Transcript
Into America
Uncounted Millions: Reparations Now
Adele Flateau: Some people feel like this has nothing to do with us. You know, reparations, why? Because this is something that, you know, other generations did. We had nothing to do with slavery. But I think what they failed to realize is that, let’s say in our case, the reparations that he did get, even though it was meager compared to the value of how do you value a person, your own family.
But he was able to uplift his own family, but then that became future generations who were educated, became professionals, doctors, lawyers, people who were able to help respectively uplift their own communities. So that — so we reverberated now to us 200 years later. So when people say that, you know, that’s in the past, it’s not really in the past because there are people who didn’t benefit like we did.
The vast majority, basically, you would say of Black people did not have any benefit whatsoever. So, imagine if they had that little step up at that time, you know. It would have changed the course of lives of millions of people.
Rep. Steve Cohen: The Committee on the Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties will come to order —
Trymaine Lee: On June 19th, 2019, Congress held a hearing. This hearing had been a long time coming, a step in securing for millions of Black Americans what Gabriel Coakley had managed to win for his family a century and a half earlier.
Rep. Cohen: But the greatest credit for H.R. 40 belongs to two individuals. First and foremost, Mr. John Conyers.
Lee: In 1989, a year after the successful passage of the Civil Liberties Act, which granted Japanese Americans reparations, Michigan Representative John Conyers introduced a bill that he hoped would follow a similar process to study reparations for Black Americans. H.R. 40, nodding to the failed promise of 40 acres and a mule, was introduced year after year and went nowhere for 30 straight years until that day.
Rep. Cohen: Enacting H.R. 40 will be an important step in finding effective long-term solutions to these problems, ones that can trace their origins to our nation’s shameful history of slavery and anti-Black racism.
Lee: This hearing was more than two years into Trump’s presidency, but the Democrats had recently won back the House in the midterm elections.
Rep. Cohen: And now I’d like to recognize the gentlelady from Texas for an opening statement, Ms. Sheila Jackson Lee.
Lee: Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee is now picking up the mantle of retired Congressman John Conyers.
Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee: H.R. 40 is, in fact, the response of the United States of America long overdue. Slavery is the original sin, and the idea of this commission should be welcomed by all Americans.
Danny Glover: I sit here as the great grandson of a former slave, Mary Brown. I had the fortune of meeting her as a small child.
Lee: There was a long list of notable speakers on both sides of the debate, like actor and activist Danny Glover.
Glover: This hearing is yet another important step in the long and heroic struggle of African Americans to secure reparations for the damages inflicted by enslavement and racial exclusionary policies.
Lee: And writer Coleman Hughes —
Coleman Hughes: If we were to pay reparations today, we would only divide the country further, making it harder to build the political coalitions required to solve the problems facing Black people today. We would insult many Black Americans by putting a price on the suffering of their ancestors.
Lee: The ranking member of the subcommittee was a relatively unknown second term congressman from Louisiana named Mike Johnson.
Rep. Mike Johnson: But putting aside the injustice of monetary reparations from current taxpayers for the sins of a small subset of Americans from many generations ago — let me finish. The fair distribution of reparations would be nearly impossible once one considers the complexity of the American struggle to abolish slavery.
Just consider this, okay. There are tens of millions of today’s non-African Americans who are descended from people who arrived in the country, of course, after slavery ended. And therefore they can’t be held responsible for its legacy.
Lee: Today, of course, he is the Speaker of the House. But the day truly belonged to a man who has become pivotal in the modern-day discussion of reparations, Ta-Nehisi Coates.
Ta-Nehisi Coates: Yesterday, when asked about reparations, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell offered a familiar reply. America should not be held liable for something that happened 150 years ago since none of us currently alive are responsible. This rebuttal proffers a strange theory of governance that American accounts are somehow bound by the lifetime of its generations.
But well into this century, the United States was still paying out pensions to the heirs of Civil War soldiers. We honor treaties that date back some 200 years, despite no one being alive who signed those treaties. We recognize our lineage as a generational trust, as inheritance.
And the real dilemma posed by reparations is just that, a dilemma of inheritance. It is impossible to imagine America without the inheritance of slavery. By the time the enslaved were emancipated, they comprised the largest single asset in America, $3 billion in 1860 dollars, more than all the other assets in the country combined.
The method of cultivating this asset was neither gentle cajoling, nor persuasion, but torture, rape, and child trafficking. Mr. McConnell was not alive for Appomattox, but he was alive for the electrocution of George Steny. He was alive for the blinding of Isaac Woodward. He was alive to witness kleptocracy in his native Alabama, and a regime premised on electoral theft.
Majority Leader McConnell cited civil rights legislation yesterday, as well he should, because he was alive to witness the harassment, jailing, and betrayal of those responsible for that legislation by a government sworn to protect them. What this committee must know is that while emancipation deadbolted the door against the bandits of America, Jim Crow wedged the windows wide open.
And that is the thing about Senator McConnell’s something. It was 150 years ago, and it was right now. In H.R. 40, this body has a chance to project fair-weather patriotism. To say that a nation is both its credits and its debits. That if Thomas Jefferson matters, so does Sally Hemings. That if D-Day matters, so does Black Wall Street. That if Valley Forge matters, so does Fort Pillow.
Because the question really is not whether we will be tied to the somethings of our past, but whether we are courageous enough to be tied to the whole of them. Thank you.
Lee: The hearing room was so packed that several overflow rooms were set up to accommodate the largely Black crowd, some of whom had traveled great distances to witness this day. The hearing was well over three hours long.
Rep. Cohen: And with that, the hearing is adjourned.
