Black Reparations News Begins Publication

A new publishing venture is taking dead aim at black reparations, one of the most controversial issues in America. Black Reparations News, an electronic newsletter, which begins publication March 17th, will cover reparations news in America and abroad. The bi-weekly journal features interviews with reparations leaders, a calendar of local and national events, current news and analysis by political journalists and academics.

(PRWEB) February 25, 2004 --A new publishing venture is taking dead aim at black reparations, one of the most controversial issues in America.

Black Reparations News, an electronic newsletter, which begins publication March 17th, will cover reparations news in America and abroad. The bi-weekly journal features interviews with reparations leaders, a calendar of local and national events, current news, historical documents and analysis by political journalists and academics.

"Black Reparations will be the most important issue of the 21st century for Americans," said John Wesley Lewis, the newsletter editor. "Legal suits, books, university conferences, city resolutions, lobbying and national coordination by N'COBRA, the umbrella organization spearheading the reparations drive, have created a movement poised to mobilize millions of Americans in a struggle to win compensation for slave labor."

Reparations supporters, who include whites as well as blacks, believe that African Americans are due compensation for slavery, terrorism, murder, economic exploitation and segregation.

"BRN was launched to open a reliable, accurate, information channel carrying reparations news," said Lewis, a former Washington political reporter. "There is an information gap in black reparations coverage.

"Reparations doesn't fit into any particular news beat. It's not civil rights, affirmative action, equal opportunity or diversity. And so it is not covered with any regularity."        

Black Reparations News begins publication against a backdrop of accelerating reparations activities. In Oklahoma, U.S. District Judge James Ellison is considering evidence to determine whether a lawsuit seeking to hold the state and the city of Tulsa responsible for the massacre of an estimated 300 blacks will be allowed to proceed to trial.

Attorneys for the victims, all over 80 years old, include Johnnie Cochran, famous as the attorney for O.J. Simpson, Charles Ogletree, a Harvard Law professor, and Randall Robinson, author of "The Debt", the ground-breaking book on reparations.

In Chicago, Judge Charles Norgle, of the U.S. District Court, has set April 5th as a deadline for a refiled suit against 19 corporations who profited from the forced labor of slaves.

The North Carolina legislature has established a commission to investigate the 1898 racial violence by a white mob in Wilmington, N.C. which burned the newspaper office of a courageous black publisher, murdered scores of defenseless blacks and seized the local reins of government.

Congressman John Conyers(D-Mich.) annually introduces a bill which would establish a commission to study the impact of slavery and its aftermath in the U.S. and to make appropriate remedies to Congress. City councils in Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas and Oakland have passed pro-reparations resolutions supporting a federal commission to study reparations.

The historical record on slave reparations begins in 1865 with a military order issued by Union General William T. Sherman during his victorious Civil War campaign in Georgia. Sherman's order, generally considered to be the origin of "40 acres and a mule," set aside hundreds of thousands of acres along the Georgia and South Carolina coasts for newly-freed slaves.

Later, the former slaves were removed from their homesteads by President Andrew Johnson, who allowed the white southerners to reclaim their land.

Contact:
John Wesley Lewis
(757)838-9636
http://www.blackreparationsnews.com
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