[cure-news] Panel Suggests Brown U. Atone for Ties to Slavery

[Ida Hakim]

Panel Suggests Brown U. Atone for Ties to Slavery
By PAM BELLUCK

BOSTON, Oct. 18 ? Extensively documenting Brown University?s 18th-
century ties to slavery, a university committee called Wednesday for
the institution to make amends by building a memorial, creating a
center for the study of slavery and injustice and increasing efforts
to recruit minority students, particularly from Africa and the West
Indies.

The Committee on Slavery and Justice, appointed three years ago by
Brown?s president, Ruth J. Simmons, a great-granddaughter of slaves
who is the first black president of an Ivy League institution, said
in a report: ?We cannot change the past. But an institution can hold
itself accountable for the past, accepting its burdens and
responsibilities along with its benefits and privileges.?

The report added, ?In the present instance this means acknowledging
and taking responsibility for Brown?s part in grievous crimes.?

The committee did not call for outright reparations, an idea that has
support among some African-Americans and was a controversial issue at
Brown several years ago. But the committee?s chairman, James T.
Campbell, a history professor at Brown, said he believed the
recommendations ?are substantive and do indeed represent a form of
repair.?

The committee also recommended that the university publicly and
persistently acknowledge its slave ties, including during freshmen
orientation. Dr. Campbell said he believed that the recommendations,
if carried out, would represent a more concrete effort than that of
any other American university to make amends for ties to slavery.

?I think it is unprecedented,? Dr. Campbell said, adding that a few
other universities and colleges have established memorials, study
programs or issued apologies, but not on the scale of the Brown
recommendations. It was not clear how much the committee?s
recommendations would cost to carry out.

?We?re not making a claim that somehow Brown is uniquely guilty,? Dr.
Campbell said. ?I think we?re making a claim that this is an aspect
of our history that not anyone has fully come to terms with. This is
a critical step in allowing an institution to move forward.?

Even in the North, a number of universities have ties to slavery.
Harvard Law School was endowed by money its founder earned selling
slaves for the sugar cane fields of Antigua. And at Yale, three
scholars reported in 2001 that the university relied on slave-trading
money for its first scholarships, endowed professorship and library
endowment.

Dr. Simmons issued a letter in response to the report, soliciting
comments from the Brown community and saying she had asked for the
findings to be discussed at an open forum. She declined to give her
own reaction, saying, ?When it is appropriate to do so, I will issue
a university response to the recommendations and suggest what we
might do.?

She said ?the committee deserves praise for demonstrating so
steadfastly that there is no subject so controversial that it should
not be submitted to serious study and debate.?

Initial reaction to the recommendations seemed to be appreciative.

?It sounds to me like this makes sense,? said Rhett S. Jones, a
longtime professor of history and Africana studies at Brown. ?I did
not expect the committee would emerge saying, Well, you know, Brown
should write a check.

?I never thought that was in the cards. I?m not sure I think it?s
even appropriate that a university write a check, even though it?s
pretty widely agreed on that Brown would not be where it is if it
were not for slave money. These recommendations seem to me to be
appropriate undertakings for the university.?

Brown?s ties to slavery are clear but also complex. The university?s
founder, the Rev. James Manning, freed his only slave, but accepted
donations from slave owners and traders, including the Brown family
of Providence, R.I.. At least one of the Brown brothers, John, a
treasurer of the college, was an active slave trader, but another
brother, Moses, became a Quaker abolitionist, although he ran a
textile factory that used cotton grown with slave labor.

University Hall, which houses Dr. Simmons?s office, was built by a
crew with at least two slaves.

?Any institution in the United States that existed prior to 1865 was
entangled in slavery, but the entanglements are particularly dense in
Rhode Island,? Dr. Campbell said, noting that the state was the hub
through which many slave ships traveled.

The issue caused friction at Brown in 2001, when the student
newspaper, the Brown Daily Herald, printed a full-page advertisement
produced by a conservative writer, listing ?Ten Reasons Why
Reparations for Slavery Is a Bad Idea And Racist Too.?

The advertisement, also run by other college newspapers, prompted

protests by students who demanded that the paper pay ?reparations? by
donating its advertising fee or giving free advertising space to
advocates of reparations.

The Brown committee was made up of 16 faculty members, students and
administrators, and its research was extensive.

