How reparations activist Deadria Farmer-Paellmann turned a one-woman campaign into a triumphant national movement
by KEMBA J. DUNHAM
from ESSENCE.com
Growing up in Brooklyn, Deadria Farmer-Paellmann listened to her grandfather wax poetic about how African-Americans deserved their 40 acres and a mule to make up for centuries of enslavement. Now she’s fighting to see that we finally get paid in full. For the past seven years, the 41-year-old reparations advocate has taken on some of America’s biggest corporations by proving that they profited—and continue to reap rewards—off the back of slave labor. In her latest move to get restitution, Farmer-Paellmann is serving as the lead plaintiff in a case against companies that allegedly made money from slavery. The landmark proceeding, which names 17 businesses, including Aetna and Bank of America, is currently up for review on the United States Supreme Court’s docket.
"Her strategy of going after the private sector is absolutely imaginative and creative," says Mary Frances Berry, a history professor at the University of Pennsylvania and former chairperson of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. "She is at the vanguard of the movement to try to get reparations taken seriously."
With a string of victories already under her belt, Farmer-Paellmann certainly has people sitting up and taking note. Along with other advocates, she has compelled businesses, such as J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and Wachovia, to apologize for their role in slavery and to shell out millions to organizations like the NAACP and Howard University. She’s also triggered the passage of slavery disclosure laws around the country, forcing companies to fess up to their links to the slave trade.
"It is unreasonable for companies to keep wealth they acquired by stealing people, torturing laborers to work without compensation, and brutalizing those who resisted," she argues. “They must atone by paying restitution." Her current lawsuit demands a humanitarian trust fund be set up to benefit the descendants of slaves instead of individual payouts. "We need this capital for economic development, affordable housing, educational opportunities and health care," she says. "As a community we suffer in all these areas as a direct result of slavery."
The toilsome reparations fight became a passion for Farmer- Paellmann during law school, when she chose the controversial topic as the focus of a project. It became her full-time mission during her pregnancy with daughter Sabina in 1999.
Prepping for her battle has been far from easy. Farmer-Paellmann went through the laborious process of getting a list of present-day companies that existed in some form before 1865 and calling them, one by one, to grill them about past practices. Her enterprise is largely self-funded, and she relies on donations from family and friends and personal savings to forge ahead, despite naysayers who argue that the reparations fight is futile.
But Farmer-Paellmann says her progress speaks for itself. "We’ve won historic victories, and we got companies to pay $20 million," she says, referencing payments made by J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Bank of America and Wachovia to Howard University and the NAACP and several other organizations. "If detractors were aware of these things, they would be a bit more optimistic."
I'm not certain exactly what Bank of America would have to do with this because they weren't formed until after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.
ReplyDeleteShari,
ReplyDeleteThe bank may not have been formed until 1906, but their proto organizations had extensive ties to the slave trade. They financed and insured slave ship voyages, they provided runaway insurance for slaveholders to compensate them for their losses, et cetera.
The money and wealth they built doing that was incorporated into the capital that started B of A.
New York was the financial center for the slave trade. It was so wedded to the profits from it that the city briefly considered seceding and joining the Confederacy.
Much of this country's wealth and infrastructure was built on not paying my ancestors for 246 years of labor. For example, our nation's capital was built with slave labor. Many roads and railroads in the South were also buillt with slave labor.
That wealth built up from the savings of not having to pay for labor costs was passed on to the descendants of those original slave holders.
The same goes for all the businesses who got wealthy off of the slave trade. Their successor orgs inherited that cash or have connnections to it.
Bank of America didn't exist until 1906, but they've merged and acquired plenty of other financial institutions that existed far back into the old days of the Confederacy. Local banks, regional chains, etc. When you acquire a company, you acquire their liabilities as well as their assets.
ReplyDeleteImaginative, indeed. Must take a lot of historical and genealogical sleuthwork to research one of these actions. More power to her.
This article seems quite old. I believe Farmer-Paellmann has already lost her lawsuits, and the appeals are over.
ReplyDeleteJames, I agree that the article is a bit old (her petition to the Supreme Court was denied Oct 1, 2007).
ReplyDeletehttp://www.supremecourtus.gov/docket/06-1533.htm
But don't miss the big picture. She accomplished a great deal. And she's only in her early 40s - that gives her time to accomplish even more. Deadria Farmer-Paellmann is a name worth remembering.
and the fact that the US government has paid the Japanese survivors of WW2 internment only adds to the strength of the case.
ReplyDeleteAt emacipation the freedmen were supposed to get 40 acres and a mule for the feds, but that compensation was vetoed by President Andrew Johnson.
You may also want to read Randall Robinson's 'The Debt'. It lays out cogent arguments for reparationns and how they should be disbursed.