Lee: But in the end, it was just that, a hearing. There would be no floor vote for H.R. 40, no path for legislation to merely study reparations. Even still, it was a watershed moment for the reparations movement, a momentum-building event that would help fuel the flurry of proposals we see today.
Newscaster: Racism and slavery in Boston getting historic reconsideration with a new reparations task force.
Lee: And new ideas around what could constitute reparations.
Newscaster: Evanston City Council voted 8-1 to approve reparations to Black residents. Those approved can use up to $25,000 for things like down payments, home improvement, or mortgage assistance.
Lee: And for the many times great-grandchildren of one of the only Black families to ever receive reparations, that fight is not far from home.
John Flateau: We’re waiting on the governor to sign that bill. It did pass the legislature.
Lee: What’s the bill?
John Flateau: It’s a reparations commission for the state of New York.
Lee: Today, in 2024, is the bill finally coming due?
What’s the number that you put on reparations in America?
Dr. William Darity: It’s about $16 trillion.
Lee: $16 trillion. That’s a lot.
Darity: But that’s the figure. That’s the gap.
Lee: It is what it is.
The number may be high, perhaps even hard to fully wrap your mind around. But many are saying the time for payback has finally come.
Dreisen Heath: I will see meaningful reparations in my lifetime. You know, this is our rent for living on Earth. It’s to fight for this issue.
Lee: I’m Trymaine Lee, and this is “Into America.”
The Coakley legacy shows us what could have been, but what is going to be. On the final episode of “Uncounted Millions,” the descendants of Gabriel Coakley make their way back east where a century and a half of boundary pushing and foundation building would culminate in a new generation of activists, entrepreneurs, and movement makers, pushing the United States to finally repair what’s been broken.
Lee: Act One: A New Legacy.
We’ve been following this family through the generations. From the nation’s capital, where Gabriel Coakley was freeing his people and finessing reparations from the government, to the next in line, who were building off those seeds and watched their family’s roots flourish.
And then to the other side of the family tree, in the deep South, to those who found fortune in the tumultuous time after Reconstruction, but could not hold on to it. To the moment where these two families would meet, fleeing violence and chasing opportunity in the Golden State.
But the next era after the war would bring the newlywed couple, Sidney and Jean Flateau, parents of Adele, John and Richard, back east to New York.
Richard Flateau: I can remember a bell being rung.
Lee: Here’s Richard Flateau from our conversation at John’s house in Brooklyn.
Richard Flateau: My parents had a cowbell.
John Flateau: Yes.
Richard Flateau: And when it was time for dinner, somebody would ring the bell and that’s how we would know, you know, it was time for dinner.
John Flateau: We were living in that three-story house right on Clawson, seven kids spread out. But when you hear that bell, you better respond to that bell and you better be sitting at that dinner table if you wanted to have dinner. So that was —
Lee: The family would settle in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood, and they continued to grow.
Richard Flateau: You know, there were a lot of changes taking place. And by the time I was growing up, I think most of the whites had moved out of the area.
Lee: These children would come of age as neighborhoods in the city were literally being divided and devalued by infrastructure projects, and as white flight was stripping parts of the city of money and resources. And of course, fiery social movements were roaring across the country, including right here in New York. Anti-war, civil rights, Stonewall, Black Power.
The family continually stressed that it wasn’t just money and opportunity that they would inherit. There was always a sense of service, a mission.
Adele Flateau: This is what we’re supposed to do. We’re supposed to help our families, to educate our community, to uplift the community.
Lee: Both parents embodied this. Their mother, Jean, had a career as a social worker in Brooklyn. Their father, Sidney, spent many years working in the aeronautical business, but then followed Jean, finishing his graduate degree and starting his own career in social work. Whether through their professional work or work in the community, Sidney and Jean held a torch for the next generation in the fight for Black equality.
And the siblings, in their own unique ways, carried this light of service. Richard had a knack for business, a connection with great, great, great granddaddy Coakley that he can’t brush off.
Richard Flateau: In terms of entrepreneurialism, I didn’t hear my parents talk about it much, but then going back now and looking at what Coakley did, he had businesses, so he had restaurants, and I’ve been an entrepreneur for most of my career, so I have a business.
Lee: I know where the impulse starts, but it’s in you.
Richard Flateau: Yes. Exactly.
Lee: Richard would serve on Bed-Stuy’s community board for 13 years, and there was also his faith.
Richard Flateau: I’ve been a trustee of a church, so there’s a direct connection there. I’ve been a trustee of a Catholic church, involved, well, actually three churches, a parish that has three churches.
Lee: For Adele, it started with activism and education in the late ‘60s.
Adele Flateau: I was engaged in political activism at Brooklyn College. At that time, we were advocating for free tuition and to get more people of color in general into the city university system.
Lee: Adele was part of a student movement fighting for greater access and support for students of color through boycotts, strikes, and even occupations of campus buildings at Brooklyn College.
Adele Flateau: And I’d say we were pretty successful, you know, as a group in doing that and raising awareness about that.
Lee: The movement pushed Mayor John Lindsay and the school’s chancellor into implementing an open admissions policy several years ahead of schedule, which drastically overhauled the entire city university of New York system.
Adele Flateau: And then, you know, I was involved in another movement, which is more like a socialist organization. And so it gave me more of an international perspective on inequities that were happening outside of the U.S.
Lee: Adele even spent significant time in England and France organizing with radical workers movements. Eventually, she made her way back to Brooklyn, where she went back to school, settled down and started a family and ended up with a 30-year career in health care administration. But she’s never stopped advocating for Black education.