?The official history of Brown will have to be rewritten, entirely
scrapped,? said Omer Bartov, a professor on the committee who
specializes in studying the Holocaust and genocide.

The report cites examples of steps taken by other universities: a
memorial unveiled last year by the University of North Carolina, a
five-year program of workshops and activities at Emory University,
and a 2004 vote by the faculty senate of the University of Alabama to
apologize for previous faculty members having whipped slaves on campus.

Katie Zezima contributed reporting.
>From hakimida at reparationsthecure.org  Thu Oct 19 08:26:57 2006
From: hakimida at reparationsthecure.org (Ida Hakim)
Date: Thu Oct 19 08:20:12 2006
Subject: [cure-news] Gullah/Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor is now Law
Message-ID: <45378B31.2090802 at reparationsthecure.org>


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 13, 2006
 

Congressman Clyburn's Gullah/Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor is now Law
 
(Washington, DC) - Sixth District Congressman James E. Clyburn is 
pleased to announce the Gullah/Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor Act is 
now law.  The President signed the National Heritage Areas Act, which 
included the language authored by Congressman Clyburn, yesterday without 
a formal ceremony.

"I join today in celebrating with the innumerable people who watched and 
waited for this bill to become law," Congressman Clyburn said.  "This 
piece of legislation has garnered more support and interest than 
anything else I have done in my 14 years in Congress, and I make this 
announcement today as a gift to them for their fortitude on this issue."

This law instructs the U.S. Secretary of the Interior to establish a 
Gullah/Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor Commission that will oversee 
the implementation and funding for the designated corridor that 
stretches from northern Florida, along Georgia's and South Carolina's 
coastlines, and into North Carolina.  The law authorizes $1 million per 
year in funding for the corridor to help protect what the National Trust 
of Historic Preservation named as one of the 11 Most Endangered Historic 
Sites in America.

"Now that the Gullah/Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor is a reality, 
the hard work begins," Congressman Clyburn continues. "There is little 
time to waste to preserve, protect, and promote this endangered culture."

The Commission will be composed of 15 members appointed by the Interior 
Secretary.  The State Historic Preservation Officer of South Carolina 
will nominate four commission members, and two individuals will be 
nominated by the State Historic Preservation Officers of Georgia, North 
Carolina, and Florida.  In addition, the Interior Secretary will appoint 
two individuals from South Carolina and one individual from Georgia, 
North Carolina, and Florida who are recognized experts in historic 
preservation, anthropology, and folklore.
 
 
>From hakimida at reparationsthecure.org  Fri Oct 20 13:54:48 2006
From: hakimida at reparationsthecure.org (Ida Hakim)
Date: Fri Oct 20 13:48:07 2006
Subject: [cure-news] Afro-descendant International Recognition Established
Message-ID: <45392988.9020102 at reparationsthecure.org>

AFRE News Report
October, 2006


Afro-descendant International Recognition Established

Atlanta, GA - August of 2006 will be remembered as a landmark month in 
the ongoing rise of the Afro-descendant human family. ?Afro-descendants? 
is a term now officially in use by the United Nations to identify the 
more than 250 million descendants of enslaved Africans dwelling in North 
America, Latin America, the Caribbean and the Slavery Diaspora.

After years of traveling to the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, 
Mr. Silis Muhammad, CEO of the international Non-Governmental 
Organization, AFRE, announced in September that Afro-descendants have 
been officially recognized by the United Nations as a human family. This 
recognition means that Afro-descendants now fall under international 
laws that protect collective human rights. This official recognition 
gives long-awaited legal standing, which is the required step in 
claiming reparations for the lingering effects of slavery.

The recognition of Afro-descendants is a great achievement shared by 
Afro-descendant leaders from across the Americas Region. Officials 
within the United Nations who have helped significantly, include Latin 
American expert and Sub-Commissioner, Mr. Jose Bengoa. Mr. Muhammad 
shares his success with his wife, Atty. Harriett AbuBakr Muhammad, other 
members of the AFRE team, and the men and women who helped AFRE through 
financial contributions.

