Irvington, NJ – “Forty acres and a mule!” and “You stole us. You sold us. You owe us,” chanted here, Feb. 23, demanding reparations for African American people. The march was sponsored by the People’s Organization for Progress (POP) and the New Black Panther Party.

The first chant refers to Field Order 15 issued by General W.T. Sherman in 1865. The intent was to furnish a livelihood to Black freedmen after the end of slavery. Sherman’s field order was the first attempt to give reparations to the victims of slavery. It was never successfully implemented.

POP Chairman Lawrence Hamm brought out the history of the struggle for reparations for 250 years of stolen labor and 100 years of Jim Crow segregation. Slave labor created immense wealth that built this country through the production of cotton, corn and other agricultural products.

“People spoke and prayed to end slavery,” said Hamm, “but it took guns and cannon to end slavery because you could not reason with the slave masters.” 220,000 freedmen joined the Union Army and 40,000 laid down their lives.

With the end of Reconstruction in 1877 the progressive measures of Black legislatures were nullified. “The Black Codes and segregation became the law of the land,” Hamm said. Slavery was reinstated through sharecropping, the convict labor system and segregation. The convict labor system created vast wealth – the railroads of the late 19th century were largely built on convict labor. The legend of John Henry commemorates that contribution.

Black people were never paid for any of it.

“Some of us don’t just want a check,” said Zaid Muhammad of the New Black Panther Party. “We want it [reparations] to happen in a way to break the back of this system so that what happened to us can never happen again. You can’t put a number on the pain and suffering. The ghost of that suffering is still with us.”

He noted the presidential campaign of Barack Obama is said to be ‘beyond race.’ “How is it gonna be beyond race when you get beat every day by the police, when we don’t have jobs and suffer from gentrification and police brutality?” demanded Muhammad. “Race ain’t goin’ nowhere, not now.”

Instead of downplaying demands like reparations during the presidential campaign, Muhammad said, “Now is the time to accelerate this issue,” and other issues of the people’s agenda.

The march was organized by Ingrid Hill, Chair of the POP reparations committee, who raised the question of self-determination, saying, “We need money that we control so we can restore ourselves to what we were before.”

Workers of every nationality should support reparations for African American people. It is a just demand. Monopoly capitalism in the United States rests on the inequality and the systematic discrimination directed against African Americans and other oppressed nationalities within this country’s borders. It is a system of racist discrimination that benefits the big corporations at the expense of all working people. Reparations now!

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