Adele Flateau: Right now, I’m part of a legacy sort of organization that my mother was involved in for 43 years. And she recruited all of her daughters into what’s called the National Association of University Women. And so all of us have been involved in helping, like to raise scholarships. So, again, it’s like a continuation of really what was started, you know, by our ancestors.
Lee: John Flateau went the academic route.
John Flateau: I’m a professor at Medgar Evers College right here in Brooklyn. I teach government, public policy, American history, political science.
Lee: But John, he didn’t just teach politics. He shaped politics.
John Flateau: Prior to that, I’ve served in a number of government positions, executive positions for the state of New York and the city of New York.
Lee: This is pretty humble of John, who for decades was at the center of electoral politics in New York. From 1975 to 1982, he served as the executive director of the New York State Black and Puerto Rican Legislative Caucus. 1982 was also the year that he was the lead plaintiff in a case to redraw congressional and state legislative lines.
He would continue to focus on voting rights, serving as an elections commissioner on New York’s Independent Redistricting Commission. He was not a politician, but he was always in the mix. In the early ‘90s, John was chief of staff for New York City’s first Black mayor, David Dinkins. And in more recent years, he was in a reparations in New York state of mind. It was one of the first things he told me when we met, before we’d even set everything up.
John Flateau: We’re doing a reparations forum at Medgar Evers College on Friday. And I’ll be on that panel. We’re waiting on the governor to sign that bill. It did pass the legislature.
Lee: What’s the bill? I haven’t heard of it.
John Flateau: It’s a reparations commission for the state of New York.
Lee: Right.
John Flateau: Yeah.
Lee: In June of 2023, the New York legislature passed a bill to establish the state’s own reparations commission in the vein of Illinois and California.
Sen. Zellnor Myrie: There’s a misconception that New York was hands off in the enslavement of people of African descent.
Lee: New York State Senator Zellnor Myrie was one of the Democrats pushing for this bill to be signed.
Sen. Myrie: A lot of things that this city and state take pride in, being the financial capital of the world, that was rooted in the enslavement of people. Slaves were sold on Wall Street. A lot of the banks that dominate our financial ecosystem now, they financed people who owned slaves and other people along the supply chain in the Atlantic slave trade. So, this is a conversation that needs to happen and certainly needs to happen in New York.
Lee: But the bill sat on Governor Kathy Hochul’s desk for weeks and weeks. As fall cooled into winter, the pressure on Governor Hochul was heating up.
Protestors: Sign the bill! Sign the bill! Sign the bill!
Sen. Cordell Cleare: Reparations. Yesterday. My son says today, but we need reparations yesterday. And there’s a lot more that —
Protestor: This is an historic legislation that needs to be signed. The governor needs to know that this needs to be one of her top priorities.
Lee: And then, on December 19th, it finally happened.
Gov. Kathy Hochul: By signing this bill today, I’m authorizing the creation of a commission, a committee to study what reparations might look like in New York. Let’s be clear about what reparations means. It doesn’t mean fixing the past, undoing what happened. We can’t do that. No one can. But it does mean more than giving people a simple apology 150 years later.
Sen. Myrie: Dr. Flateau was a major champion of this bill and in fact was at the bill signing when it was signed into law.
Lee: Senator Myrie not only represents several neighborhoods in Central Brooklyn, including parts of Bed-Stuy. He considers John to be a friend and mentor.
Sen. Myrie: Dr. Flateau, he was always updating you, whether you asked for it or not. And on reparations, he was so consistent in sending e-mails, certainly to me, but I imagine to many other folks, about this being on the governor’s desk, about this being a priority, and whether or not we were going to get it signed. And so it was incredible to see him there and present when it was signed and to see him send a celebratory e-mail and say, we finally did it.
Lee: This must have been a true moment of triumph for John. But the actual work of this task force, the research, the recommendations, any kind of tangible reparations for Black New Yorkers, John will never get to see.
On December 30th of 2023, John Flateau died suddenly at his home. He was 73 years old.
Newscaster: Capitol leaders are remembering a pioneer of the state’s redistricting process.
Newscaster: Dr. John Flateau recently passed away. His services were held today in Brooklyn. He was a commissioner on New York’s Independent Redistricting Commission and dedicated much of his life to public service.
Lee: This story from ABC News 10 was one of many remembrances that John would receive in the coming weeks. U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, another son of Brooklyn, issued a statement offering his condolences and remembering his impact on the community and political landscape. So, too, did former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.
His memorial services were attended by an equally as impressive cast of political movers and shakers and power brokers, past and present, including current Mayor Eric Adams. And the eulogies were especially moving, focusing on John’s dedication to lifting his community.
Jim Harden: Because John Flateau was a great leader. And when the books are written about great Black Americans, John Flateau has a place.
New York State Senate: Senate Resolution 1466 by Senator Stuart Cousins mourning the death of Dr. John Lewis Flateau, devoted family man, dedicated professor and distinguished member of his community.
Lee: A resolution was introduced in his memory by New York State Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stuart Cousins, one of the champions of New York’s reparations bill.
Sen. Andrea Stuart Cousins: And I’m just so happy that the fulfillment of something that he worked for for so long in so many ways happened before he transitioned.
Lee: Among those who paid tribute on the Senate floor was Senator Myrie.
Sen. Myrie: I would not be standing here today if not for Dr. Flateau. He paved a way for many of us, but particularly for people that look like me and particularly for young Black men in Brooklyn. In this country’s history, we have said we care about democracy, but it took the struggle, particularly of Black Americans, to perfect our democracy, to hold us to that higher standard.
