Should America Pay Slavery Reparations?

A review of history indicates a strong case—but mixed public support

Reviewed by Robert C. Kelly

What Are Slavery Reparations?

Slavery reparations are restitution payments for slavery remitted to the descendants of enslaved people. In theory, American slavery reparations would be paid by entities that participated in slavery, such as the federal government, local governments, corporations, and universities.

The history is complicated, but the overall principle is simple: Slavery helped the United States become a formidable economic power. It had the opposite effect on enslaved people and their descendants, stripping them of wages, property, civil rights, and freedom. Since the 13th Amendment to the Constitution was passed and ratified in 1865, ending legal slavery in the U.S., no sustained attempt has been made to right this disparity, lending additional weight to the strong case that reparations would still be beneficial today.

Key Takeaways

• Reparations would compensate Black Americans for the lost wages and suffering of their ancestors, American slave laborers.
• The U.S. has received an enormous, unacknowledged economic boost from slavery even though it has been abolished for many years. 
• Subsequent biased policies—including segregation, labor discrimination, redlining, and mass incarceration—have disadvantaged Black Americans, preserving a racial wealth gap.
• The one federal reparations attempt was discontinued after President Lincoln was assassinated.
• In the past, members of Congress supported a bill to create a commission to study the issue; a slight majority of Americans favored this approach, as well.

The History of Reparations

On Jan. 16, 1865, from a mansion in Savannah, Georgia, Union General William Tecumseh Sherman issued Field Order No. 15, announcing the award of large tracts of confiscated land to newly freed Black populations. The roughly 400,000 acres to be awarded: “The islands from Charleston, south, the abandoned rice fields along the rivers for thirty miles back from the sea, and the country bordering the St. Johns River, Florida.”

The land, which included Georgia’s Sea Islands, was to be given out in parcels of “not more than (40) acres of tillable ground.” The new owners’ rights were to be protected by the military authorities until they could protect themselves or Congress could “regulate their title.” And they were to govern those lands themselves: “…sole and exclusive management of affairs will be left to the freed people themselves, subject only to the United States military authority and the acts of Congress,” the order declared.

The land grant idea came about in a meeting four days earlier, according to historian Henry Louis Gates Jr. Sherman and Lincoln’s Secretary of War, Edwin M. Stanton, met with an invited group of 20 leaders of the Black community of Savannah, many of them Baptist and Methodist ministers. These leaders explained that the newly freed people wanted to have their own land and live on it in communities, managing their own affairs.

The land grant program became colloquially known as “40 acres and a mule”—the mule part coming later when, according to Gates, Sherman subsequently ordered that the Army could lend mules to the settlers. Word of Sherman’s order spread quickly, and the islands seemed to transform into Black autonomous farming communities overnight. The inhabitants of the islands renamed them Sherman Land in gratitude.

The federal reparations experiment was short-lived, however. After Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in April 1865, his successor, Andrew Johnson, canceled the program and returned the land to the planters who had originally owned it. Since then, for more than 150 years, groups have been advocating for reparations.

Slavery Reparations Today

The effect of generations of enslavement on the wealth and economic standing of Black Americans—and the structural racism following emancipation—has never been fully mitigated and exists to this day. With the increased attention on race relations and equality brought on by the Black Lives Matter movement, the issue of reparations came back into focus.

