The experience of the Africans in the American Diaspora in their struggle for Reparations and lessons for Namibians by Morgan Moss Jr of Ncobra, published 2/12/11 in Namibia Today

Giving honor and respect to the Supreme Creator of the universe, our
Ancestors, Paramount Chief Kuaima RiRuako, Local and Regional Chiefs,
Director of Ceremonies, Spiritual Leaders, Members of Parliament,
Ministers, Otjinene Constituency Councillor, Ovaherero Genocide
Committee, Invited Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls.
Greeting to you all, it is an honor for me to a part of this historic
occasion.
My name is Morgan Moss, Junior, an African born in America, a member
of N’COBRA International Commission of the National Coalition of
Blacks for Reparations in America ( N’cobra ). Let me begin by giving
honor and congratulations to all the people of Namibia who fought,
survived, and died in the struggle for Namibia’s liberation from
colonialism, and let us always remember and acknowledge the victims of
the genocide/holocaust.
Germany’s first holocaust of the 19th century was practiced on the
people of Namibia. You are the survivors of Namibia’s holocaust, you
are their children and it is up to you to give meaning to their deaths
and suffering to ensure that Namibia is made whole to the extent
possible by those accountable. The Extermination Order of the 2nd of
October, 1904 was directed specifically against the Ovaherero. It is
estimated that over 60,000 Herero were killed, only 15,000 survived.
Other groups affected by the genocide included the Nama, the Damara,
the San, and others.
Today I wish to highlight the issues of external and internal
reparations and genocide/holocaust. Ovaherero societies need to be
rebuilt after the genocide. Europe had its Marshall Plan after world
war two, likewise Ovaherero, Nama, Damara, San, and other society’s
needs to be restored.
This paper focuses on the diversity of individual actors,
organizations and institutions that for over a hundred years have made
up the Black reparations movement in America. It will offer an
introduction to some of the historical individuals and organizations
who were the initial advocates for Black reparations in America.
The National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (N’COBRA)
states that reparations is a process of repairing, healing and
restoring a people injured, because of their group identity and in
violation of their fundamental human rights, by governments or
corporations. Those groups that have been injured, such as, the
Ovaherero, Nama, Damara and San have the right to obtain from the
government or corporations responsible for the injuries, that which
they need to repair and heal themselves. For example, free education,
land, technology, release of political prisoners, free or affordable
healthcare, equal employment opportunities, business opportunities,
compensations, and debt release.
In addition to being a demand for justice, there is a moral basis for
reparation, it is a principle of international human rights law. It
is similar to the remedy for damages in domestic law that holds a
person responsible for injuries suffered by another when the
infliction of the injury violates domestic law. Groups that have
obtained reparations include Jewish victims of the Nazi holocaust,
Japanese Americans confined in concentration camps in the United
States of America during world war two, Alaska natives for land, and
resources taken, victims of the massacre in Rosewood, Florida and
their descendants, Native Americans as a remedy for violations of
Treaty rights, and political dissenters in Argentina and their
descendants.
A key fundamental concept that we should consider is the “Maafa”. It
was the “Maafa” that has historically created the continuing genocidal
conditions inflicted against Black people throughout the world. The
concept “Maafa” is a Swahili term meaning “a terrible tragedy”. It
describes tremendous suffering, indescribable atrocities, disasters,
calamities, catastrophes, and injustices against African people as a
consequence of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade system, slavery,
colonization, and neo-colonialism.
In all regions of Africa that Black Africans were transported through,
the Black African was involved in brutal wars implemented by the
European aggressors interested in exploiting the human and natural
resources of the richest continent on the planet earth. Those Blacks
Africans that survived the genocidal wars became prisoners of war and
were placed in detention and concentration camps. Some were
transported to the Americas to be enslaved by their captors. It must
be clearly understood that all Black Africans began their enslavement
by force and conquest.
It is imperative that all Black African people understand and
internalize these brief historical facts, just as the Jews or any
other exploited group of people internalize their holocaust and act on
it. We as Black African people must come to the collective reality of
our “Maafa”.
Genocide practice in America is the deliberate and systematic
destruction of African-Americans by White American’s racist
socio-political, economic and cultural forces. America has created
and implemented concepts that justify the annihilation of Black
African people in America and then try to explain explain that such
concepts do not exist. For example, the CIA involvement in cocaine
distribution in Los Angeles, California in the early 1980s, in which
the profits were used to finance the CIA backed contra army in
Nicaragua. This involvement of the Central Intelligence Agency ( CIA)
caused the proliferation of the distribution and sale of crack
cocaine across the African-American communities in America, causing
serious devastation within the Black communities such as, drug
addiction, mental health challenges, prison incarceration, and family
instability, etc. The United States tried to downplay the CIA’s
involvement in this incident by saying that this was an isolated
situation, but in fact this was not true.
