Slavery Reparations Quotes

More whites were brought as slaves to North Africa than blacks brought as slaves to the United States or to the 13 colonies from which it was formed. White slaves were still being bought and sold in the Ottoman Empire, decades after blacks were freed in the United States.

No more slave States and no more slave territory.

The negro race already occupy enough of this fair continent ... I would preserve for free white labor a fair country ... where the sons of toil, of my own race and own color, can live without the disgrace which association with negro slavery brings upon free labor.

Have we reached the ultimate age of absurdity where some people are held responsible for things that happened before they were born, while other people are not held responsible for what they are doing today?

The General Assembly shall have no power to pass laws for the emancipation of slaves

What a burning shame it is that many of the pieces on the subject of slavery and the slave trade, contained in different school books, have been lost sight of, or been subject to the pruning knife of the slaveholding expurgatorial system!

Should I be worried about being a slave and being returned to slavery? Because certain things happened in the Constitution that had to change.

Let us declare through the public journals of our country, that the question of Slavery is not and shall not be open to discussion; that the system is too deep-rooted among us, and must remain forever; that the very moment any private individual attempts to lecture us upon its evils and immorality, and the necessity of putting means in operation to secure us from them, in the same moment his tongue shall be cut out and cast upon the dunghill.

We've got to stand up at some point and say, 'We are not gonna pay slavery reparations in the United States Congress.' That war's been fought. That was over a century ago. That debt was paid for in blood, and it was paid for in the blood of a lot of Yankees, especially. And there's no reparations for the blood that paid for the sin of slavery.

In such a condition of affairs, the practical difference between the abolitionist and the sympathizer, to the man who lost his slave and could not recover it, was very nebulous.

I am an abolitionist. What does this mean? Abolitionist resistance and resilience draws from a legacy of black-led anti-colonial struggle in the United States and throughout the Americas, including places like Haiti, the first black republic founded on the principles of anti-colonialism and black liberation.

And we never got the mule, let alone the forty acres.

Among the friends of Union, there is great diversity of sentiment and of policy in regard to slavery and the African race among us.

Ralph Nader has slavery reparations on his platform, which makes me think he's not serious. If he thought he could win he wouldn't even say that.

This evening (January 11th) our whole mess remained in the dining room after tea, and conversed upon the subject of Mr. Lincoln’s bill to abolish slavery. It was approved by all; I believe it as good bill as we could get at this time, and am willing to pay for slaves to save them from the southern market, as I suppose every man in the District would sell his slaves if he saw that slavery was to be abolished.

The war against slavery was a war against the Southern economy.

How ridiculous! You're going to have the first black president apologize for slavery?

We must make good in essence as well as in form Madison's avowal that "the word slave ought not to appear in the Constitution"; and we must even go further and decree that only local law, and not that time-honored instrument [the Constitution], shall shelter a slave-holder.

There has never been a prosecuted case of slavery. There's no criminality to it. So, it was just like, 'It's over,' and thus, because it was over, and it was never considered 'wrong' in the prosecutable, criminal sense of the word, the country doesn't take it as wrong.

Public opinion polls would have maintained slavery.

If you want no more slaves from us, why cannot you be ingenious and tell the plain truth; saying that the slaves you have already purchased are sufficient for the country for which you bought them; or that the artists who used to make fine things, are all dead, without having taught anybody to make more?

The institution of slavery in U. S. A. was Christian, and Christianity was slave-holding there.

I do think that some form of reparations for the descendants of American slavery would go a long way.

If I can get enough signatures, to present an apology to slavery, I will present it to the President. The House of Representatives has already passed the resolution for the apology, but it has to pass the Senate. I think, in spite of all our problems, I think we're in the right direction.

To me, as I see it, reparations would be something that is fairly specific to the descendants of slaves, and it would also be an official apology from the United States government for slavery.