• In the 2020 Democratic primary, presidential candidate Marianne Williamson campaigned on paying $500 billion in reparations, and candidates were asked about their stance on the issue during the debates. As a candidate in 2024, Williamson proposed “a minimum of $1 trillion.”
• Some institutions that enslaved people or participated in slavery have begun reparations programs. In 2005, JP Morgan Chase acknowledged that two predecessor banks—Citizen’s Bank of Louisiana and New Orleans Canal & Banking Company—accepted more than 13,000 enslaved persons as collateral and once held around 1,250 enslaved persons when borrowers defaulted. Chase started a scholarship program for Black students in Louisiana as a form of reparations.
• Evanston, Illinois became the first city in the United States to offer reparations. On March 22, 2021, it approved the first round of reparations, which made a total of $400,000 available via homeownership and home improvement grants of $25,000 each to qualifying Black households. The first phase was part of $10 million in reparations the city plans to distribute over 10 years. It will be funded by a 3% annual tax on recreational marijuana. To qualify, applicants are required to show that they are a resident of African descent who lived in Evanston between 1919 and 1969, or a direct descendant who faced housing discrimination. Between the program’s start and Feb. 6, 2025, $5.2 million was paid to just over 200 people.
• On March 15, 2021, the Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States promised to raise $100 million in reparations for descendants of 272 enslaved people once held and sold by the Jesuit owners of Georgetown University. As of February 2025, the Jesuits and Georgetown University have contributed $45 million to the Descendant’s Truth and Reconciliation Foundation (DTRF) to help finance scholarships for descendants of what are known as the Georgetown University 272 (GU272). GU272 descendants can apply for scholarships via the GU272 Descendants Association.
• On Nov. 14, 2024, Palm Springs, California, approved a $27 million reparations package for primarily Black and Latino residents who were residents of Section 14, an area of the resort town that was razed in the 1960s to make way for commercial development. The package has earmarked $6 million for families who lost their homes and $10 million each for a first-time home-buyer-assistance program and a community land trust for affordable housing.
•  Other entities—including several states; the city of Asheville, North Carolina; Chicago, Illinois; Palm Springs, California; and the University of Virginia—have apologized and taken responsibility for their role in enslavement.

However, the United States government has not attempted reparations since the Lincoln administration. A bill to study reparations called H.R. 40 was introduced in 1989, but the U.S. House of Representatives has never voted on it.

Important

Eight states have changed their constitutions to outlaw slavery and involuntary servitude: Colorado (2018), Utah and Nebraska (2020), Alabama, Oregon, Tennessee, and Vermont (2022), and Nevada (2024). Voters in Louisiana (2022) and California (2024) rejected an amendment to prevent involuntary servitude as punishment for crimes.

The Case for Reparations

Examining the role of slavery in building the economic predominance of the United States, the role of the federal government in establishing the laws that allowed it and other large institutions to profit from the labor of enslaved people, and the lingering effects of both slavery and post-slavery structural racism on the descendants of enslaved people establish a strong argument for reparations.

The U.S. Was Built at the Expense of Enslaved Black People

The federal government and other large domestic institutions were participants and stakeholders in the practice of enslavement. The savings produced by using enslaved workers spurred economic growth for the country as a whole—and slave owners, particularly—while impoverishing generations of Blacks by depriving them of fundamental rights, freedom, and compensation.

It was near the turn of the century in 1793 when Massachusetts-born Eli Whitney invented the cotton engine, the machine that automated the painstaking task of removing the seeds from raw cotton by hand. Nicknamed the cotton gin, the invention revolutionized American cotton production. In short order, the U.S. became the leading cotton producer in the world.

The cotton boom created a demand for labor to work on cotton farms, which cotton growers met by purchasing slaves. According to census records, the number of slaves in America went from 894,452 in 1800 to 3,953,587 in 1860. During that same period, the per capita gross domestic product (GDP) of the United States more than doubled, going from $58 ($1,453 in 2025 dollars) in 1800 to $125 ($4,725 in 2025 dollars) in 1860.

During the slavery era in the United States, enslaved Black workers made up much of the workforce in the Southern states. Unlike the White labor pool, these workers received no wages or profit-sharing and lived and worked in bondage. The U.S. cotton industry, which depended on enslaved plantation labor in the Deep South, accounted for at least 5% of the U.S. GDP. All slave-related productivity accounted for as much as 50% of the GDP, according to author and historian E.E. Baptist.

Enslaved people worked in many different jobs, ranging from manual labor to highly skilled trades. The most common jobs for enslaved people were as farmhands or domestic workers. Enslaved Black people also worked blue-collar jobs like construction and coal mining. There were also thousands who worked in skilled trades such as cooking, carpentry, shipbuilding, blacksmithing, and masonry.

Slavery was a wealth transfer from enslaved Black laborers to America’s antebellum ownership and managerial class. For example, Natchez, Mississippi, the cotton-growing capital of the 19th century, had more millionaires than any other city in the world. Today, Natchez’s Black population, who are mostly descended from its enslaved workers, still disproportionately live in poverty.