Now that we have an understanding of the concept of the “Maafa”, it
should help to understand the concept of genocide. As a result of the
“Maafa” and genocide against African people in Africa and the
Diaspora, the new wave of the reparations movement worldwide must step
up the demand for reparations as the National Coalition of Blacks for
Reparations in America (N’COBRA) is advocating, as well as many other
African organizations throughout the world.
The issue of reparations has sparked the interest of African people
throughout the world, therefore, the question becomes, what does this
new wave of the reparation movement mean for the just cause of the
redemption and salvation of African people? According to Dr. Conrad
Worrill, Former Chairman for the National Black United Front (NBUF),
“when we talk about demands for reparations in America, we are talking
about damages, compensation, release of political prisoners, and
redress of those wrongs, so that the countries and the people that are
suffering from the vestiges of slavery and colonization will enjoy
full freedom to continue their own development on more equal terms”.
Demands by freed Blacks for external reparations in America are well
documented. After the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation
(freeing Black people from enslavement in America) by President
Abraham Lincoln in 1863, freed Africans born in America as individuals
and in organized groups began petitioning the United States government
and pleaded for and insisted on redress for their enslavement.
Institutions such as the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen’s and Abandoned
Lands, commonly known as the Freedmen’s Bureau argued “ that
confederate lands be redistributed to the free Black Africans in
America and that some form of economic redistribution was their best
chance of achieving independence”.
“The Bureau was authorized by the Reconstruction Congress in March
1865 to help the South
Transition from an enslaving economy to a democratic society while
also establishing basic
Rights for Black Americans: In addition to distributing abandoned or
confiscated confederate
Lands, the Bureau was charged with establishing schools for the Freed
Blacks and administering
Justice on their behalf. As such, it had to mediate post-civil war
political ideology, Black claims
to equality, and White’s resistance to change. Because of lack of
resources, no budget after
1870, no Congressional or Executive Branch support, the Bureau lasted
for only seven years,
from 1865-1872.” (Paul Alan Cimbala, The Freedmen’s Bureau:
Reconstructing the American South after the Civil War (2005).
The director of the Freedmen’s Bureau, General Howard began to set
aside 40 acre plots for Freedmen in spring and early summer of 1865.
In January 1865, General William Sherman’s famous field order #15
divided plantations along the Atlantic coast into 40 acre parcels to
be distributed to 40,000 freed enslaved Blacks. Adult males could
claim forty acres, and Sherman made army mules available, this is how
the phrase “forty acres and a mule” came about. By June of 1865,
approximately 40,000 enslaved Blacks had settled on 400,000 acres of
Sherman land. (Eric Foner & Olivia Mahoney, America’s Reconstruction:
People and Politics after the Civil War 32 (1995)).
The National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America,
(N’COBRA), was organized in America in 1987 following the tradition of
Sister Callie House. Since 1988, N’COBRA has developed a number of
strategies designed to gain external reparations for African-
Americans and is helping advance the international efforts to win
reparations in Africa and throughout the world.
Dr. Mary Frances Berry’s book, “My Face is Black is True”, details
what she calls “the first mass reparations movement led by African
Americans” organized by ex-slave Callie House and the Reverend Isaiah
Dickerson. In 1897 Callie House and Reverend Isaiah Dickerson formed
the National Ex-Slave Mutual Relief Bounty and Pension Association
(Ex-Slave Pension Association), which repeatedly petitioned for
pensions and eventually sued the federal government seeking pensions
for former en-slaved Blacks in America, in the form of external
reparations.
Frustrated with its lack of legislative success, the Association
eventually turned to litigation and in 1915 filed what may have been
the first lawsuit seeking Black reparations in America. In the case
Johnson V. McAdoo, Callie House and the Association claimed rights to
the funds collected through the controversial “Southern cotton Tax”.
(Johnson V. McAdoo, 45 App. D.C. 440 (1916). This was the name given
to the revenues from the sale of Southern Cotton that had been
confiscated for taxes by the federal government during world war one
and alleged to still be in the U.S. treasury. The lawsuit contended
that the taxed cotton had been produced by wrongful slave labor, and
therefore the proceeds from its sale belonged to freed former enslaved
Blacks. The plaintiffs sought over $68 million US dollars in taxes
collected between 1862 and 1868. The court denied the case based on
sovereign immunity. The court case Johnson V. McAdoo’s rationale gave
warning to a series of lawsuits against German corporations for
profits they obtained through the use of slave labor during the
holocaust (see e.g. Iwanowa V. Ford Motor Co.).
