A Lesson on Reparations

By Ursula Wolfe-Rocca, Alex Stegner, Chris Buehler, Angela DiPasquale, and Tom McKenna

As high school teachers of history and government, we teach about reparations at multiple points across the curriculum. Students learn about the reparations imposed upon Germany by the Treaty of Versailles following World War I; students learn about the failure of the U.S. government to enact reparations — 40 acres and a mule — for newly emancipated people during Reconstruction; students learn about the 1988 Civil Liberties Act through which Congress paid 82,000 Japanese American survivors of the U.S. government’s wartime incarceration program $20,000 each, totaling more than $1.6 billion. But when we have asked our students to grapple with the possibility of the United States paying reparations today — for slavery and its 20th- and 21st-century legacies of white supremacist violence, disenfranchisement, and exploitation — we find students struggle to unleash their critical imaginations.

Demanding reparations for police torture, members of the Chicago Light Brigade, Project NIA, and Chicago Torture Justice Memorials protest outside of Rahm Emanuel’s home in 2015. Source: Kelly Hayes.

Some students hold fast to the “slavery is long gone” line of thinking. Some students are frozen by the magnitude of the harm: How could any amount of money ever properly address the wickedness of slavery and racism? Other students worry about the practical questions: Who would be eligible to receive payment? What form would payment take? How long would a reparations program last and how much would it cost? These responses are understandable and important; yet, we noticed that students had trouble navigating through their initial positions to engage with a broader scope of possibilities. Students got stuck thinking of reparations only as a onetime compensatory payment intended to right the wrongs of history.

We developed this lesson to help students find a way into thinking and talking more imaginatively about reparations in general before we ask them to examine the modern debate over African American reparations specifically. [See Repair: Students Design a Reparations Bill.] We want students to consider how a legacy of injustice as deeply rooted and multidimensional as anti-Black racism in the United States requires a multifaceted strategy, not a single action.

In this mixer role play, students learn about more than a dozen different examples of reparations — ranging from cash payments to land settlements to state apologies — from a variety of historical moments and places. Students meet those who advocated for reparations, those who received them, and those who did not. They walk away from the activity with a greater understanding of the horizon of possible reparative policies and enough examples to begin to analyze and articulate their own beliefs about the appropriate context, goal, and form of reparations.

Materials Needed

Mixer roles, cut up, one for every student in the class.
Find more remote-ready lessons here and refer to our remote teaching guide.
Blank nametags, enough for every student in the class.
Copies of Reparations Mixer Questions for every student.

Time Required

1–2 90-minute block class periods.

Individual Roles Included

Judith Jaegermann, from Karlsbad, Czechoslovakia
Konrad Adenauer, from Cologne, Prussia
Hubert Kim, a law student
Maria Rosa Henson, arrested by the Japanese in the Philipines during WWII
Lee Ok-seon, arrested by the Japanese in Korea during WWII
Willis Lynch, who was forcibly sterilized by the state of North Carolina
Dr. Laura Gerald, an employee of the state of North Carolina
Albert Julkes Jr, son of someone experimented on at the Tuskegee syphilis experiment
Dr. Vanessa Northington Gamble, a professor at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, and chairwoman of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study Legacy Committee
Lyman Red Cloud, a member of the Oglala Lakota tribal council
Emil Notti, from Koyukuk, Alaska
Toby Obed, who was forcibly sent to a residential school in Canada as a child
Tony Hall, a former Democratic representative from Ohio
Callie House, a formerly enslaved person who helped found an the organization National Ex-Slave Mutual Relief, Bounty, and Pension Association
Queen Mother Moore, who was involved in numerous civil rights organizations and created the Reparations Committee for the
Descendants of American Slaves
Sheila Jackson Lee, a Texas Democrat in the House of Representatives
William “Sandy” Darity, an economist, researcher, and a professor of public policy at Duke University
Daniel Akaka, who served in the U.S. Senate for more than 20 years as the first Native Hawaiian senator in United States history
Dr. David “Keanu” Sai, a political scientist who specializes in Hawaiian constitutionalism and international relations
Tony deBrum, a representative of the Marshall Islands in negotiations with the United States
JiJi Jally, from the Marshall Islands, where the United States detonated a nuclear bomb during the Cold War
Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the first Black African to hold the position of Bishop of Johannesburg and the Archbishop of Cape Town in South Africa
Ntsiki Biko, the widow of Steve Biko who participated in South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC)
Mzoxolo Sogiba, who was fatally shot by the South African police in Nyanga, in Cape Town
Gawie Snyders, who is retired and still farms a half-acre plot behind his house in South Africa
Blanca Katsura, a person of Japanese descent living in Peru when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor
Masuo Yasui, a Japanese issei living in Oregon when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor
Min Yasui, the first Japanese American to receive a law degree from the University of Oregon
Lindsey Smith, who was 17 when he confessed to a murder he did not commit due to torture at the hands of Chicago Police Chief Jon Burge
Annemarie Cuccia, a freshman at Georgetown University
Lorraine Jones, of the Ngaliwurru and Nungali Aboriginal People from the Northern Territory of Australia who continues to fight for compensation for stolen land by the British