Enslaved Black laborers also built much of the infrastructure of the United States, including much of New York City, the White House, and the Capitol. They also quarried the sandstone used to build the Smithsonian.

These unpaid wages erased the labor costs of businesses that used slave labor and increased their profit margins.

Note

Abraham Lincoln opposed slavery in part because he believed it was wage theft.

The Federal Government Benefited Directly From Slavery

The government played a direct role in maintaining slavery and also reaped immediate benefits from it. Under the Fugitive Slave Acts of 1793 and 1850, U.S. Marshals were mandated to recover slaves who escaped and return them to enslavement.

When the U.S. Constitution was signed into law in 1787, it included language that permitted the government to collect taxes on people trafficked to America via the transatlantic slave trade, permitting a tax “not exceeding ten dollars for each person” on “importation of such persons” in Article I, Section 9. From 1798 to 1802 and 1813 to 1816, the United States Treasury collected taxes on slaves as one of its chief sources of revenue, along with taxes on land and houses. Many slave states collected as much as 2% of the valuation of each enslaved person per year as a tax.

History has understated how much the United States government used slavery to generate revenue during the antebellum period. As a starting point for reparations, it seems logical to posit that the revenue generated from taxes on enslaved people could be returned to their descendants.

Corporations and Academic Institutions Profited From Slavery

A number of multinational corporations owned enslaved people in their early history. In addition to JPMorgan Chase, the companies that became Bank of America, Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., Aetna Inc., New York Life Insurance Company, and Lloyds Banking Group participated in slavery. Cotton commodities and plantation shares and bonds—sometimes underwritten with deeds to enslaved people—were traded on the New York Stock Exchange in the antebellum era.

Some of America’s oldest colleges and universities, including Harvard, Yale, Brown, the University of Virginia, Columbia, and Princeton, were built by enslaved workers and partially funded by the slave trade.

Note

Many institutions have yet to try to make amends for their role in slavery.

Slavery Led Directly to Modern Inequality

Despite their two centuries of contributions, hundreds of thousands of Black Americans were left destitute after they were emancipated. After 1865, many free Black people faced starvation and homelessness and were forced to go back to work as sharecroppers on plantations for subsistence wages.

The gap in wealth between the free White population and the newly emancipated Black population became generational through laws that mandated segregation, disenfranchisement, and economic oppression for the next 100 years. This crystallized a stubborn racial wealth gap that still exists today.

Instead of attempting to close the gap between the Black population and the White population created by enslavement, racist laws began to go into effect almost immediately after slavery ended to limit Black people’s access to benefits such as education and trades. This effort culminated in 1892 with the Supreme Court case Plessy vs. Ferguson, which legalized segregation, establishing the notorious doctrine of “separate but equal.”

For the next 70 years, Black Americans would be denied access to jobs, schools, and labor unions. When President Roosevelt passed the New Deal programs in the 1930s, the original legislation excluded domestic workers and farmworkers—occupations that employed roughly 65% of African American workers. The GI Bill, signed in 1944, also was structured in a way that shut out many Black veterans. The Federal Housing Administration, a government agency created to promote homeownership, often refused to underwrite mortgages for Black homebuyers, a practice known as redlining.

Even after the Civil Rights Act became law in 1964, attempts to disadvantage the Black population continued. In 1971, President Nixon launched the war on drugs, which began an era of mass incarceration that disproportionately jailed Black individuals. In a 1994 interview reported in 2016, Nixon’s domestic policy chief, John Ehrlichman, stated the program was designed to criminalize Black people.

In concert, more than 100 years of discriminatory policies after emancipation worked effectively to prevent Black Americans from fully closing the racial income and wealth gap that originated with slavery. The numbers say it all: When slavery ended in 1863, Black people owned roughly 0.5% of the nation’s wealth. In a report written by the U.S. Census Bureau in April 2024 using 2021 census data, it was 4.7%.

13.6%

Percentage of U.S. population with a “Black householder” in 2021, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

What Reparations Could Look Like

Slavery reparations are often proposed as a cash payout to the descendants of enslaved people. A few universities and corporations that owned enslaved people have started granting scholarships to the descendants of the people they enslaved. Other than cash payments to Black Americans, proposals have included an extensive federal government economic development program that benefits Black communities. Additionally, some proponents have called for a reparation program of payments to Black Americans directly from White Americans, but these proposals are outliers.

