Joe Jarvis

"Restitution, Resolution, Reparations," 3rd Ward Ald. Dorothy Tillman calls from the great podium inside McCormick Place's Lakeside Ballroom.

Day two of the National Reparations Convention. The massive conference is a key indicator of how the movement to demand monetary reparations for African-American descendants of African slaves has grown -- especially in Chicago, where the city council last year passed a resolution in support of the idea.

Regional coordinators from around the country detail the increasing momentum in their home states, give pep talks and detail the atrocities committed against African slaves -- scripting the movement not in terms of closure, but as the fulfillment of the Civil Rights movement. "Once we stop thinking of ourselves as victims, we become our own victimizers," one regional coordinator says.

But for most here the discussion is old hat. Though this movement has existed conceptually for some time, never before has it physically materialized in such form. And despite the discussions, the organization of reparations remains a logistical nightmare. "All we know is that they're going to pay us," Earnest E. Lacey says during his afternoon workshop. "We just don't know how."

Still, Tillman and company have made considerable progress giving form to concept. Though some of the convention workshops deal with well-trod ideology ("TransAtlantic Slave Trade: A Crime Against Humanity"), some try to tackle exactly how reparations would work and where the movement should go. And it's these discussions that seem most invigorating for the crowd.

To be eligible for reparations, a person must be the "African American descendant of an African slave" and prove his or her African slave ancestry. Lacey's workshop, "Researching Your Ancestry" outlines this excruciating task, from the examination of birth records and death records to research of probate records. But it sometimes seems less a workshop than a discussion group with Lacey as emcee. Questions and comments from those in attendance, sparking conversations among audience members, stop the lecture. At one point a man gets up and pins his extensive family tree to the wall, saying he has traced his genealogy to a slave port but can get no further. Another man suggests he research the sea charters of all ships visiting that specific port. The movement's sense of community, which will doubtless prove its main reason for success in oncoming years, is strongest at these informal points.

But the convention's constant claim that the United States is the debtor leaves some unanswered questions, not the least of which is who gets billed. White America? How do you do that? And how do you deal with the fact that many citizens -- Native Americans and Japanese Americans, for example -- couldn't possibly be expected to pay for something they had no part in? "Well," answers one attendee, "these are things that still have to be worked out. But for right now, we're all here, and that's enough."

(2001-02-08)

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