Jessica Ann Mitchell Aiwuyor
Executive Director
National Black Cultural Information Trust Inc.
Washington, DC Reparations Testimony Regarding B25-0152 – Reparations Foundation Fund and Task Force Establishment Act of 2023
Thank you to the Committee on Business and Economic Development and chairperson Councilmember Kenyan R. McDuffie for hosting this hearing regarding the Reparations Foundation Fund and Task Force Establishment Act of 2023.
I’m Jessica Ann Mitchell Aiwuyor, founder of the National Black Cultural Information Trust, Inc., Commissioner on the National African American Reparations Commission, and member of the DC chapter of the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America. I’m a descendant of enslaved Africans in Georgia and South Carolina. I’m also a former Washington, DC resident.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
At the time these words were written in the Declaration of Independence, the United States of America could have truly stood for freedom but instead chose to continue one of the worst human rights violations known to man – chattel slavery. During the 19th century, Washington, DC, became a hub for the domestic slave trade. Our Nation’s capital was created with the blood, sweat, and tears of our ancestors – under the whip. And it was a free Black man, Benjamin Banneker, that helped to survey the land, which would become the borders of Washington, DC.
Banneker called out the hypocrisy of the so-called “pursuit of happiness” in a letter to Thomas Jefferson, stating, “in detaining by fraud and violence so numerous a part of my brethren under groaning captivity and cruel oppression, that you should at the same time be found guilty of that most criminal act, which you professedly detested in others, with respect to yourselves.”
What our ancestors endured during centuries of chattel slavery was heavily connected to the construction of race. The racialization of blackness (possessing predominantly African ancestry) was codified by the Virginia Slave Code of 1705, stating that “All Negroes, Mulatto, and Indian slaves shall be taken as real estate.” Race and its construction were weaponized and very integral to the ongoing enslavement of our ancestors. Consequently, the lingering effects of the racialization of chattel slavery are present in the vestiges of slavery that harm Black communities today.
In 1820, there were 6,400 enslaved Africans in the District. President Lincoln abolished slavery in Washington, DC, on April 16, 1862, but instead of reparations paid to formerly enslaved Africans, it was paid to former enslavers.
Following emancipation, Black DC residents endured Jim Crow, including racially restrictive housing covenants – that segregated communities, forced African Americans to live in unequal inadequate housing, and drove down the property values of Black neighborhoods. These practices directly affected access to Black economic upward mobility.
Black DC residents have also experienced displacement and are often pushed out due to gentrification. Black DC residents are still denied full citizenship rights, experiencing taxation without a congressional vote. Additionally, many still face a myriad of inequities, including health care disparities (for example, in DC, Black men die 17 years earlier, and Black women die 12 years earlier than their white counterparts.) This is one of the many vestiges of chattel slavery under systemic racialized oppression.
Black DC residents and displaced Black DC natives are owed comprehensive reparations for chattel slavery, Jim Crow, and their continuing vestiges among us today.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
It is time to make this Nation be true to its word, starting with our Nation’s capital.
Thank you.