And Dr. Flateau was such a perfecter because he didn’t just know about the grand and big ideas, he knew the minutiae. And he knew that the minutiae was where the momentum actually was. And that that’s how they had kept people down for a long time in the details. He knew the details better than anyone else.
And so I find it appropriate that today, not only are we honoring him with this resolution, but we are naming a bill after him to create an elections and voting academic center here in this state. Because the details matter. We can only perfect our democracy with people who care deeply about those it affects the most. And Dr. Flateau was such a person.
Lee: I only got to meet John once, that first time, when I met the family in his living room, when we recorded this nearly four-hour sit-down interview that you’ve all heard so much of. We were hoping to speak to John even more, to soak up every last bit of his story, of his family story. But as it goes, there’s never enough time.
I’ve been coming back to this one moment from that sit-down at his house. It was just, you know, this short, casual moment. The kind so often left in a pile on the cutting room floor.
Yeah, thank y’all. Thank y’all seriously for having us. We really do appreciate this. It’s good.
John Flateau: No, we appreciate.
Lee: Thank you.
John Flateau: And we happen to be in almost in the same place at the same time. You’ve just a neighborhood won over and —
Lee: Yeah.
John Flateau: — and timing just came together.
Lee: It happens like that.
John Flateau: Providentially, yes.
Lee: That’s right.
Providentially. I love that word. Providentially. It’s hard not to feel that way. This family, this story, all the questions and mysteries, the lost and found records, all just revealed itself in a way that’s hard to chalk up to anything but providence.
The family will continue to honor John the best way they know how, by pushing for the things he believed in most, like reparations for New Yorkers.
Adele Flateau: He would definitely be very excited about it because most of his career was focused around building equity, you know, building racial equality, political empowerment, and laying out the facts of what was going on in Black America. So we’re going to miss that from him.
Lee: We’ll be right back.
Act Two: An Uphill Battle
After a lifetime of service, John’s legacy has now been solidified with his push for a reparations task force in New York. An action which, if carried through to its most optimistic conclusion, could one day result in reparations that might change the lives of millions of Black residents.
With the signing of this reparations commission bill, New York joined California and Illinois as the three states with task forces. California recently introduced a slew of bills in response to the state’s reparations report.
Newscaster: And the legislative Black Caucus formally introduced more than a dozen bills they say will lead to the start of reparations for California descendants of enslaved Black Americans. It comes less than a year after the California reparations task force submitted this 1,000 plus page recommendations report to the governor and legislature.
Lee: Cities and municipalities are getting involved too. The city of San Francisco started looking into this issue, suggesting that Black residents could be owed as much as $5 million each in reparations. And in Evanston, Illinois, they’ve already gotten started.
Newscaster: Eligible Black people can receive up to $25,000 each to use for housing. The money will come from tax revenue collected from the sales of recreational marijuana. The bill —
Lee: Over 100 applicants have received funding since the program’s approval in 2019, with 80 more expected to receive payment this year. There are now dozens of municipalities who are somewhere in the process of at least studying reparations. And all of this movement begs the question, what about the federal government?
Sen. Myrie: Our federal government is a large, large, large ship that takes a very long time to turn. And our states can be a little bit more flexible.
Lee: New York State Senator Zellnor Myrie.
Sen. Myrie: But on reparations, I do think that there has to be a national conversation about this because this is a national sin. And so I think it merits a national response.
Lee: In 2021, the White House said it would support the idea of studying reparations. That same year, H.R. 40 was advanced out of committee, the furthest the bill had ever gotten in the three decades since Conyers first introduced it. Last year, Representative Sheila Jackson Lee reintroduced the bill and got the most co-sponsors to sign on in its history.
But it still has never received a floor vote. And to be crystal clear, H.R. 40 is a bill for the study of reparations, not actual reparations. But it’s not the only federal effort. Representative Barbara Lee, who we heard from last episode, is pushing to establish a commission on truth, racial healing and transformation to examine the effects of slavery.
The bill has been supported by Representative Cori Bush, who has put forth her own bill, co-sponsored by Jamal Bowman from New York. This bill goes further than just studying reparations. They’re calling on the federal government to actually pay them to the tune of $14 trillion.
Rep. Cori Bush: What we are working on is we’re looking at the Black-white wealth gap, which is about $14 trillion. So there, you know, we have scholars like Dr. Sandy Darity and others who have been working on a dollar amount, looking at what that is. And so what we say is —
Darity: When thinking about what the components of a reparations plan must be, the priority is to eliminate the racial wealth gap.
Lee: Dr. William Darity is a professor of public policy at Duke University. He launched an entire research field called stratification economics that looks at economic inequality across social groups. He is also considered one of the foremost scholars on reparations. His book, “From Here to Equality,” co-written with A. Kirsten Mullen, explains that full repair would require three building blocks, acknowledgement, redress and closure.
Darity: We have a partial checkmark on the first, acknowledgement. Circa 2006, 2007, each branch of Congress provided an apology for slavery. It did not provide a full scale apology for all of the atrocities that took place after slavery ended, which I think are central to any case for reparations. But the Senate’s version of the apology said specifically that this was not a basis for a claim for restitution.
Lee: So they were already thinking like, okay, let’s not go too far because then we’ll help establish a foundation for this greater push for reparations.
Darity: Exactly.
Lee: For Darity, it all comes back to the racial wealth gap.
Darity: So we think of the wealth gap as capturing the cumulative intergenerational effects of white supremacy. So that all of these factors that would have gone into influencing the capacity of Black families to accumulate wealth are captured in the current statistic of the disparity.
Lee: I wonder how do you quantify the wealth gap between Black and white Americans today? In your research, in your understanding of the situation, where are we today?