When Mr. Muhammad first went to the UN in the early 1990s, he quickly 
realized that his people did not exist as a human family, either in the 
eyes of the law or in the eyes of the world community. Subsequently he, 
Atty. AbuBakr Muhammad, and others, made more than thirty trips to the 
UN in Geneva and to UN conferences and workshops in South Africa, 
Honduras, Canada and Peru in order to place the facts before the world 
and make connections with Afro-descendant leaders.

Over the years many battles were fought, until in Peru, in November of 
2005, the joining of Afro-descendant leaders from across the Americas as 
one family, made UN recognition inevitable. The next year, in August of 
2006, a resolution of the 58th Session of the UN Sub-Commission on the 
Promotion and Protection of Human Rights specifically addressed 
Afro-descendants, making UN recognition formal. In the same historic 
session, the Sub-Commission took the very unusual step of accepting and 
promoting a paper written by members of AFRE entitled ?A Regional 
Perspective on Afro-descendant Quality of Life.? This paper was 
distributed to all Sub-Commissioners, Delegates of Member States and 
NGOs as an official document of the session.

In recognition of the recent achievements at the UN, AFRE is encouraging 
Black people in the U.S., whose ancestors were subjected to slavery, to 
choose, and use, the term Afro-descendant as an identity, and 
discontinue use of the term African American or other terms of identity. 
The Afro-descendant identity is not, as in the past, being forced upon 
the people. It is an identity created and offered, to be self-chosen by 
those who wish to belong to their larger human family and benefit from 
collective human rights protection.

With UN recognition and legal standing established, Afro-descendants now 
demand reparations for being deprived of and denied, during the 
lingering effects of slavery, the collective human rights of their 
mother tongue(s), culture and religion. The U.S. Government, and other 
governments under which Afro-descendants live, have ratified Article 27 
of the ICCPR, which protects these collective human rights.

For more information, please contact Mr. Muhammad and AFRE. 
Tax-deductible contributions to support the international movement for 
human rights and reparations for Afro-descendants can be made to War 
Chest and mailed to AFRE at the address listed below.

All For Reparations and Emancipation
130 Melanie Lane
Fairburn, Georgia 30213
Email: AFREoffice at aol.com
Website: AllForReparations.org
Fax: 770-460-7732

Maia Hadi, Communications Director
>From hakimida at reparationsthecure.org  Tue Oct 31 09:33:56 2006
From: hakimida at reparationsthecure.org (Ida Hakim)
Date: Tue Oct 31 09:33:18 2006
Subject: [cure-news] Reparations activists differ on slavery and justice
	report
Message-ID: <45476CE4.6040306 at reparationsthecure.org>

Reparations activists differ on slavery and justice report
Simmi Aujla
Posted: 10/31/06
<www.browndailyherald.com>

Reparations advocates across the country have applauded the historical 
value of the final report from the University Steering Committee on 
Slavery and Justice, but some say the report - especially its 
recommendations - will not have a significant effect on the descendants 
of black slaves.

Adjoa Aiyetoro, co-president of the Legal Defense Research and Education 
Fund of the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America, 
said the report's recommendations did not sufficiently focus on black 
Americans - something she said a targeted scholarship fund, for example, 
would have accomplished.

In its recommendations, the committee wrote that such a scholarship fund 
was the most common suggestion it received during nearly three years of 
research and deliberation. Committee members wrote that a scholarship 
fund for the descendants of slaves was a "logical suggestion....But it 
is not a recommendation we can make" because of the University's 
need-blind policy, which accepts students regardless of their ability to 
pay tuition.

When the committee's formation in the fall of 2003 sparked national 
media speculation about whether the University might pay such 
reparations for slavery, President Ruth Simmons dismissed the prospect 
in a 2004 Boston Globe editorial. She wrote that the committee was not 
created to discuss "whether or how we should pay reparations. That was 
never the intent nor will the payment of reparations be the outcome."

Even though the University is need-blind, Aiyetoro said Brown could have 
called for funds to specifically aid slave descendants from economically 
disadvantaged backgrounds. She said even though the report recommends 
increased recruitment of students of color and those from lower 
socioeconomic backgrounds, this does not adequately target black slave 
descendants.

Though Aiyetoro called the report's effort "commendable," she also said 
"it could have made a much stronger precedent; to heal the racial divide."

