A Reparations Experiment

The Pay Check

Bloomberg

Society & Culture, Business, Investing

4.4 • 630 Ratings

🗓️ 15 April 2021

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week on the Pay Check, we look at the long fight for reparations for slavery in the U.S. Economists have calculated that each Black American is owed around $300,000, which would just about close the racial wealth gap. While momentum for reparations has grown, it's not likely to happen any time soon -- at least at the federal level. Meanwhile, cities and the state of California are looking into local reparations. Susan Berfield looks at how one town is repaying its Black residents for discrimination.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This is an IHeart podcast.
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0:45.3	One of the first Americans to lead a movement for slave reparations was a woman named Callie House. She was born into slavery, freed after the Civil War, married at 22, and widowed in her 30s.
0:52.3	By the late 1890s, she was raising five children and working as a seamstress.
0:58.0	She was also helping to start an association for former slaves
1:02.0	that did things like pay for medical care or burials.
1:06.0	Importantly, it also demanded pensions from the federal government as compensation for slavery.
1:13.6	Callie traveled all over the South recruiting for the association.
1:17.6	Eventually, she signed up some 300,000 dues-paying members,
1:23.6	and she sent petitions to Washington asking for reparations.
1:28.6	She also encouraged her members to do the same.
1:31.7	They proposed a system modeled on money that had been awarded to disabled Civil War soldiers.
1:37.4	All ex-slays would get a monthly pension starting at about $4 a month.
1:43.5	That's around $125 in today's money.
1:47.6	How did Washington respond?
1:50.1	The post office issued a fraud order against Callie and members of the association.
1:55.6	They said she was using the mail to encourage people to ask her something they'd never get.
2:02.0	When Callie got the letter for bidding her from using the Postal Service for her campaign,
	...

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