Darity: The 2022 data indicates that the average difference in wealth between a Black and a white household in the United States is $1.15 million. If we were to try to break that down into a per person estimate, $390,000 to $400,000 per person. That differential is immense. And it is reflective of the gap in the capacity of Black Americans to participate fully as citizens.
Lee: So the average white family has more than a million dollars’ worth of wealth compared to an average Black family?
Darity: The average white family, yes.
Lee: When it comes to what we do have, though, where is our wealth concentrated in terms of, you know, where it sits on the scale?
Darity: Among those Black Americans who have some type of significant net worth, the primary source of wealth for those households is equity in their homes. When we start talking about more affluent white households, their sources of wealth are far more diverse.
We’re talking about non-residential property. We’re talking about business ownership. We’re talking about pensions. And we’re also talking about ownership of financial assets, participation in the stock exchange. And to be a player in terms of buying stocks and bonds, you have to have a certain threshold of wealth in the first place. And so we don’t have the opportunity to pursue some of these higher return options at all. And so if we could change the racial wealth distribution in the United States, we could change the character of this country.
Lee: When you add up that million dollars plus gap for Black families today, the number is staggering.
Darity: If you estimate that there are about 40 million Black Americans whose ancestors were enslaved in the United States, 40 million times $400,000 gives you that rough estimate of $16 trillion.
Lee: What’s the number that you put on reparations in America?
Darity: It’s about $16 trillion.
Lee: $16 trillion. That’s a lot.
Darity: Yeah, but that’s the figure. That’s the gap.
Lee: It is what it is.
Cori Bush’s current bill, titled Reparations Now, cited Darity’s work and gave a $14 trillion price tag. But as time ticks on, that price tag goes up and up.
Darity: The $14 trillion figure was generated based upon the 2019 data. The $16 trillion is from the 2022 data. So it’s just an indication that the longer we wait, the larger the bill gets.
Lee: Is it hard for people to — obviously, for some people, reparations is just, they can’t even — anti-Blackness and the state in which we exist in this country is so baked in where it’s hard for people to even imagine paying back Black people for all that was stolen from us. But is it hard for people to understand these numbers? Because these are big numbers. Is it hard for people to get their heads around of what is that worth?
Darity: Yeah. It is. It’s a big number, and it’s hard for people to get their heads around it. And I try to use the following illustration. If generous donors put $1 billion into a fund on a monthly basis, it would take a millennium for them to get to $16 trillion.
Lee: Then there’s the question of eligibility. Dr. Darity proposes two standards to qualify.
Darity: The first is a lineage standard. An individual would have to demonstrate that they have at least one ancestor who was enslaved in the United States. But the second is an identity standard. And what we say is the following. An individual would have to have self-identified as Black, Negro, African American, or Afro-American for at least 12 years before the adoption of a reparations program or the adoption of a study commission for reparations.
Lee: This question of eligibility is still a pretty contested subject. But this standard that Darity outlines is commonly used in reparation frameworks. California’s task force recommended a similar standard regarding lineage, a direct line to someone who was enslaved.
Is there a dollar amount that would, you know, heal us as Black Americans in this country that doesn’t change the white supremacy, that doesn’t change the political dynamics? Does reparations do what we would hope and dream it would do? Or is it just purely about here’s a financial representation of what is owed?
Darity: I think it’s more the latter. But I also think it’s the basis for giving Black Americans the material conditions for full citizenship. A more affluent Black community would also be in a better political position than it is today. But no, I don’t really have much of a focus on healing and repair and psychological, emotional —
Lee: Cut the check.
Darity: Yeah, cut the check and let the folks who receive those checks do with it what they see fit for the purposes of improving their own lives.
Lee: So if the federal government was willing to, you know, push through legislation that they would consider a reparations bill that would pay for all the damages and stolen money and what is owed, but it was short of $16 trillion, would that be insufficient?
Darity: Depends on how far short it was of $16 trillion.
Lee: We’ll take $2 trillion short, but $10 trillion short is —
Darity: Yeah, yeah. I mean — and that ultimately is up to Black American descendants of U.S. slavery.
Lee: Do you honestly and truly believe that the federal government of the United States will ever pay descendants of enslaved people reparations? Do you believe that reparations will actually happen at some point in America?
Darity: I hope reparations will happen at some point in America. There are some signals that suggest that the possibility is there. Not tomorrow. But I bring to mind a study that was done in the year 2000. And at that time they found that 4 percent of white Americans endorsed monetary payments as reparations to Black Americans. That’s F-O-U-R, 4 percent.
Lee: Wow.
Darity: A study that was completed by a team of researchers at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst at the beginning of 2023 found that the percentage of white Americans who support monetary payments as reparations for Black Americans is now closer to 30 percent.
Lee: The team of researchers was headed up by Dr. Tatishe Nteta, a political science professor at University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Dr. Tatishe Nteta: The best public opinion data goes back to really about the 1980s. And what you find when you look at that data is that consistently large percentages of Americans expressing opposition to any form of reparations directed at African Americans. It is much more popular today than it has been in the past.
And so when you think about where we’re at in the United States, about 35 to 38 percent express some level of support for reparations, whether that’s cash payments or housing assistance or educational assistance or even just symbolic in terms of apologies. And so this is a high point in the level of support expressed by Americans writ-large for these policies.
Lee: How did those numbers skew in terms of Black and white? Were you seeing the outcomes very different?
Nteta: African Americans are, and this is not surprising, are overwhelmingly supportive of reparations. About three quarters of African Americans express support for reparations. But whites are on the other side, a majority of whites express opposition to reparations. What we also see is what people say is the great awakening of America.
