Michael T. Martin

Redress for historical injustices in the United States : on reparations for slavery, Jim Crow, and their legacies

An exceptional resource, this comprehensive reader brings together primary and secondary documents related to efforts to redress historical wrongs against African Americans. These varied efforts are often grouped together under the rubric “reparations movement,” and they are united in their goal of “repairing” the injustices that have followed from the long history of slavery and Jim Crow. Yet, as this collection reveals, there is a broad range of opinions as to the form that repair might take. Some advocates of redress call for apologies; others for official acknowledgment of wrongdoing; and still others for more tangible reparations: monetary compensation, government investment in disenfranchised communities, the restitution of lost property and rights, and repatriation. Written by activists and scholars of law, political science, African American studies, philosophy, economics, and history, the twenty-six essays include both previously published articles and pieces written specifically for this volume. Essays theorize the historical and legal bases of claims for redress; examine the history, strengths, and limitations of the reparations movement; and explore its relation to human rights and social justice movements in the United States and abroad. Other essays evaluate the movement’s primary strategies: legislation, litigation, and mobilization. While all of the contributors support the campaign for redress in one way or another, some of them engage with arguments against reparations. Among the fifty-three primary documents included in the volume are federal, state, and municipal acts and resolutions; declarations and statements from organizations including the Black Panther Party and the NAACP; legal briefs and opinions; and findings and directives related to the provision of redress, from the Oklahoma Commission to Study the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 to the mandate for the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Redress for Historical Injustices in the United States is a thorough assessment of the past, present, and future of the modern reparations movement. Contributors . Richard F. America, Sam Anderson, Martha Biondi, Boris L. Bittker, James Bolner, Roy L. Brooks, Michael K. Brown, Robert S. Browne, Martin Carnoy, Chiquita Collins, J. Angelo Corlett, Elliott Currie, William A. Darity, Jr., Adrienne Davis, Michael C. Dawson, Troy Duster, Dania Frank, Robert Fullinwider, Charles P. Henry, Gerald C. Horne, Robert Johnson, Jr., Robin D. G. Kelley, Jeffrey R. Kerr-Ritchie, Theodore Kornweibel, Jr., David Lyons, Michael T. Martin, Douglas S. Massey , Muntu Matsimela , C. J. Munford, Yusuf Nuruddin, Charles J. Ogletree Jr., Melvin L. Oliver, David B. Oppenheimer, Rovana Popoff, Thomas M. Shapiro, Marjorie M. Shultz, Alan Singer, David Wellman, David R. Williams, Eric K. Yamamoto, Marilyn Yaquinto

Reparations for ‘America’s Holocaust’: Activism for Global Justice

The enslavement of blacks in America lasted 246 years. It was followed by a century of legal racial segregation and discrimination. The two periods, taken together, constitute the longest running crime against humanity in the world over the last 500 years. – Randall Robinson Reparations are the central issue of race relations in America in the twentyfirst century. Until we address it seriously, we will continue to make only modest progress with some of the larger issues. – Charles J. Ogletree Jr

Race, Space, and Gender in Ed Bland's The Cry of Jazz

Ed Bland’s film The Cry of Jazz has been subject to increasing critical and scholarly interest since its re-release (on DVD) in 2006. Ostensibly a narrative of a musical genre, Jazz is at the same time a discourse on race relations circa the late 1950s and a meditation on African American identity. In this essay, we seek to situate this meditation within the larger social and cultural registers of both race and gender. It is our contention that, utilizing jazz as the site of struggle, Bland expresses the crisis of race relations as a crisis through gender in his presentation of a struggle for racial equality as the contest between black and white men over the possession and control of white women. Further underlining the significance of gender, black women, in a denial of their subjectivity, remain almost entirely absent from the film. The film’s sexual politics is, then, a key problematic that, as it valorizes the creative expression of the black American male experience, serves to marginalize the presence, and silence the voice, of black women. Gender, though unexamined explicitly in the film, takes on significance precisely because of Bland’s positing of jazz as the most profound expression of black American identity. If there is no place for black women within Bland’s schematic, then the “world-making” project of jazz as conceived within The Cry of Jazz is deeply compromised. When it was first released in 1959, The Cry of Jazz was intended as a filmic response to what Bland described as the “barrage of nonsense” encountered from those who “were musically illiterate, would lecture [him] about jazz music, which they couldn’t

Filmmaking is My Life, Politics My Mistress—donnie l. betts

Michael T. Martin conducted this interview when donnie l. betts visited IU Bloomington on November 6-7, 2007, during which time the documentary, Music is My Life, Politics My Mistress: The Story of Oscar Brown Jr. (2005) was screened on the IU campus. The interview is organized in two parts. Part one concerns bettss development and practice as a filmmaker, while part two looks at his films, the black arts movement, and current work in development.