"I'm concerned that (the report) avoided a discussion of the need to 
award directly some sort of reparation for (Brown's) historical racism 
(against blacks)," she said. In addition to her role at NCOBRA, Aiyetoro 
is also a law professor at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and 
serves as co-chair of the advocacy group Reparations Coordinating Committee.

Deadria Farmer-Paellman, executive director of the Restitution Study 
Group and an adjunct professor at Southern New England School of Law, 
agreed that the committee should have recommended scholarships. But 
unlike Aiyetoro, she said such a fund should be created for any students 
descended from slaves, regardless of their financial background. The 
University should increase grants for black students on financial aid 
rather than requiring them to pay off loans years after they graduate, 
she added.

The report's recommendation to continue supporting students of color and 
lower socioeconomic backgrounds is "not (a) significant policy change," 
said William Darity '74, a professor at Duke University and the 
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he also serves as the 
director of the Institute of African American Research.

"I don't see the notion of inclusiveness as some form of compensation 
for past injustices - those policies adjust problems of exclusivity 
now," he said.

Harvard Law School Professor Charles Ogletree, who serves with Aiyetoro 
as co-chair of the RCC, said the recommendations were "somewhat 
underwhelming," though he applauded "the committee's thoroughness."

"(The report) could have gone further," Ogletree said, by formally 
recommending that other universities follow its lead. As founder and 
executive director of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race 
and Justice at Harvard Law School, Ogletree specializes in civil rights 
and social justice.

He added that the report's recommendation to further support minority 
and economically disadvantaged students is "an important start."

Darity agreed that while the report was an important step in the right 
direction, it does not fully demonstrate how other institutions could 
analyze their own troubled pasts.

"No single institution like Brown bears isolated responsibility," he 
said. The report should have made an attempt to create "a national 
conversation and a national program for compensation," he said, by 
advocating for House of Representatives Bill 40, sponsored by U.S. Rep. 
John Conyers, D-Mich., which would create a federal commission to study 
the national legacy of slavery and the possibility of reparations. 
Conyers has introduced the bill every year since 1989, but it has never 
left the House Judiciary Committee.

This commitment would have been "relatively painless," but the committee 
"made a decision that they wanted to steer clear of anything like 
reparations," Darity said.

But Al Brophy, a professor at the University of Alabama School of Law 
and a reparations scholar and advocate, had a far more positive take on 
the report's potential impact.

"The report itself is a form of reparation," he said, adding that he 
defined reparations "very broadly."

Several groups will benefit from the report, he said. For one, those who 
read it will gain a better understanding of Brown's past. Rhode 
Islanders will gain from Brown's increased commitment to public 
education. Also, low-income students of color recruited by the 
University, who otherwise would not have "thought of going to an Ivy 
League college, or a college at all," will receive access to college 
education, Brophy said.

He likened the report's potential impact on economically disadvantaged 
blacks to the GI Bill of Rights, which Brophy said gave thousands of 
former soldiers college educations after World War II.

But Aiyetoro questioned whether the recommendations miss the target the 
entire report identifies as most affected by the slave trade - black 
slaves and their descendants. She said the report's section on the 
history of reparations is only "trying to placate" reparations 
activists. Because the report doesn't, in her view, recommend 
reparations or incorporate the committee's research of the damage done 
to black slaves, Aiyetoro said the report's discussion of reparations 
was "gratuitous" and "patronizing."

She especially took issue with the report's expansive view of 
restorative justice and examination of other ethnic and racial groups.

"They seem to have forgotten (in the recommendations) that the people 
injured were not white, Latino or Asian," she said, referring to the 
lack of recommendations specifically targeting blacks.

The report does recommend increased recruitment of students from Africa 
and the West Indies - areas affected by the transatlantic slave trade. 
Aiyetoro said that this suggested move was "fine," but the descendants 
of those most affected by slavery "are here," in the United States.

"Education is important for everyone," but if Brown is to use the report 
well, it must help the descendants of those who were injured - black 
slaves, she said.

Despite varying degrees of approval and disappointment, each of the 
scholars interviewed by The Herald expressed support for the 
University's endeavor. Their contentions concern its future significance.

"There will always be more left to say," Brophy said. "But I think (the 
report) is the best work ever written on the issues of reparations of 
slavery."

Aiyetoro disagreed: "(The report) is an example of how we don't really 
grab onto the continuing consequences of the past," she said.