The exact dollar amount of slavery reparations would need to be calculated as part of a government study on reparations by a federal commission, such as the one proposed by the reparations bill H.R. 40. Estimated costs for the program fell somewhere around $16 trillion, the entire current-day book value of the four generations of slaves who lived in the United States from 1776 until the Emancipation Proclamation in 1865. Another way of determining the amount would be to determine the amount in lost wages, which would yield a similar figure.

Previous Reparations Programs

A reparations program for Black Americans would not be unprecedented; the United States has paid reparations in other instances.

• In 1946, an Indian Claims Commission was established, which awarded more than $818 million to 176 different Native American tribes and groups over its 31 years of existence for lands that had been taken. In 1994, a Court of Claims settled 10 remaining cases for $400-$500 million, for a total of $1.3 billion.
• The money was given to individual groups and tribes to distribute. It equated to about $1,000 ($16,185 in 2025 dollars) per person.
• In 1988, the United States paid reparations to Japanese-Americans who were interned during World War II. Reparations came in the form of a $20,000 check to people who were imprisoned in the camps. 

In addition to the U.S. government, the state of Florida paid restitution to those who survived the Rosewood massacre of 1923, in which White mobs burned the Black community of Rosewood and murdered at least six people. It took until 1994 for a law to be passed approving these payments, which gave the nine survivors $150,000 each and provided up to $100,000 from a pot of $500,000 to descendants for property damages, in addition to establishing a scholarship fund for descendants.

Funding Slavery Reparations

How would a slavery reparations program be funded? Deficit spending is the most feasible approach. The taxes needed to support such an expensive program would be onerous. And there is precedent for it: In 1833, the United Kingdom passed the Slavery Abolition Act across much of the British Empire. It paid to liberate its enslaved population by compensating slave owners to the tune of £20 million through deficit spending (£3 billion/$3.72 billion in 2025).

To put the cost of slavery reparations in context: The program would be less pricey than the proposed outlays for proposals for Medicare for All at $20.5 trillion and the Green New Deal at $50-$90 trillion (both estimated in 2019).

Where the Campaign for Reparations Stands Now

H.R. 40, a bill proposing a federal commission to examine slavery reparations, previously garnered the endorsement of former President Joe Biden and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Initially, the bill had 157 co-sponsors and held the support of 114, all Democrats. The bill, which was under consideration for over three decades without leaving committee, made progress on April 19, 2021, when it was moved forward by the Judiciary Committee with a 25-17 vote. However, the bill is stalled in Congress due to a lack of legislative action.

In 2023, Senator Cory Booker introduced S.40, the Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act, which would establish a commission to explore reparations for descendants of slavery. This bill is a Senate companion to H.R. 40, focusing on the impact of slavery and ongoing discrimination, with an aim to propose reparations. It emphasizes the need to address the historical oppression of African Americans and proposes a comprehensive study to assess and repair the impacts of slavery in the U.S.

The high cost isn’t the only obstacle to slavery reparations. Low support for slavery reparations among White Americans and questions about logistics are also obstacles to moving forward.

Mixed Support for Reparations

While awareness of racial disparities in the U.S. is increasing, opinions on reparations remain divided. A 2024 Princeton University poll, in partnership with Liberation Ventures, found that 24% of White respondents versus 72% of Black respondents support reparations. Among Blacks, 57% support direct cash payments.

A 2022 Pew Research report found a significant majority of Black Americans (85%) recognize the ongoing impact of slavery’s legacy on their community’s status, with 77% endorsing some form of reparations for descendants of enslaved people in the U.S. Party affiliations also influence views on this issue, as 14% of Republicans, 55% of Democrats, and 30% of Independents (or no party affiliation) supported the idea at the time.

Some Americans have expressed opposition to paying out reparations because the people who were enslaved are dead. These beliefs ignore the debilitating effect of more than two centuries of enslavement and economic discrimination on Black Americans. They also do not weigh the fact that instead of making efforts to remedy the damage caused by slavery, the government moved to make those injuries permanent by creating a racial caste system through legal segregation and discrimination.

