How the Movement for Reparations Inspired Hope

By TREVOR SMITH JUNETEENTH 2070

Almost 50 years ago, amid the 21st-century resurgence of the Black-led reparations movement, the now-defunct Pew Research Center released a survey that found over 70% of Black people supported reparations, but only 7% of Black people believed it would happen in their lifetime. Activists at the time described this phenomenon as the “hope gap,” as it illuminated the utter lack of belief that the federal government would ever provide redress to Black people across the country.

More recently in 1990, the U.S. government paid Japanese Americans $1.2 billion, or $20,000 for each person placed in the American concentration camps during World War II.

That same year, Austria paid $25 million to Holocaust survivors who had made claims against that country.

Even in 1952, Germany paid $822 million to Holocaust survivors in a German-Jewish settlement reached shortly after World War II.

The point is that precedents have been set for repaying particular ethnic groups for ills done to them. Between 1980 and 1986, the U.S. paid over $261.3 million to five different Native American tribes for the atrocity and genocide done them since the 1936 U.S.-Indian Treaty.

In 1980 the American government paid $105 million to the Klamaths of Oregon. In 1985, the government paid $105 million to the Sioux of South Dakota, $12.3 million to the Seminoles of Florida; $31 million to the Chippewas of Wisconsin, and in 1986, $32 million to the Ottawas of Michigan.

Yet, the United States government has paid nothing (repeat nothing!) to African people for enslaving and brutalizing them for over three hundred years.

When HR 40 was passed in 2030, the belief that reparations were possible amongst the Black community stood at 55%. When the first federal reparations policies were enacted in 2034, the belief that reparations policies were possible stood at 90%.

Somehow, advocates were able to enact a policy solution that was not only deeply

Examining this movement and how it both inspired and harnessed the hope of Black people will be significantly critical for continuing to implement reparations policies and create a racially just world.

The Uprisings Of 2020

On May 25, 2020, a Black man named George Floyd was arrested for the possible use of a counterfeit $20 bill. One of the arresting officers, Derek Chauvin, shoved his knee into the back of Floyd for close to nine minutes until Floyd stopped breathing. The deadly encounter sparked mass protests against police brutality and anti-Blackness across the globe. The clarion call that Black lives matter reverberated in streets from Oslo to Harlem as thousands of people took to the streets in protests that lasted for months in some cities.

While reparations were not a central call of the 2020 uprisings, the increased attention on racial inequality, anti-Blackness, and the carceral system in conjunction with the fallout of the Trump presidency and the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 created an opening within our national discourse on race that the reparations movement graciously stepped into.

On June 17, 2021, President Biden signed a bill into law that made Juneteenth the 11th holiday officially recognized by the federal government and cemented an annual reminder that this country still had much reckoning to do.

An Interconnected And Intersectional Movement Appears

unpopular amongst a small and vocal minority of the U.S. public, but also reinvigorated a Black population that had no faith in a legal system that had let them down time and again.

How was this possible in a deeply partisan country where anti-Blackness ran rampant for over 400 years? Over the last half-century, the movement for reparations strategically built power across progressive movements and tied the story of reparations as the key to unlocking true healing across society. It ushered forth what many now consider a Third Reconstruction and transformed a culture deeply rooted in violence and individualism into one rooted in care and community.

With more funding, sustained organizing, and increased exposure to the topic, support for reparations steadily increased across the country. Culturally, there was a crucial turning point; perhaps the most critical moment, at least within the cultural context, came when HBO, a legacy, corporately controlled media outlet, released their epic series “Reconstruction” in 2024, which told the fictional story of how the country would look in the 21st century if the era immediately after the Civil War was successful. The show portrayed the true story of Hiram Revels, the first Black person elected to the United States Senate, and fictionalized accounts of Black people gaining political, economic, and social power.

By showing what the world would look like if formerly enslaved people were given the 40 acres as the federal government promised them, the show simultaneously inspired hope that a progressive pro-Black society was attainable and pushed the movement to think critically about where

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