Organized by Deborah McDowell (Alice Griffin Professor of English and Director of the Carter G. Woodson Institute for African American and African Studies), Kim Forde-Mazrui (William S. Potter Professor of Law), and Lawrie Balfour (Professor of Politics), the symposium is organized around four sessions—“Reparations in Historical Frame,” “Reparations and the University,” “Reparations and the Nation,” “Reparations around the Globe.” Panelists will examine the range of meanings, questions, controversies, and aspirations the term “reparations” has elicited historically and will explore among other topics, the cultural, legal, economic, and political legacies of slavery and Jim Crow.
A controversial term provoking a range of meanings and responses, “reparations” has been used most commonly to refer to material compensation in the present as a means of righting the wrongs of the past. In the political arena, the connection between the crimes of the past and the health of the polity has been acknowledged in the recent spate of public apologies, particularly for slavery and Jim Crow. Beginning with the Commonwealth of Virginia in 2007, several states and then the U.S. Congress expressed regret for slavery and segregation and vowed that the lesson of this past history would not be lost. In its 2009 apology, the U.S. Senate observed that "African-Americans continue to suffer from the consequences of slavery and Jim Crow laws—long after both systems were formally abolished—through enormous damage and loss, both tangible and intangible, including the loss of human dignity and liberty." For many, including the distinguished historian, John Hope Franklin, such apologies cost nothing and carry limited utility as concerns the work of righting wrongs. The next step, he asserted, was “to do something."
