Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination

The fourth essay in the collection details the history of the movement for reparations. Though this term means different things to different people, at a fundamental level it refers to efforts to compensate Black Americans for the compounded economic losses arising from hundreds of years of slavery and segregation. The essay covers debates around reparations within the Black community over time, beginning in 1854, with a focus on “the historical vision and imagination that has animated the movement since the days of slavery” (114).

In a section entitled “Forty Acres and a Mule,” Kelley describes the attempts at reparations in the aftermath of the Civil War, during a period typically known as Reconstruction. In 1865, Union General William Sherman issued an edict distributing 40 acres of land and farm animals, including mules, to families of emancipated people. This land had previously been held by plantation owners. Congress likewise passed a similar law. However, President Andrew Jackson reversed the order, and eventually all of the land was given back to the plantation owners. Radical Republicans and Black leaders continued to advocate unsuccessfully for land redistribution as a compensation for slavery. Meanwhile, the plantation owners lobbied Congress and succeeded not only in keeping their land but also in getting compensation for former enslaved people through the Southern Claims Commission.