United States of America - Slavery

The request for reparation of slavery has developed in the United States of America since its abolition in 1865.

In the same year, shortly after the Civil War and the defeat of the Confederate States, General William Tecumseh Sherman issued pitched Special Order Number 15 to work around the problem of the masses of freed slaves. Each family was given 40 acres of arable land and a mule which the army didn't need anymore. About 40,000 freed slaves were settled on 1600 square kilometers in Georgia and South Carolina. President Andrew Johnson, however, cancelled the order immediately after the assassination of Lincoln and the land was returned to large landowners.

In 1867 deputy Thaddeus Stevens introduced a bill to redistribute land to African Americans, though it was not approved.

United States: small steps towards reparations

The path to local level reparations continues with victories and defeats in Evanston, Chicago, Providence, Burlington, Kalamazoo County, Carrboro, Wilmington, Amherst, San Francisco, New York, Saint Paul, Los Angeles, Durham, Detroit, Fulton County, Greenbelt, High Point, Asheville, Saint Louis, Boston, Atlanta.

Also the path to state level reparations continues with victories and defeats in California, where the Task Force to study and develop reparation proposals for African Americans presented the final report and lawmakers introduced a package of bills on reparations, in Illinois, where the African descent-citizens reparations Commission is developing reparations measures, in the New York State, where the Community commission on reparations remedies has been established, and in New Jersey, Maryland and Oregon,  where the legislative process for the establishment of Task Force or Commissions for reparations is still underway.