The Cost of Inheritance | Callie House & Reparations History
Clip: Season 12 Episode 1 | 1m 19sVideo has Closed Captions
The story of Callie House and her efforts to organize Black Americans for reparations.
Beginning in the 1800s, the reparations movement started with Mrs. Callie House, who led the National Ex-Slave Mutual Relief, Bounty and Pension Association. Historian Mary Frances Berry tells of House's efforts to organize Black Americans to ask for compensation from the government and the backlash against her that would not slow the activist down until her death.
Funding for America ReFramed provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Wyncote Foundation and Reva and David Logan Foundation. Funding for The Cost...
The Cost of Inheritance | Callie House & Reparations History
Clip: Season 12 Episode 1 | 1m 19sVideo has Closed Captions
Beginning in the 1800s, the reparations movement started with Mrs. Callie House, who led the National Ex-Slave Mutual Relief, Bounty and Pension Association. Historian Mary Frances Berry tells of House's efforts to organize Black Americans to ask for compensation from the government and the backlash against her that would not slow the activist down until her death.
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Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorshipRON DANIELS: Reparations has been here and have been worked on for generations.
From the very beginning, people were knocking on the door saying, "We are owed for our labor."
BERRY: Callie House, she was born a slave.
She went out all around in the community telling Black people that they ought to ask the government to get some money, because, many, they were poor, and they were desperate.
By 1900, she had 300,000 dues-paying members.
It was the largest organization of Black folk that had existed.
Pretty soon, her activities came to the attention of the government, and they convicted her of fraud.
The federal charge was that at a time when you should have known that the federal government would have never give Negroes anything, why were you telling Negroes they should organize to try to get something?
(chuckles) They sent her to prison to serve a one-year term.
She got out of prison, she went back to Nashville to this shotgun house.
She got uterine cancer and she died.
You can draw a direct line from Callie House to the reparations' movement today.
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Providing Support for PBS.org
Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorship
Funding for America ReFramed provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Wyncote Foundation and Reva and David Logan Foundation. Funding for The Cost...