Progressives, Biden voters, and Democrats all support reparations in all of its forms. So majorities of those groups. And so, you know, as we look forward to the future and if we assume that younger generations will continue to sort of liberalize on these issues, we may see an increase in support for a policy like reparations, but we’re not there yet. We’re not at majoritarian support just quite yet.
Lee: So three quarters of Black folks who were polled said they supported that last quarter, what were they saying like? What do you find about Black folks who oppose reparations? What were they saying?
Nteta: So if you assume that people are motivated by self-interest, that there’s a non-trivial portion of the African American community that if reparations are paid will not qualify. Like my parents came from South Africa in 1965. I was born here in the United States. I’ve been socialized as an African American. I identify as such, but no one in my family would be qualified for reparations.
It does place a dividing line in the Black community that a number of people have highlighted. At least reparations as directed towards the descendants of slaves. Now, if you flip the script and talk about reparations, not about slavery, but talk about reparations for things like Jim Crow, then you widen the circle and you include more folks.
And what’s interesting based on our polling is that reparations for Jim Crow are much more popular. And so the question going forward for the movement is whether or not the focus is going to maintain on reparations for slavery, which potentially could do damage to the unity of the Black community or to seek reparations for something like Jim Crow and to personalize the story.
Lee: For Dr. Nteta, the most surprising thing he found was the reasoning behind opposition to reparations.
Nteta: What we found was that people aren’t concerned about the cost of the program. They’re not concerned about the logistics, you know, identifying who is a descendant of a slave and who is not. The central issue that explains opposition in our polling is this question of deservedness. I think it’s a reflection of the stereotypes directed at African Americans, particularly regarding their work ethic, the stereotypical, the sort of materialistic inclinations.
Dave Chapelle: Our top story, as we all know, Congress recently approved paying over a trillion dollars to African Americans as reparations for slavery.
Nteta: We go back to that Dave Chappelle skit from the early 2000s about the provision of reparations. And of course, it’s done in a comedic fashion, but I think in comedy you find a lot of reality. And the skit was really about what would happen the day after reparations are paid and African Americans are buying cars and outfitting their cars with rims and buying gold chains.
Character 1: Sir, now that you’ve got your check, do you plan on quitting your job driving this truck?
Character 2: Truck driver? I ain’t no truck driver. I’m a janitor.
Character 1: Janitor?
Character 2: That’s right, baby. I just bought this truck straight cash. And I got enough cigarettes to last me and my family for the rest of our lives.
Nteta: You know, people laughed, but in that laughter is a recognition of the predictions that people have for what African Americans do when they get some influx of money. And I think that’s really at the heart of the level of opposition in public opinion today.
Lee: Does public opinion around reparations shift or change at all when we’re talking about different kinds of reparations, like whether it’s free college, whether it’s actually a check, whether it’s land? Like, how does that all parse out?
Nteta: Yeah. What we found is Americans are least supportive of cash payments to descendants of slaves. And so around 35 to 38 percent of Americans express support for that policy and then the remainder really oppose it. But when you ask about other forms of reparations, interestingly, college tuition and housing assistance enjoys about 45 percent support among Americans.
And so if folks are looking for a win, it may behoove the movement to start thinking more about these areas rather than the provision of cash payments, which are relatively unpopular.
Lee: Do you think reparations on a federal level, a national level is possible in this moment? And can you actually, given everything you understand about how people think about this, you see a day in which the federal government? No? The point no — nope?
Nteta: Federal government? No. So I have very little faith in the potential of the federal government making the decision to step in to do something about this issue. Let’s — again, let’s be frank. The Congress refuses to even put together committees to talk about reparations, let alone pass a reparations policy.
So in the short term, I don’t see this as likely coming from the federal government, but that doesn’t mean all hope is lost. And what you’re seeing where the heat is for the reparations movement is at the state level and at the local level. You’re seeing these cities that are relatively progressive, who are looking for solutions to the problem of racial inequality. And they’re looking to reparations as potentially that solution.
Lee: Perhaps the federal government is not ready or willing to take on this responsibility. And while it’s not clear how effectively local efforts could shrink the racial wealth gap, they might be the best shot. Back in New York, the reparations process is moving forward. On February 29th, Governor Hochul announced the names of the task force commissioners who will serve a similar role to Don Tamaki in California.
We can only imagine that maybe John Flateau’s name would have been on that list. His siblings know he would have been right in the thick of it one way or another.
Adele Flateau: I wish he was here because he would probably help us sort out a lot of things or recommendations about how we address this kind of issue. But he was very much on top of it. And that was one of the last conversations actually we had with him because it happened shortly before he passed away. So I know he would have been — he would have been part of the conversation for sure, you know.
Lee: As we draw to the end of our journey with the Coakley Flateau’s, we head back to where this story and their story began, the District of Columbia.
This document here would change your family’s trajectory.
Adele Flateau: Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely.
Lee: Act Three: Uncounted Millions.
We’ll never know how Gabriel Coakley might have imagined how his signature on that petition might have changed the lives of those who’d come after him or after those whose names he listed on it. But we do know that he would go on to pour himself and his money into his community and Black institutions, helping to fortify his section of the Black world in D.C. in a way that was necessary, and for the times revolutionary. He’d share a notch in history with ambitious Black men and women who’d mount their own forms of nation building in Washington and beyond.
Like the great abolitionist and orator Frederick Douglass, who built a home in D.C. where he spent the last decade and a half of his life. It’s likely that Douglass and Coakley could have met as Douglass was well acquainted with St. Augustine and had high esteem for the congregation and the community that the church had built.
