Case For Reparations~ American Studies Inquiry

By lditomasso@elmhurst205.org

  • First Documented Slave Ship in U.S.

    1619- a ship carrying enslaved Africans arrived in the English colony of Virginia.

  • First Documented Attempt of Reparations

    Massachusetts- received 15lbs and 12 shillings
  • Period: to

    Civil War

    The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States from 1861 to 1865, between the North and the South. The Civil War began primarily as a result of the long-standing controversy over the enslavement of black people.

  • 13th Amendment

    abolishes slavery
  • Period: to

    Jim Crow Era

    laws targeting
    Poll Tax
    Vagrancy Laws
    Grandfather Clause
  • Period: to

    Sharecropping Era

  • Period: to

    Reconstruction "Positive Failure"

  • 14th Amendment

    Citizenship to all people born in the United States
    Equal Protection clause
    Due Process clause (fairness of the law to all)

  • Birth of the KKK

    terror, violence, lynching, restoration of the white supremacy after the Civil War

  • 15th Amendment

    The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

  • Plessy v Ferguson

    In a 7-1 ruling, the Supreme Court rules the 14th Amendment intended to establish absolute equality for the races before the law, but held that separate treatment did not imply the inferiority of African Americans. The Court noted that there was not a meaningful difference in quality between the white and black railway cars per the Louisiana law. Ruling: Separate, but equal facilities are Constitutional.

  • Great Migration

    Massive movement of African Americans from rural South to urban North during World War I as a result of the labor shortage

  • Red Summer

    Race riots emerge all over the country- Florida, Chicago, DC, Oklahoma City

  • Redlining

    Predator lenders target black people for "housing contracts" NOT mortgages; restrictive covenants- written into the lease that you can't sell your home to anyone who is not white; Block Associations

  • Federal Housing Administration

  • Social Security Act

    Part of FDR's New Deal

  • White Flight

    Suburbanization and "block busting"

  • G.I. Bill

    gives veterans access to low-interest home loans (excludes African Americans)

  • Holocaust Reparations

    How Germany dealt with repair

  • Brown v Board of Education

    Supreme Court rules 9-0 public schools need to be integrated under the 14th Amendment equal protection clause. This landmark case overrules Plessy v Ferguson and the "separate, but equal clause". Southern states are ordered to desegregate their schools "with all deliberate speed?

  • Emmitt Till Murder

    Chicago teenager is lynched in Mississippi for whistling at white woman. Open casket in Chicago to expose racism in the South

  • Chicago Contract Buyers League

  • Fair Housing Act

    Outlaws redlining and discrimination in housing- sex, race, religion

  • HR 40

    First Congressional bill calling for the study of reparations. Doesn't cost a "single cent"

  • Bank of America Reparations

    predatory loans and sub prime loans. $355 million dollar payout.