40 Acres and a Mule Would Be at Least $6.4 Trillion Today—What the U.S. Really Owes Black America

By Tracy Loeffelholz & DunnJeff Neumann

Slavery made America wealthy, and racist policies since have blocked African American wealth-building. Can we calculate the economic damage?

Dr Martin Luther King Jr Speaking on Federal Subsidies for White Land Owners, the sound doesn't become clear until about eight seconds into the video.

Infographic "A Nation Built on the Back of Slavery and Racism" that poses the central question, "Why Reparations?"


Download a PDF of this infographic:

11×17 poster format

8.5×11 vertical format


Sources:

Introduction

http://theconversation.com/slavery-in-america-back-in-the-headlines-33004

http://www.civil-war.net/census.asp?census=Total

1.

1.5 million pounds in 1790 and 2.25 billion pounds in 1859, based on Empire of Cotton, by Sven Beckert (2014) pgs. 104, 106

77% based on: Cotton and Race in the Making of America: The Human Costs of Economic Power, by Gene Dattel (2009)

http://mshistorynow.mdah.state.ms.us/articles/161/cotton-in-a-global-economy-mississippi-1800-1860

Joshua Rothman, email correspondence, 2015

http://eh.net/encyclopedia/the-economics-of-the-civil-war/

http://abrahamlincolnsclassroom.org/abraham-lincoln-in-depth/abraham-lincoln-and-civil-war-finance

48.3% in 1860 according to Gavin Wright, Slavery and American Economic Development (LSU Press, 2006, paperback 2013) [personal communication]


2.

http://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1073&context=jlasc

http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured_documents/dc_emancipation_act/

http://philosophy.fullerton.edu/people/2007%20-%20Heiner%20-%20Abolition%20Democracy%20-%20Rad%20Phil%20Today%205.pdf

http://www.cjcj.org/uploads/cjcj/documents/slavery_in.PDF

http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21583992-fifty-years-after-martin-luther-kings-speech-fixing-americas-racial-ills-requires-new/comments?page=8

The Politics of Despair: Power and Resistance in the Tobacco Wars. Tracy Campbell, 2015

7% based on: Documents of the Assembly of the State of New York, Vol. 4. 1979.


3.

http://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/ssb/v70n4/v70n4p49.html

70-80%, according to:

http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/05/the-case-for-reparations/361631/#ii-a-difference-of-kind-not-degree

http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CREC-2010-08-05/html/CREC-2010-08-05-pt1-PgS6836.htm

http://www.farmaid.org/atf/cf/%7B6ef41923-f003-4e0f-a4a6-ae0031db12fb%7D/FARM_AID_2014_ISSUE_BRIEF-BLACK_FARMING_AND_LAND_LOSS.PDF

http://www.racialequitytools.org/resourcefiles/lui.pdf

http://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1073&context=jlasc


4.

https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2014/demo/p60-249.pdf

Dime based on: 

http://www.insightcced.org/uploads/CRWG/LayingTheFoundationForNationalProsperity-MeizhuLui0309.pdf

http://newsreel.org/guides/race/whiteadv.htm

$59 trillion:  http://activistteacher.blogspot.com/2013/01/calculated-minimum-reparation-due-to.html

$15 trillion: National Legal and Policy Center,

http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/obama-reparations-black-farmers/2010/02/21/id/350458/

$25 trillion:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPcap/1999-11/23/047r-112399-idx.html

Martin Luther King:   http://www.theroot.com/articles/history/2014/07/mlk_s_case_for_reparations_included_disadvantaged_whites.html


Republished with permission under license by Yes Magazine