I am writing in response to Marc Warner’s Guest Column, “Reparations in Northampton would demean us,” published in the Gazette’s Dec. 26 edition. Warner states that the city of Northampton has “long stood resolutely against injustice for Blacks” and that “we did not enslave anyone.”
The truth is that from 1654 to 1783 residents of Northampton (originally Nonotuck) did enslave more than 50 people. We know about this history thanks to the excellent work of the Slavery Research Project of the Northampton Historical Society (NHS). The project uncovered the names of both the enslaved and their enslavers. The enslavers were prominent members of this community, many of whose names are familiar to us all as they adorn a number of city streets and one church. I am listing only a few of them with their enslavers: Leah, Rose and Venus were enslaved by Jonathan and Sarah Pierpont Edwards; Boston and a child whose name was not recorded were enslaved by Ebenezer and Eliza Parsons Strong; Bathsheba Hall, Jason, Jesse, Josie, and Jonah were enslaved by Ebenezer and Sarah King Pomeroy; Nanne was enslaved by Benjamin and Thankful Pomeroy Lyman; Caleb was enslaved by Joshua Henshaw.
Those of you who want to know more, visit the NHS website for more information about this project. Coming up soon at the NHS is a Zoom presentation by Emma Winter Zeig and Shara Denson of the NHS’s Slavery Research Project on Thursday Jan. 12 at 7 p.m. You can register online at https://conta.cc/3WPr31N.
Reparations are due when a wrong is done. The U.S. made reparations very belatedly to Japanese Americans for their unlawful incarceration and the confiscation of their property during FDR’s term. The German government made reparations to Jews for the Holocaust. African people were kidnapped, brought across the ocean to these shores in unimaginably horrific conditions. Those who survived the journey were enslaved and the next six generations of their children were also enslaved. In other words, they were kept in slavery for 246 years experiencing brutally violent conditions that yielded enormous profits to their enslavers. Like cattle, they were commodified, people sold away from their families or given as marriage presents. The work performed by the enslaved created enormous wealth for the enslavers.
Before the Civil War, the Southern United States was the richest place on earth and in history. Confiscating Indigenous land and extracting free labor from enslaved Africans was very profitable indeed and slavery contributed enormously to the development of the wealth of the nation. The North benefited from building the ships that transported the Africans, the banking system developed to finance this lucrative trade, the insurance industry developed to protect the enslavers’ “property” and mills in New England boomed with the abundance of cotton produced by enslaved people.
For a very brief period after the Civil War there was hope for change, but within a few years Black people had lost most of what was gained as Southern states did what they could to reinstate slavery, stripping the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the Constitution of their power. One by one, the former slave states passed Jim Crow laws that were ratified by the United States Supreme Court either unanimously or by very large margins. There was virtually no dissent. These laws stayed on the books for nearly a century until the activism of the 1960s resulted in the passage of the 1964 and 1965 Civil Rights Acts.
The resistance to those laws has been very strong and persistent. In only one fairly recent example, the United States Supreme Court stripped the enforcement provisions of the Voting Rights Act in 2013, and the former slave states were at the ready with laws making it harder for Black people to vote. And now we all can see that white supremacists are enacting hundreds of laws restricting the right to vote. They are the old Jim Crow laws in new clothing, but they are transparent to those of us who know this history.
Reparations are not just for historic wrongs in slavery, but address the cumulative effects of slavery and its aftermath. After the Civil War, the formerly enslaved were destitute. General Sherman of the Union army began to give 40 acres and a mule to the formerly enslaved. President Andrew Johnson, who had owned slaves himself, rescinded Sherman’s order and the formerly enslaved were left with no resources and thousands starved to death.
The Northampton Reparations Petition addresses the devastating effect of the more than 100 years of closing Black people out of educational, social, and economic benefits by making reference to the resulting discrepancy between white and Black incomes and even more devastatingly in the difference in the levels of family wealth. White people in the U.S. currently hold 84% of the wealth while Black people hold 4%. Imagine what might have happened if the formerly enslaved got those 40 acres and were able to accumulate some wealth for themselves and their descendants after the war.
Reparations are both materially and symbolically important to Black people, but I would argue that the nation needs to pay reparations to validate wrongs done and benefits gained through slavery and the white supremacy it engendered and that continues to this day. As James Baldwin so eloquently told us time and again, white people have to face what we have done so that we can begin to recover from the damage white supremacy and its denial have done to our character.
Arlene Avakian is professor emerita from UMass and lives in Northampton.