And on April 16th, 1883, to commemorate the 21st anniversary of Emancipation Day in D.C., Douglass stood before an audience inside the first congregational church not far from Coakley’s home and delivered a powerful, rousing speech where he said freedom alone wasn’t enough to repair what America had broken in slavery. We can only wonder if Coakley was there that day to hear his words. I’m going to read some of it for you.
Time and events which have done so much for us in the past will, I trust, not do less for us in the future. The moral government of the universe is on our side and cooperates with all honest efforts to lift up the downtrodden and oppressed in all lands, whether the oppressed be white or Black. In whatever else, the Negro may have been a failure, he has in one respect been a marked and brilliant success.
He has managed by one means or another to make himself one of the most prominent and interesting figures that now attract and hold the attention of the world. He goes on. It was so in the time of slavery and it is so now. Then the cause was interest. Now the cause is pride and prejudice. Then the cause was property. He was then worth twenty hundred millions to his owner.
He is now worth uncounted millions to himself. While a slave, there was a mountain of gold on his breast to keep him down. Now that he is free, there is a mountain of prejudice to hold him down. Let’s sit with that for a minute. Twenty hundred millions to his owner. Uncounted millions to himself. A mountain of gold on his breast to keep him down. And in freedom, a mountain of prejudice to hold him down.
I can’t shake that one line. Uncounted millions. There’s so much packed in those words. Unrealized wealth or value. A vastness of untapped potential. Perhaps some sort of financial negligence or at least neglect. Some great amount owed.
This clarion call to be made whole, to stake a claim on what’s rightfully ours, has been lifted for generations since. For that mountain of gold, for those uncounted millions, for reparations. We’ll never know if Gabriel Coakley was seated in the pews that day to hear those words. But there’s no doubt, he lived them. He knew his people’s worth.
This whole series started with a discovery. That in the great war over slavery and freedom, a Black man found a loophole in the white man’s law that secured him never before paid compensation for slavery. On our journey to learn more, we dug deep. In basement archives, small town records rooms, and historic cemeteries. Through digital libraries and one family’s catalog of memories. But there was one document that none of us had ever seen with our own eyes. Gabriel Coakley’s original petition for compensation.
Adele Flateau: How are you doing?
Lee: How are you doing? Good to see you all.
Adele Flateau: Yeah. Thank you.
Lee: How y’all feeling today?
Adele Flateau: Great.
Richard Flateau: Good.
Lee: We asked Adele and Richard, and two of their sons, Antoine and Desmond, to meet us in D.C. at the National Archives. This was just a few weeks after John had passed away, and it was the first time we’d seen the family since.
So thank you for taking the time with everything going on to come down here because we’re all very excited, though, to finally see this document here.
Adele Flateau: Yeah, it’s something that John definitely would have wanted us to, you know, to finish. And he was very excited about it, and so we couldn’t think of not, you know, going ahead, really.
Lee: Right.
Adele Flateau: But it’s definitely very bittersweet right now.
Lee: We also invited Dr. Lopez Matthews, head of the D.C. Archives across town, to put the document into a little more context.
Hey, Adele, this is Dr. Lopez Matthews. He’s been the head archivist of D.C. in this story, and he’s been helping us understand the story a bit.
Lopez Matthews: So, it’s a fascinating story.
Adele Flateau: Yes.
Lee: We’ve been waiting out in the hallway until the staff leads us into the records room.
All right, it’s the moment of truth. Y’all ready?
Adele Flateau: Yeah.
Lee: All right, let’s go.
Adele Flateau: I’m following you.
Lee: And this place looks exactly like it should, right? With all the old books and all the old documents.
Adele Flateau: Oh, yeah.
Lee: Beautiful looking —
Adele Flateau: Oh, should I put my phone somewhere?
Lee: It’s a simple but grand room with high walls lined with books, and a recessed second floor with a spiral staircase leading up to it.
So this is the moment you guys have been waiting for.
Adele Flateau: Yes, very much.
Richard Flateau: Yes, indeed.
Lee: I think we’re ready.
The clerk brings over a simple file box and starts to leaf through it.
So what exactly do we have here?
Clerk: So these are all sorts of petitions to free enslaved folks. Y’all, our petition number 332. Got it tabbed for you.
Richard Flateau: Gabriel Coakley’s name.
Clerk: Yeah.
Adele Flateau: Yeah. There is —
Lee: Is there a way for us to see this? Can we touch it and open it?
Matthews: You can. You just have to be gentle. It opens to the left. You have to open it that way.
Lee: Who wants to do the honors?
Adele Flateau: I don’t know if the archivist maybe should do that.
Matthews: Your hands are clean and dry.
Lee: They’re clean.
Matthews: Just be gentle.
Adele Flateau: Okay.
Richard Flateau: That’s amazing.
Lee: Richard, what are you seeing there?
Richard Flateau: I’m seeing a dollar amount.
Desmond Flateau-Gooding: Looks like a description of the slaves.
Lee: Now, would this have been his handwriting or a lawyer’s?
Matthews: No, this would have been the clerk or someone who was filling out the petition for them.
Adele Flateau: Oh, wow.
Matthews: They wanted to make sure it was someone who had good handwriting.
Richard Flateau: Right.
Lee: Antoine reads from the petition.
Antoine Flateau: Petition to the commissioners under the Act of Congress approved the 16th of April 1862 entitled An Act for the Release of Certain Persons Held to Service or Labor in the District of Columbia. Your petitioner, Gabriel Coakley of Washington, D.C. By this, his petition in writing represents and states that he is a loyal person to the United States who at the time of passage of the said Act of Congress held a claim to service or labor.
