A forgotten chapter in U.S. reparations
I was aware that the United States had paid reparations in the past to descendants of Japanese American internees and, in a few individual cases, to German Americans and German nationals for similar confinement. America paid reparations to slaveowners in Washington, D.C., who were compensated when slavery was abolished there in 1862. In 1865, General Sherman confiscated about 400,000 acres of coastal land in South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. It was divided into 40‑acre plots for settlement by freed families — the origin of the phrase “40 acres and a mule.” Within a year, President Andrew Johnson issued pardons to ex‑Confederates and ordered that their lands be returned. I consider that reparations.
What I recently discovered was that Italy received reparations after a mass lynching in New Orleans. On March 14, 1891, the city of New Orleans became the stage of what is often described as one of the most infamous acts of mob violence in American history. Eleven Italian immigrants, accused but largely acquitted of involvement in the assassination of Police Chief David Hennessy, were dragged from the Orleans Parish Prison and lynched by a mob of thousands. The killings shocked the world…