Dr. Frances Berry stated that the cotton tax revenues were attractive
because “it could be traced in the Treasury, and thus…avoided the
issue of whether congress would appropriate funds to pay for pensions
as compensation for the ex-enslaved Blacks in America”. The United
States Congress had repeatedly rejected proposed pension legislation
claiming there were no appropriated funds.
Queen Mother Audley Moore and Callie House came to be known as the
guiding light of the post-world war two reparations movement. Queen
Mother Moore was born in 1898 in New Iberia, Louisiana.Like most Black
Americans of her generation she was a descendant of enslaved Blacks.
She started her activist life as a Garveyite. She was introduced to
Marcus Garvey’s United Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in New
Orleans, Louisiana. Marcus Garvey’s UNIA was the first worldwide
organization that promoted Pan-Africanism, Black Nationalism and
established a vision for Black political self-determination and
economic independence.
In 1955, Queen Mother Audley Moore started her reparations advocacy
with a pamphlet entitled “Why Reparations? Money for Negroes”. In
1962 Queen Mother Moore and Dara Abubakari started the organization,
Reparation Committee of Descendants of United States Slaves, Inc. with
the mission to educate the grassroots community about reparations and
mobilize for reparations from the United States federal government.
In 1963 she presented to the United States federal government during
the Kennedy Administration a petition with a million signatures she
had collected. The petition implied that without Reparations Black
people in America could never be on equal terms with the White sons
and daughters of former slave masters who continue to reap and enjoy
the abundant benefits of the wealth created by our fore parents
through their centuries of unpaid labor. (Texas Wesleyan Law Review,
vol. 16, # 4 Symposium edition 2010).
Queen Mother Audley Moore petitioned the United Nations to recognize
the demands for reparations of Blacks in America. She was a founding
member of the Republic of New Afrika, advocating for the release of
political prisoners, Black self-determination, land and reparations.
Queen Mother Moore became known within the Black Power Movement
circles in the 1960s, speaking at conferences, mentoring younger
activists, and working and demanding for reparations until her death
in 1996. (Texas Wesleyan Law Review, vol. 16, #4 Symposium edition
2010).
In addition to Queen Mother Audley Moore vocalized reparations,
mobilizing a million signatures in support of reparations. Advocacy is
crucial in her conception of reparations. Unlike Callie House who
demanded pensions for ex-enslaved Blacks in America or their immediate
descendants, Queen Mother Moore had a much broader vision of redress.
She called for $500 trillion as partial compensation for historic
injustice, which would be spread over four generations. She was
explicit in conceiving the call for reparations as a grassroots mass
movement, and her conception of reparations reflected that. Queen
Mother Moore’s idea was not to make one or two or three or ten little
people a little wealthier. Her idea was to give some form of
recompense even unto our fourth generation to come, because we’ve been
four generations injured and it’s going to take four generations in
order to heal us. Queen Mother Moore’s conception of reparation was,
“what the White man owes us for the damages committed against our
families, our homes, and our people. She sought multi-generational
redress designed to repair slavery’s legacy of injury and damages.
(Texas Wesleyan Law Review, vol. 16 #4 Symposium edition 2010.)
What might be called the “pre-modern” reparations movement in America
peaked in 1969, when Former civil rights activist James Forman shocked
America by interrupting services at New York City’s prestigious
Riverside Church to demand that churches and synagogues pay half a
billion dollars in racial reparations. On May 4, 1969 speaking for
the Black Economic Development Conference, James Forman disrupted
religious services to read the Black Manifesto which charged American
Churches and Synagogues with historic and on-going collaboration in
global racism and colonialism, starting with the Trans-Atlantic Slave
Trade, and demanded half a million dollars in reparations. He later
increased the demand to $3 billion dollars. James Forman was specific
in his demands, calling for: funding of a Southern Land Bank; four
publishing houses and television networks to generate jobs and
capital, as well as to counter racist media representations; a
research institute; a training center; and a black university. (Texas
Wesleyan Law Review, vol. 16, #4 Symposium edition 2010).
The Black Manifesto’s charges offended many religious communities,
including some Black religious communities. Some religious
institutions took up Forman’s challenge. Riverside Church’s own
Minister later stated, “it is just and reasonable that amends be made
by many institutions in society including, and perhaps especially, the
church and funds be earmarked for the disadvantaged as restitution and
penance”. (Sugrue, Supra note 83, at 436)
In 1970 the Philadelphia Diocese created a half million dollars
restitution fund that supported Black community development
organizations and scholarships, and the United Methodists set aside
$1.3 million for economic empowerment of Black people. The religious
organization distributed over $2 million to various Black
organizations.