Lee: As we’ve described before, the petition starts with Gabriel pledging loyalty to the Union since this was during the Civil War.
Antoine Flateau: — of the personal description following. Adam Coakley is of a brown complexion, about five feet, two inches height.
Lee: And then there’s the description of all his family members, property in the eyes of the government, listed with their physical characteristics and temperaments.
Antoine Flateau: Mary is a bright mulatto. About five feet, four inches high. Mary Ann is of a yellow complexion, is 11 years old.
Lee: You might hear how, for Black Americans, records like these that help trace a family story are almost non-existent. But you also need to know where to look. It’s remarkable just how accessible this all was. You could hold and touch these pieces of paper, these freedom papers, 162 years later.
But in some respects, this was just paperwork. A bureaucratic process for most of these petitioners to be repaid for their property. But for this family, this simple paperwork is more than just procedural.
Antoine Flateau: I’m kind of left speechless. This is a really trying time in history for African Americans in this country, you know. This is a remarkable legacy that he left for us. Not knowing the future, you know, of this country or, you know, for his family.
Lee: We’re standing in the National Archives, home to some of the most historic documents of freedom that this country has. The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights. Where does a document like this, especially in the context of Black people fighting their freedom, where does a document like this fall in this long historical line of historical documents?
Matthews: Well, I think it falls on the line of progress in America. It speaks to the continual improvement that a country goes to. We started at one period. We started with this horrible institution. But we are moving beyond that. Those who suffered under that institution are finding at least a little bit of redress for that injustice.
And so these documents, you know, the National Archives holds documents that tells the story of America. And this document really tells another piece of that important story.
Lee: We’ve been having this conversation around reparations in America and what is owed to Black people. Is this, in your estimation, reparations? Is that what this is?
Desmond Flateau-Gooding: Man, I feel like reparations has such a negative connotation. It’s such a loaded term. It’s restorative. Like, in a lot of ways, he was able to, you know, again, get the family back together and really change the course of the future generations to come. All right. So, I mean, who knows what we would have looked like as a family if he wasn’t able to get this accomplished?
Adele Flateau: Well, the way I see it is that the reparations was not just about money, because what he was able to do with that is create a new generation of educated Blacks, like, you know, his family members. And even though we didn’t know much about him, it’s like that legacy was instilled in us, the value of education, not always higher education in that sense, but just being educated, being educated about your community, being educated about political empowerment.
That’s something that, you know, we have always — it’s like been a part of our DNA. We don’t know how it got there. It’s there. And John was like the epitome of that.
Lee: John’s presence loomed large over this visit. It was John who first discovered that their ancestor was on this list of petitioners in the first place, that a record of his signature would be in these very halls, not as a person emerging from bondage, but as a free man pulling his people out of it while pulling one over on the white supremacist system that refused to see them as whole.
He may not have collected the uncounted millions that he was worth, but it was no pittance. It was enough to cast ripples for generations. And John, he would remember that he had to give back. There’s this one last moment that I want to play from our conversation in his living room, a moment that perhaps speaks best to his family and their legacy and what still remains for Black Americans.
So as we sit here today and you’re going through this amazing history where your great, great, great grandfather purchases the freedom of his wife, his children. When you sit in that for a moment, how does that feel recognizing that this man did something that would have been extraordinary by any measure at any time? What do you, how do you, think about that?
John Flateau: What I think about that is, yes, he was an extraordinary, phenomenal man and accomplished in extraordinary times and we are the beneficiaries. And if you understand what he accomplished 150 years ago, those of us that are here on Earth now, we should have no complaints, no excuses for not advancing the struggles, freedom, equality of people of African descent that we are a part of today.
Lee: This family has had a front row seat to history, slavery, freedom, reconstruction and redemption. Great migration, world wars, the civil rights movement, the rough and tumble world of New York politics. And now the fight for reparations. We’ve walked with them through time and space, trying to wrap our arms around the sheer enormity of their family’s incredible story.
Then and now the courage, the cunning, the fortune and misfortune. Theirs is both a singular tale and one that’s universal. It’s certainly about what could have been, but it’s also about what is and has been. And that is the sheer beauty and brilliance and resilience of Black America. Despite what might be owed us, we will always be fighting for what’s ours.
Thank you so much for listening to “Uncounted Millions.” And please stay tuned in the coming weeks for some bonus content. If you love the show and the series, help us spread the word. You can do that by rating and reviewing “Into America” on Apple Podcasts or wherever you’re listening right now.
A special thank you to all the archivists, clerks and record keepers who’ve helped us along the way. From the county clerk’s office in Donaldsonville, Louisiana, to the National Archives in D.C., there are treasures in the archives of this country. Thank you for helping us find them.
A special thank you to Dreisen Heath, racial justice researcher and advocate. We, of course, could not have made this series without the descendants of Gabriel and Mary Coakley, Adele Flateau, Richard Flateau, Antoine Flateau, Desmond Flateau-Gooding, and the time and countless hours of research from those descendants who are no longer with us. John Flateau, Andrea Flateau, Sidney Flateau Jr., and of course, Sidney and Jean Flateau. Thank you for entrusting us with your family’s story.
“Into America” is produced by Max Jacobs. Our associate producer is Janmaris Perez. Catherine Anderson and Bob Mallory are the sound engineers. Bryson Barnes is the head of audio production. Original music is by Hannis Brown. Ayesha Turner is the executive producer of MSNBC Audio. And I’m Trymaine Lee. Thanks for joining us on “Uncounted Millions.”