Black Reparations: A Transatlantic Conversation

Join us for this virtual conversation discussing The Black Reparations Project: A Handbook for Racial Justice, edited by William "Sandy" Darity, A. Kirsten Mullen, and Lucas Hubbard. This book is the first, comprehensive blueprint for Black reparations in America—moving from rationale to action with a groundbreaking and practical plan.

This groundbreaking resource moves us from theory to action with a practical plan for reparations. A surge in interest in black reparations is taking place in America on a scale not seen since the Reconstruction Era. The Black Reparations Project gathers an accomplished interdisciplinary team of scholars—members of the Reparations Planning Committee—who have considered the issues pertinent to making reparations happen.

This book will be an essential resource in the national conversation going forward. The first section of The Black Reparations Project crystallizes the rationale for reparations, cataloguing centuries of racial repression, discrimination, violence, mass incarceration, and the immense black-white wealth gap. Drawing on the contributors' expertise in economics, history, law, public policy, public health, and education, the second section unfurls direct guidance for building and implementing a reparations program, including draft legislation that addresses how the program should be financed and how claimants can be identified and compensated. Rigorous and comprehensive, The Black Reparations Project will motivate, guide, and speed the final leg of the journey for justice.

Event panellists:

Lucas Hubbard is an associate in research at the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity, where he writes articles and press releases to help illuminate and broadcast the Cook Center’s research. With Gwendolyn L. Wright and William A. Darity Jr., he co-edited The Pandemic Divide: How COVID Increased Inequality in America (Duke University Press, 2022); most recently, he co-edited, with William A. Darity Jr. and A. Kirsten Mullen, The Black Reparations Project: A Handbook for Racial Justice (University of California Press, 2023).

William A. (“Sandy”) Darity Jr. is Samuel DuBois Cook Professor of Public Policy, African and African American Studies, and Economics and founding director of the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity at Duke University. With A. Kirsten Mullen, he is the author of the award-winning From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty-First Century. Most recently, he is one of the editors of The Pandemic Divide: How COVID Increased Inequality in America.

Folklorist, founder of the arts-consulting practice Artefactual, and the literary consortium Carolina Circuit Writers, A. Kirsten Mullen was a member of the Freelon Adjaye Bond concept development team that won the commission to design the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. She worked with the North Carolina Arts Council to expand the Coastal Folklife Survey; trained students to research and record the state’s African American music heritage for the Community Folklife Documentation Institute; and was a consultant on the North Carolina Museum of History’s “North Carolina Legends” and “Civil Rights” exhibitions. She is a recipient of the Brown Hudson Award, the highest recognition conferred by the North Carolina Folklife Institute. Coauthor of the multiple award-winning From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the 21st Century and coeditor of The Black Reparations Project: A Handbook for Racial Justice, her recent work includes “Black Culture and History Matter” (The American Prospect), a look at the politics of funding black cultural institutions and The Queen Mother a profile of black nationalist and reparations advocate Audley Moore (Vanity Fair).

Nicola Frith was awarded a second AHRC grant to set up the International Network of Scholars and Activists for Afrikan Reparations (INOSAAR) in collaboration with Professor Joyce Hope Scott (Boston University), Esther Stanford-Xosei and Kofi Mawuli Klu (co-founders of the Pan-Afrikan Reparations Coalition in Europe, PARCOE). She is co-chair of the Research and Engagement Working Group (REWG) for a University-wide project entitled, 'Decolonised Transformations: Confronting the UoE's Legacies of Slavery and Colonialism'.

Esther Stanford-Xosei is a decolonial Pan-Afrikanist Jurisconsult, Reparationist, Community Advocate and ‘Ourstorian’ engaged in reparations policy, research and movement-building under the auspices of the Pan-Afrikan Reparations Coalition in Europe, Stop the Maangamizi Campaign, Global Afrikan People’s Parliament, International Network of Scholars & Activists for Afrikan Reparations, Extinction Rebellion Internationalist Solidarity Network as well as XR-Being the Change Affinity Network.

Sponsored by University of Bristol's American Research Group and The International Network of Scholars and Activists for Afrikan Reparations (INOSAAR)

Event co-chairs: Nicole Gipson (University of Bristol) and Ahmed Honeini (Royal Holloway University of London)