Direct descendants of enslaved people in Charleston, South Carolina are demanding the transfer of more than 7,000 acres of former plantation land, and they are giving the owners 40 days to respond. Charlotte Drayton is a white descendant of plantation owners. She is joining the fight. “I have always felt…
Author: Uncle Melvin
Art, Culture & Memory
“If We Can’t Get Justice for Her, We Can’t Get It for Anyone”: 105 Years After Tulsa, One Survivor Is Still Waiting
As America marks the 105th anniversary of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, ABC Senior National Correspondent Steve Osunsami revisits the events that destroyed Black Wall Street, and national civil rights attorney Damario Solomon-Simmons, whose new book Redeem a Nation offers a blueprint for the justice that still hasn’t come. Damario Solomon-Simmons’s…
Educational Resources
Vic Mensa and The Conscious Lee on the 13th Amendment, the Sugar Land 95, and Why Reparations Can’t Be Real While Slavery Is Still Legal.
Chicago rapper, activist, and Harvard-educated debater Vic Mensa sat down with The Conscious Lee for one of the most intellectually rigorous reparations conversations in this entire series. The central argument is one line that should stop your breath: “Reparations cannot be a serious conversation while slavery is still happening — because under the…
Edutainment
‘When I’m Elected, I’m Pushing for Reparations’: Uncle Luke’s FL-20 Campaign — and the Democrats He’s Calling Out for Never Moving the Bill
“They’re giving reparations to people who stormed the Capitol before. Not one Black or Democrat ever crafted a bill, put it to the House, got votes for it to give African-American Foundational Black Americans reparations. But yet Donald Trump did it for his people. I respect that… Where’s…
Books
My 111-Year-Old Client Will Be in Line: Damario Solomon-Simmons on the Tulsa Race Massacre, Reparations, and the 1776 Fund Precedent
Angela Rye’s latest SoloPod opens with two voting rights victories — federal courts rejecting racially gerrymandered maps in both Alabama and South Carolina — then pivots to a conversation with attorney Damario Solomon-Simmons, founder of Justice for Greenwood, legal counsel for the last living survivor of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre,…
Church
Pope Leo XIV Apologizes for the Church’s Role in Authorizing Slavery
On May 25, 2026 — Memorial Day — Pope Leo XIV made history. In his first papal encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas (“Magnificent Humanity”), the first American-born pope issued the most explicit apology any pope has ever delivered for the Catholic Church’s direct role in authorizing, legitimizing, and expanding the Transatlantic Slave Trade. He called…
African Union
“When I See the Street Lights in Brussels, I See Congo: Professor PLO Lumumba on Global Reparations”
The African Union declared 2025 the Year of Reparations and Justice — making this a coordinated global movement involving Africa, the Caribbean, Latin America, and the diaspora worldwide. Professor Lumumba situates the American reparations debate inside this larger global framework: “It is only a matter of time before we break the back…
New York State Commission
Update: New York Just Pushed Its Reparations Study to 2029. – New York’s Reparations Hearings Are Doing the Work the Federal Government Refuses to Do.
Update: New York Just Pushed Its Reparations Study to 2029. The new deadline is 2029 — nearly four years past the original target. That’s two more election cycles, one more presidential term, and many more potential setbacks before New York even recommends anything. The commission was never empowered to…
Edutainment
A Republican Just Called It Reparations. On Live TV. Willie D Has the Receipts.
Rep. Dan Meuser (R-Pennsylvania) used the word “reparations” on Newsmax to describe Trump’s $1.776 billion Anti-Weaponization Fund — a taxpayer-backed settlement fund for people who claim the Biden administration wronged them. Willie D’s point is simple: “Now we know y’all have a fundamental understanding of what reparations is. Y’all just don’t want to pay…
Podcast
So White People Can Get Reparations? Angela Rye Has Questions.
Political commentator and attorney Angela Rye went live on May 22, 2026 to ask the question that every Black American is thinking: So white people can get reparations? The Trump administration’s $1.8 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” is being called out for what looks like reparations for insurrectionists, funded by the same taxpayers…