Confronting the Past, Creating the Future ©
Reverend Janet Parsons
Gloucester UU Church
February 18, 2024
In April of 1862, at the height of the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln signed a law giving freedom to enslaved people in the District of Columbia. This was before the Emancipation Proclamation that declared all enslaved people free, which took effect on January 1 of 1863. But this District of Columbia Emancipation Act not only freed local slaves, but provided $300.00 to the enslavers for every person emancipated. (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/16/opinion/when-slaveowners-got-reparations.html)
A few years later, at the end of the war, Union General William T. Sherman met in Savannah, Georgia with a number of local Black ministers, to hear from them directly what they would find helpful now that slavery was ended. The reply came that Black people would prefer to live among themselves, to have access to education, and to own land. Four days later, on January 16, 1865, Sherman signed Field Order No. 15, which set aside 400,000 acres of confiscated Confederate land to be divided among formerly enslaved people. Each family would be given up to 40 acres. Some were given surplus U.S. Army mules. This order became known popularly as “40 Acres and a Mule.” (https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2015/01/12/376781165/the-story-behind-40-acres-and-a-mule)
Sadly, that is not the end of the story. For after President Lincoln’s assassination, the Southerner Andrew Johnson took office, and reversed Sherman’s order, thereby returning the land to its former Confederate owners.
As a result, with no land and no income, thousands of newly freed Black people were forced back onto the land restored to their former enslavers, to become sharecroppers, a condition of semi-slavery that persisted well into the 20th century.
It’s a heartbreaking story. Heartbreaking for the impact on people’s lives for generations to come, still being felt today, and heartbreaking because with this early effort at reparations the United States had the opportunity in the very beginning of the post-Civil War period to begin to set things right; to compensate Black people for the loss of wages, and freedom, and autonomy. Imagine the fresh start many would have received, and where their descendants might be today as a result.
We hear a lot these days about the great disparity of income among Americans, and how this gap in income between the richest and the poorest continues to grow. But we don’t talk as much about wealth; meaning the accumulated value of assets and property. According to the Brookings Institution, in 2020 White Americans held 10 times the wealth of Black Americans. (https://www.brookings.edu/articles/why-we-need-reparations-for-black-americans/)
The Brookings Institution and other sources make it very clear how much is owed to Black Americans. In its article, “Why We Need Reparations for Black Americans,” Brookings asserts: “In 1860, over $3 billion was the value assigned to the physical bodies of enslaved Black Americans to be used as free labor and production. This was more money than was invested in factories and railroads combined. In 1861, the value placed on cotton produced by enslaved Blacks was $250 million.” (Ibid.)
There’s that word: reparations. It’s a word that many find scary, or even abhorrent. But as we have just seen, the idea of reparations is nothing new in American history. In 1862, as we just heard, reparations were paid to former owners of freed slaves. An attempt to compensate Black people was attempted at the very end of the war, and overturned. And all the way through 19th and 20th century history, efforts of the United States government to compensate people for damages or for their labor, were offered to some people. For example, Japanese Americans were paid $1.5 billion in damages following their wrongful internment during World War II. And Native Americans are now being awarded grants of land that was taken from them.
But too often, Black Americans have been denied access to financial compensation. We hear frequently how the GI Bill failed to provide equal opportunity to Black veterans. Education and housing opportunities were limited by segregation restrictions. Historian Ira Katznelson stated, “In New York and the northern New Jersey suburbs, fewer than 100 of the 67,000 mortgages insured by the GI bill supported home purchases by non-whites.” (https://www.history.com/news/gi-bill-black-wwii-veterans-benefits)
Katznelson went on to write that there was “no greater instrument for widening an already huge racial gap in postwar America than the GI Bill.” (Ibid.)
Even Social Security failed our Black citizens. When it was originally created, Social Security was structured to exclude farmworkers and domestic laborers. Who does that sound like? (Brookings, op.cit.)
In sum, paying reparations to citizens who have lost property, or who have been harmed or exploited is nothing new. And we have demonstrated that we are willing to offer compensation: the G.I. Bill is the outstanding example. But Blacks have been systematically excluded from compensation, from any opportunities to accumulate wealth, and we see the result today.
Slavery is often referred to as America’s Original Sin: older than the country, and included in our Constitution. And we must ask ourselves hard questions. The first question is, what does the weight of this systematic cruelty and oppression do to the country that is carrying it?