Attitudes about slavery reparations also vary by age, with younger people being more supportive than older generations. For example, the Princeton–Liberation Ventures poll found that among 18- to 25- year-olds, 48% (47% for 25- to 35-year-olds) were in favor of reparations compared to only 21% of those ages 56 to 65 (21% for 66- to 75-year-olds).

Deciding Who Would Be Eligible

Another obstacle would be establishing eligibility. Though it could be labor-intensive to determine which Americans are the descendants of enslaved people, it is possible. A majority of Black Americans fall into this category. The remaining Black Americans are the descendants of immigrants, mostly from Africa and the Caribbean, and could be determined as such via immigration and vital records.

What’s Next for Slavery Reparations

Though many Americans continue to view reparations as unnecessary, attitudes are shifting, as a greater focus is put on a legacy of slavery and racial discrimination in America. Institutions revealing their enslavement of people or otherwise profiting from the trade of enslaved labor is bringing into ever greater focus the unacknowledged role that enslaved people played in building the United States.

The political landscape for reparations legislation, particularly H.R. 40, has recently changed. While the bill previously had 157 co-sponsors, in 2023-2024, it had 130, reflecting a shift in congressional support. With Republican majorities in the House and Senate in 2025, the bill’s progress faces new challenges.

In June 2020, while running for re-election, Donald Trump said, “I don’t see [reparations] happening.” Reparations advocates are concerned that in his second term, President Trump may slow or cancel the progress that has been made. During the 2024 campaign, he called for dismantling diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs that were intended to address slavery and government-sanctioned discrimination against Blacks. He signed executive orders in January 2025, ending DEI programs in the federal government.

California is a leader in researching and addressing the issue of slavery reparations. Following two years of hearings, a state task force established by Assembly Bill 3121 released a report with significant findings. The task force recommended reparations amounting to an estimated $1.2 million per individual, a landmark decision in the reparations movement. This state-level initiative is distinct from any federal reparations actions and sets a precedent for similar studies and actions across the country.

Both Evanston’s and Palm Springs’ reparations programs, which focus on economic development, are viewed as models for other cities considering reparations. But there have been challenges: A class action lawsuit brought by Judicial Watch, a conservative advocacy group, in June 2024 aimed to kill the program, arguing that it discriminates against Evanston’s non-Black residents.

Other cities, such as New York City and Tulsa, Oklahoma, have set up commissions to study their role in slavery and to look into reparations.

What Are Slavery Reparations?

Reparations for slavery are proposed compensations aimed at the descendants of enslaved individuals, acknowledging the unpaid labor and hardships endured by their ancestors. The idea is that entities such as the federal and local governments, corporations, and educational institutions, which historically benefited from slavery, would provide these reparations.

What Is the Historical Background of U.S. Slavery Reparations?

The idea of reparations for slavery in the United States originated during the Civil War era. One example is General Sherman’s Field Order No. 15, which aimed to provide land to emancipated slaves. The order ultimately redistributed 400,000 acres of land to newly freed Black families in 40-acre segments. However, lasting reparations were not established.

What Are Some Current Proposals Regarding Slavery Reparations?

Recent proposals for federal reparations include direct payments to descendants of enslaved people and economic development investments in Black communities. Some institutions and local governments have started their own reparations programs. For example, a California task force that studied and developed reparations proposals released a comprehensive report in June 2023, which resulted in 14 bills being put forward in 2024. Evanston, Illinois, has initiated a reparations program funded by a tax on recreational marijuana. Palm Springs, California, has agreed to pay reparations to residents who lost their homes in the 1960s in an area of the resort town where commercial buildings were planned.

The Bottom Line

The issue of slavery reparations in the United States centers on addressing the long-standing economic and social disparities caused by slavery and ongoing discrimination against African Americans. Recent years have seen a growing recognition of these injustices, with some local governments and institutions beginning to implement reparations programs.

However, the conversation around federal reparations remains complex and polarized. As public opinion and political support fluctuate with changing political landscapes, the concept of reparations is increasingly viewed as a means to address long-standing injustices and their ongoing effects on Black communities.