Callie House, Queen Mother Moore, and James Forman were not alone in
the history of reparations activism in America. Henry McNeal Turner,
a Bishop in the African Methodist Episcopal church and a leading voice
for Black emigration in the 1890s, called for $40 billion in
reparations for the free service African Americans had provided the
United States for over two hundred years. During the mid-twentieth
century, almost every significant Black radical organization endorsed
reparations at some point. The issue of reparations was a major
component of Black Nationalist rhetoric during the 1950s and 1960s.
The Nation of Islam, the Black Panther Party, Republic of New Afrika,
National Black United Front, and National Association of Black Social
Workers all endorsed Black reparations to some degree. Reparation is
a crucial component in Black Nationalist and Pan-African thought.
Individual leaders in the struggle for racial equality, as diverse as
Frederick Douglass, Malcolm X, and Whitney Young, also at times
supported reparation for Blacks in America.
Black Africans on the continent of Africa and in the Diaspora are
becoming more familiar with the concept of reparations and what it
means to our continuing struggle in Africa and the Diaspora for
self-determination, healing, repair, redress, liberation, independence
and freedom. Therefore, we must be clear that reparations means
“repair” for the damages inflicted on a people or a nation.
In pursuit of this repair, we must be conscious of the fact that we
are engaged in the process of internal reparations and assume the
responsibility for repairing ourselves, which includes: changing the
way we think, supporting our own traditional and modern institutions,
supporting our families, supporting our own Black business
enterprises, cleaning up our communities, and changing the way we
relate to and think of each other as a people, these are just a few of
the internal repairs we must constantly work on.
Most Black Africans realize that our minds were tampered with as a
result of our forced colonization in Africa and forced capture and
enslavement in America. Internal reparations require those groups and
individuals that were injured to come together, formulate alternative
solutions and implementation processes to begin healing and repairing
their minds in order to peacefully move forward. For example,
Ovahereros, Namas, Demaras, San, Africans in the Diaspora and other
affected societies must unite, struggle, fight, mobilize, and organize
to demand external reparations from those governments, corporations,
and institutions that are responsible for our historical and
continuing state of oppression.
Just as Jewish people proclaim, “Never Forget”, Black African should
do no less. We should “Never Forget” that “They owe us”. Part of our
internal repair is to consciously understand that “We are owed” and
that we have a historic responsibility to demand reparations from
those forces that continue to benefit from what they did to us and
that lingers on as part of the vestiges of our enslavement,
colonization, neo-colonization and genocide. (Dr. Conrad Worrill,
“They Owe Us”)
As we continue to mobilize, organize, and unite around the issue of
reparations, we should be clear that they owe us for:
• The genocide against the Ovahereros, Namas, Damaras, San, and other
affected societies.
• The colonizing of our African culture, that forbade African people
to engage in our traditional spiritual and cultural practices.
• The destruction of the African Family.
• The raping of African women and girls by the colonizer.
• Forcefully remove and acquisition of land.
• The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and Slavery: The United Nations
World Conference Against Racism declared that the Trans-Atlantic Slave
Trade and Slavery were crimes against humanity. Crimes against
humanity have no statute of limitations.
It must be understood that the invasions, intrusions, thefts, murders,
pillaging, the decimation and destruction of African’s land, bodies,
minds, and spirits is the basis for our on-going struggle for
reparations.
In conclusion, our greatest challenge as an African people is that of
getting our minds straight. Getting our minds straight requires that
African people begin to relearn the African principle: rules, laws,
and customs which guide our behavior and which serve as the foundation
for all of our actions. At this juncture in history, we as African
people have the capacity to straighten our own minds out, without the
controlling help of anyone outside the African community.
In our efforts to straight out our minds, it should be clearly
understood and internalized by all Africans that Europeans and Western
imperialism have developed a method whose basic purpose is to replace
all indigenous cultures with their own, mainly through religion,
literacy modalities, military force, and structural adjustment
programs.

Reparations Now!

Morgan Moss, JR is a member of the National Coalition of Blacks for
Reparations in America, (N’COBRA), International Commission, located
in the United States of America, email: mmossjr@hotmail.com website:
www.ncobra.org)

B.F.Bankie
Sudan Sensitisation Project (SSP)
www.bankie.info

The experioence of the Africans in the American Diaspora in their stuggle for Reparations and lessons for Namibians by Morgan Moss Jr of Ncobra, published 2/12/11 in Namibia Today, bankie bankie, 12/02/2011