We are seeing the answer to this question on a daily basis. It threatens to destroy us. We see the efforts to silence the people who speak out, the attempts to hide our history by denying children books to read, the massive violence endemic in our damaged and hurting society. These are all manifestations of the fractures we have created in our country from the beginning. These will not go away by trying to hide them. They will only continue to divide and harm us all.
The next question is, what can we do? How can we repair this catastrophic damage that has been done to so many of our citizens?
Once last year and again this past fall, I preached about the steps, the process, that people can use to confront wrongs and atone for them that Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg outlines in her wise book On Repentance and Repair.
You may remember from those sermons that nothing meaningful can take place without first acknowledging that a wrong has been committed – to confess the wrongdoing. Many in our country have steadfastly refused to confront our past. Until the harm is named, there is no path forward. And then, from that beginning of confession, we must repent – must begin to take steps to make sure that such harm cannot happen again. Then we can begin to make amends, and to offer a meaningful, heartfelt apology. From this emerges transformation; both of individuals and of a society trying to deny its pain. This work takes great courage; a willingness to admit wrongdoing, a desire to step forward onto a new path, into a new future. Will we ever be able to do this work?
Perhaps the guilt is too intense. Or perhaps the task feels so monumental that people cannot imagine it, and are frightened of it. And so perhaps it would be wise to begin by looking for smaller steps; for individuals and organizations to find ways to acknowledge their own complicity and offer recompense, or reparations, in their own way.
And of course, that brings us to our beloved church. We, too, are part of this American story. We, too, benefitted from the slave trade and the slavery economy. What are we called upon to do?
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Dick Prouty: speaks of wealth derived from participation in the slavery economy by merchants and ship owners who then donated to local institutions – our church and others.
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Our congregation has faced our past with honesty. And when asked, back in 2020, you raised funds to help the Cape Ann Slavery and Abolition Trust continue its work. Some might say that that is enough – we told the truth about our history and have made it public. The website – capeannslavery.org, is itself a monument to the truth.
Around the country, institutions are finding ways to make amends. Harvard, in 2022, created a $100 million endowment to find ways to close the wealth and achievement gap, noting in its report, “The nation’s oldest institution of higher education … helped to perpetuate the era’s racial oppression and exploitation.” (https://www.reuters.com/world/us/harvard-sets-up-100-million-endowment-fund-slavery-reparations-2022-04-26/)
Other academic institutions making amends include Georgetown University and Princeton Theological Seminary. And just this week, the president of Yale University issued this statement: “Today, on behalf of Yale University, we recognize our university’s historical role in and associations with slavery, as well as the labor, the experiences, and the contributions of enslaved people to our university’s history, and we apologize for the ways that Yale’s leaders, over the course of our early history, participated in slavery. Acknowledging and apologizing for this history are only part of the path forward. These findings have propelled us toward meaningful action to address the continued effects of slavery in society today.”
That is what an apology sounds like.
Some of our fellow Unitarian Universalist congregations are also exploring reparations, including First Parish in Arlington, which has discovered that 17 of its original pew owners were enslavers. They have formed a Reckoning and Repair Task Force to develop policies for making meaningful financial reparations.
I would have two goals for any work that our church might undertake. First, I hope we can do something that would help students of color further their academic achievements. As part of that work, I would ask that we partner with people of color here in Gloucester and follow their lead. Too often well-meaning white people step into situations without asking enough questions. Let’s work on our partnerships and see what emerges.
And: I have a sentimental request. We claim as a founding member the first Black Universalist: Gloster Dalton, whose signature we can see on our charter in the Historical Room. His funeral was held here in this building in 1813. And yet, we do not know where he is buried. Can we locate his remains, and create an appropriate memorial?
My friends, we embarked on this journey together with courage and honesty. We could stop here, knowing that we had made an effort to uncover some of the history of slavery. But we can do more. There is a promissory note outstanding, a bad check.
“Human beings suffer,
They torture one another,
They get hurt and get hard.
No poem or play or song
Can fully right a wrong
Inflicted or endured…
History says, Don’t hope
On this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up,
And hope and history rhyme.” (The Cure at Troy, Seamus Heaney)
May we answer this call to hope and history with love and justice.
Blessed Be.
Amen.
