By Rodney LaBruce

"If you stick a knife in my back nine inches and pull it out three inches, that’s not progress… The healing begins when you pull the knife all the way out—and then start to heal the wound that the blow made."
— Malcolm X

Reparations are about making things right. At their core, they’re a response to harm. When a government or institution causes long-term damage to a group of people—especially through violence, theft, or systemic injustice—reparations are one way to acknowledge that history and offer something concrete in return.

In the U.S., the idea of reparations for Black Americans has been debated for generations. But it’s more than just a debate. It’s rooted in real history—slavery, segregation, racial terror, economic theft, and today’s racial inequalities. If we’re serious about repairing what’s been broken, we have to be honest about what happened, and how we’re still living with the consequences.

What Should Reparations Be Based On?

Three key chapters make the case for reparations: slavery, Jim Crow, and the present day. Each caused lasting harm. Each helped others build wealth. And any one of them alone would justify reparations.

Let’s break them down.

1. Slavery: The Foundation of the Country

For over 250 years, enslaved Africans were forced to work—unpaid, brutalized, and legally owned. Their labor didn’t just support the Southern economy; it built America’s wealth. Cotton, tobacco, and sugar—the cornerstones of early U.S. exports—were powered by slavery. Wall Street banks financed it. Insurance companies profited from it. Even the White House and Capitol were built by enslaved people.

Malcolm X said it plainly in his 1964 speech at Michigan State University:

“You don’t have a revolution in which you love your enemy, and you don’t have a revolution in which you’re begging the system of exploitation to integrate you into it. Revolutions overturn systems. Revolutions destroy systems. A revolution is bloody… and you don’t do that politely. The Black man in America has been made rich soil for the seeds of revolution—because it was the Black man’s labor that made this country rich.”

That labor was never paid for. That debt was never settled.

After emancipation, formerly enslaved people were promised 40 acres and a mule. That promise was quickly reversed. Many of those families never had a chance to own land, build wealth, or escape poverty. Meanwhile, white families—many of them former slaveowners—were compensated for their “loss of property.”

The foundation of racial wealth inequality started here.

2. Jim Crow: Violence, Theft, and Legalized Discrimination

Slavery ended, but racism didn’t. From the late 1800s through the 1960s, Jim Crow laws locked Black Americans out of political power, education, and economic opportunity. This was state-sanctioned.

But it wasn’t just segregation. It was terror—and theft.

The Lynching of Isadore Banks (1954)

Isadore Banks was a wealthy Black landowner in Arkansas. A World War I veteran, he built his fortune through farming and business—owning hundreds of acres in the Mississippi Delta, something almost unheard of for a Black man in the Jim Crow South.

In June 1954, just weeks after the Brown v. Board Supreme Court decision, Banks was found dead—tied to a tree, burned beyond recognition. He had been tortured and lynched.

His murder was never solved. Local authorities made little effort to find his killers. In the years that followed, his land was quietly taken from his family through shady legal dealings and silence. His descendants never recovered what was lost.

The podcast Unfinished: Deep South documents this story in detail, showing how violence, theft, and silence worked hand-in-hand. Banks wasn’t just killed—his legacy was erased.

The Story of Ocoee, Florida (1920)

On Election Day 1920, two Black men in Ocoee tried to vote. One was Mose Norman. White residents warned him not to return to the polls. He did anyway. What followed was one of the deadliest racial massacres in U.S. history.

A white mob, backed by local law enforcement, burned Ocoee’s Black community to the ground. Churches, schools, homes—all destroyed. As many as 60 people were killed. Survivors fled. Their property was stolen or sold off.

Ocoee became a “sundown town”—a place where Black people were not welcome after dark. No one was held accountable.

Rosewood, Florida (1923)

Three years later, another Black town in Florida was erased. In Rosewood, a white woman falsely accused a Black man of assault. A white mob descended. They burned homes, hunted residents, and killed at least six people—possibly many more.

Sam Carter, a Black resident, was tortured and murdered early in the attack. Survivors, mostly women and children, hid in the swamps or fled on foot. State and local officials knew what was happening. They did nothing to stop it. No arrests were made. No one was charged.

It took 70 years, but in 1994, Florida acknowledged the truth. A state commission found that officials had failed to act. One of the investigators, Richard Hickson, wrote in the final report:

“It is clear that government officials were responsible.”

That year, the state paid reparations to surviving victims and their descendants—the first time this had happened in U.S. history. It wasn’t enough, but it was something.

3. The Present: Racial Inequality Isn’t Just History

Some argue that reparations shouldn’t be paid today because slavery happened a long time ago. But the legacy of racism isn’t in the past—it’s still alive.

Look at the numbers. According to the Federal Reserve, the average Black family has one-tenth the wealth of the average white family. That’s not a coincidence. That’s the result of policies that helped white families build wealth while blocking Black families from doing the same—housing discrimination, redlining, unequal schools, mass incarceration, employment bias, and more. It’s the result of Ocoee, Rosewood, and similar stories to the Lynching of Isadore Banks.

The Black Economic Research Center, founded by economist Robert S. Browne, spent decades documenting these gaps. Browne argued that reparations shouldn’t just be symbolic—they should be economic. That means investment in education, housing, jobs, and healthcare. It means closing the racial wealth gap in real, measurable ways.

And sometimes, it means direct payment.

Land Theft, Lynching, and the Sheriff

Across the South, thousands of Black families had their land stolen—often violently. This wasn’t a rare story. Researchers estimate that 90% of Black-owned farmland was lost between 1910 and today. Some of it was bought under pressure. Much of it was just taken—through fraud, legal trickery, or violence.

That land loss cost Black families billions in generational wealth.

Red Summer: 1919

The summer of 1919 saw some of the worst racial violence in U.S. history. Across dozens of cities, white mobs attacked Black communities. In Chicago, a Black teenager named Eugene Williams drifted across an invisible “color line” while swimming in Lake Michigan. A group of white boys threw rocks at him. He drowned. The police refused to arrest the white attackers.

The city exploded. For days, white mobs looted and burned Black neighborhoods. Thirty-eight people were killed. Hundreds were injured. Thousands were displaced.

It wasn’t an accident. It was part of a pattern—punishing Black Americans for asserting their rights, owning property, or even existing in the wrong place.

What Would Reparations Look Like?

Reparations could take many forms. Some ideas include:

• Direct payments to descendants of enslaved people
• Tuition-free college for Black students
• Forgiveness of student loan debt
• Down payment grants for Black homebuyers
• Targeted investments in historically Black neighborhoods
• A national truth and reconciliation commission to document and share stories of harm

There’s no one-size-fits-all answer. But there’s one clear principle: reparations must be more than symbolic. They need to be real.

And yes, they’ll be complex. But complexity isn’t a reason to do nothing.

Final Thoughts

Reparations aren’t just about money. They’re about repair. They’re about recognizing the role that slavery, segregation, and systemic racism played in building this country—and the ways those systems still shape our society today.

This isn’t about guilt. It’s about responsibility.

The United States has paid reparations before—to Japanese Americans interned during WWII, to Native American tribes for broken treaties, to victims of police abuse in cities like Chicago.

So, the question isn’t whether reparations are possible. It’s whether we have the courage to face the truth—and the will to do something about it.

Because the truth is, this country was built on Black labor, Black suffering, and Black resilience. Reparations are about finally saying: we see that. We value that. And we’re ready to repair what was broken.