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Article: Reparations then and now.
- Article from:
- First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion and Public Life
- Article date:
- June 1, 2002
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2002 Institute on Religion and Public Life. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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On May 4, 1969,James Forman rose to interrupt the Sunday morning services at New York City's Riverside Church to read aloud a "Black Manifesto." The Manifesto was an explosive declaration of independence by a new generation of young black activists who had grown impatient with the slow-moving, nonviolent tactics that had prevailed in the Civil Rights Movement. It was intended to shock, and shock it did, not least because, among its other features, it demanded $500 million as reparations "due us as a people who have been exploited and degraded, brutalized, killed, and persecuted."
The idea that one party to a conflict can end up owing financial reparations in some ...