages done to Africans in America during enslavement and recommend remedies for repair, has been an important galvanizing point for the U.S. Reparations Movement.

Congressman Conyers is considered one of the most progressive political leaders of the last half century. He was the primary sponsor and steadfast proponent for the Martin Luther Holiday King Bill which eventually became the law of the land. He has also been a leading advocate for universal health care, criminal justice reform and a steadfast supporter of democracy and development in Haiti, the world’s first Black Republic. The Benefit Tribute will mark the beginning of what Sir Hilary Beckles has called the “Conyers Decade of Reparatory Justice.”As such it will be a major highlight of the Reparations Summit. Proceeds from the Tribute will support the work of the National African American Reparations Commission which has been established as a parallel body to the CARICOM Reparations Commission.

The newly established National African American Reparations Commission (NAARC) is near full strength with the appointment of four additional Members by the Institute of the Black World 21st Century (IBW). Bill Lucy, President Emeritus, the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists and Dean of the Black Labor Movement in the U.S.; Kaam Howard, National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (N’COBRA); Salim Adolfo, Vice-Chairman, National Black United Front and a leader of the struggle against police brutality and killings in the U.S.; and Nana Dr. Patricia Newton, Chief Executive Officer, Black Psychiatrists of America are the latest additions to NAARC. The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan is expected to serve on the Commission or name a representative from the Nation of Islam in the near future to round out the fifteen Member body. IBW will function as the administrative and facilitative structure for NAARC. The dialogue and strategic discussions between NAARC, the CARICOM Reparations Commission and scholars, advocates and organizers from the U.S. and the Pan African world will be a central focus of the Reparations Summit.

CLICK HERE FOR LIST OF NAARC

Click here for registration an more information