Reparations Daily (ish) Vol. 60
5 Quotes That Show MLK Supported Reparations
Happy Monday and MLK Jr. Day!
For the past few years, I’ve taken some time out of my day to read his Letter from a Birmingham Jail. There’s always an endless amount of commentary on this day, so I find it refreshing to read his actual work before reading anything else.
The question of whether MLK Jr. would have supported reparations has been discussed before, most notably around the time the Case for Reparations by Ta-Nehisi Coates was published.
MLK supported the foundational ideas behind reparations, and I believe if he were still alive today, he would be a vocal supporter of the current reparations movement.
Today’s Hot Takes section provides five quotes that I believe back up the above statement.
Here are some articles I recommend checking out today:
The Washington Post compiled the first database of slaveholding members of Congress in this analysis published last week.
Christiane Calixte, a Black high school junior at the Berkeley Carroll School in Brooklyn, penned this op-ed in the Washington Post describing the current backlash against CRT as unbelievable.
NBC detailed the history and relationship between Japanese-Americans and Black Americans in this terrific piece.
As reported by the New York Times, a bill introduced by a Republican delegate in Virginia that sought to teach a particular aspect of history got the history wrong.
With radical love,
Trevor
National News
Washington Post: More than 1,700 congressmen once enslaved Black people. This is who they were, and how they shaped the nation.
NBC News: 'Because we know it is possible': Japanese Americans join fight for reparations
The Root: Japanese Americans Join The Struggle for Black Reparations
LA Times: Op-Ed: King was a critical race theorist before there was a name for it
Washington Post: Take it from a high schooler who’s actually learned about CRT: Adults need to chill out
Harpers Bazaar: For Angela Davis and Gina Dent, Abolition Is the Only Way
USA Today: These parents are angry at schools. But it has nothing to do with critical race theory.
The Guardian: MLK is revered today, but the real King would make white people uncomfortable
Politico: Where MLK’s Vision Is Starting to Be Realized
Econofact: The Economic Case for Reparations
The Guardian: My family benefited from slavery. Why can’t we accept white people still owe a huge debt?
Nonprofit Quarterly: Closing the Racial Wealth Divide—A Call for Strategic Thinking
Brookings: Student loan forgiveness is regressive whether measured by income, education, or wealth
UMass Amherst: UMASS AMHERST POLL EXAMINES AMERICANS’ VIEWS OF RACE ISSUES INCLUDING CRITICAL RACE THEORY, SYSTEMIC RACISM AND REPARATIONS
News @ Northeastern: REPARATIONS LEGISLATION IS STALLED IN CONGRESS. CAN LOCAL GOVERNMENTS FILL THE GAP?
Vox: Could a 54-year-old civil rights law be revived?
Regional News
AL.com: Alabama still has combined Martin Luther King, Robert E. Lee holiday
New York Times: A Bill Proposed a New Way to Teach History. It Got the History Wrong.
Next City: Racial Justice On the Ballot for New York City Voters This Fall
Crain’s Chicago Business: Can reparations in Evanston really solve its wealth gap?
ABC 7: Evanston reparations: 16 recipients selected to receive $25,000 for housing
ABC 13: Time almost up to apply for Asheville's Community Reparations Commission
ABC News: Guaranteed income experiment for Black women aims to tackle racial wealth gap
Sacramento Observer: Roads and Reparations: How Highway Construction Hardened Discrimination
The Guardian: ‘If not us, then who?’: inside the landmark push for reparations for Black Californians
Business Insider: On his first day in office, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin banned teaching Critical Race Theory and mask mandates in schools
NJ.com: Reparations, and the dark Jersey history Trenton is scared to discuss
KOSU: Oklahoma received only two unfounded allegations of violations of critical race theory ban law
Washington Post: Federal government facilitates donations to group that praises Confederate traitors
International News
Yes! Magazine: Desmond Tutu and the Power of Apology
HuffPost: Dutch King Stops Using Golden Coach Criticized For Slavery Painting
Al-monitor: Iraq's credit rating lifts with final reparations payment to Kuwait
Hot Takes
We often fall into the trap of pitting Dr. Marin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X against each other. Over the years, I have said things like, “I want to be a little bit of Martin and a little bit of Malcolm.” Statements like these incorrectly place the two leaders on opposite sides of an ideological spectrum.
While Dr. King described his tactics as militant nonviolent direct action, his demands for racial and economic equality were compelling and forceful. On this day, each year, those whose actions directly contradict King’s beliefs uplift quotes that distort his vision of the world.
Dr. King supported progressive policies like guaranteed jobs, guaranteed income, guaranteed housing, and affirmative action. While he never (to my knowledge) mentioned reparations by name, it is clear that he would have been a supporter of today’s movement.
Here are five quotes that I believe make that case.
“The ancient common law has always provided a remedy for the appropriation of the labor of one human being by another. This law should be made to apply for American Negroes. The payment should be in the form of a massive program by the government of special, compensatory measures which could be regarded as a settlement in accordance with the accepted practice of common law. Such measures would certainly be less expensive than any computation based on two centuries of unpaid wages and accumulated interest. I am proposing, therefore, that, just as we granted a GI Bill of Rights to war veterans, America launch a broad-based and gigantic Bill of Rights for the Disadvantaged, our veterans of the long siege of denial.” 'Why We Can’t Wait 1963.
“This is a litany to those of us in this field. “What more will the Negro want?” “What will it take to make these demonstrations end?” Well, I would like to reply with another rhetorical question: Why do white people seem to find it so difficult to understand that the Negro is sick and tired of having reluctantly parceled out to him those rights and privileges which all others receive upon birth or entry in America? I never cease to wonder at the amazing presumption of much of white society, assuming that they have the right to bargain with the Negro for his freedom. This continued arrogant ladling out of pieces of the rights of citizenship has begun to generate a fury in the Negro. Even so, he is not pressing for revenge, or for conquest, or to gain spoils, or to enslave, or even to marry the sisters of those who have injured him.
What the Negro wants—and will not stop until he gets—is absolute and unqualified freedom and equality here in this land of his birth, and not in Africa or in some imaginary state. The Negro no longer will be tolerant of anything less than his due right and heritage. He is pursuing only that which he knows is honorably his. He knows that he is right. Few white people, even today, will face the clear fact that the very future and destiny of this country are tied up in what answer will be given to the Negro. And that answer must be given soon.” Interview with Alex Haley for Playboy, 1965.’
"A society that has done something special against the Negro for hundreds of years must now do something special for the Negro" to compete on a just and equal basis.” Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?, 1967
“Again we have deluded ourselves into believing the myth that Capitalism grew and prospered out of the Protestant ethic of hard work and sacrifice. The fact is that capitalism was built on the exploitation and suffering of black slaves and continues to thrive on the exploitation of the poor – both black and white, both here and abroad.” The Three Evils of Society, 1967.
“At the very same time that the government refused to give the Negro any land, through an act of Congress our Government was giving away millions of acres of land in the west and the midwest, which meant it was willing to undergird its white peasants from Europe with an economic floor. “But not only did they give the land, they built land grant colleges with government money to teach them how to farm; not only that, they provided county agents to further their expertise in farming; not only that, they provided low-interest rates in order that they could mechanize their farms; not only that today, many of these people are receiving millions of dollars in federal subsidies not to farm and they are the very people telling the Black man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps. And this is what we are faced with, and this is the reality. Now, when we come to Washington in this campaign, we are coming to get our check.” 1968 Speech.