Episode Transcript
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0:09
Hey everyone, it's Tremaine Lee, MSNBC
0:11
correspondent and host of the podcast,
0:13
Into America. This Black
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History Month, Into America is presenting
0:17
a special series, Uncounted
0:19
Millions, The Power of Reparations.
0:22
I'm exploring the untold story
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of Gabriel Coakley, one of
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the only Black Americans ever
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compensated for slavery. This
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is a story that's had my mind racing for
0:33
months, wondering how this man did
0:35
this, how it shaped his family, and
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what the implications might be for our
0:40
current debate on reparations. Our
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story begins in the thick of
0:44
the Civil War, in an America
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torn between holding to its traditions
0:48
of slavery and moving closer to
0:50
its messy ideals of freedom, a
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moment when reparations were just as central
0:55
in the policy debate as they are
0:57
now. Stay right here
0:59
and listen to a special preview of
1:02
the first episode of Uncounted Millions and
1:04
search for Into America wherever you're listening
1:06
now and follow. I
1:11
had this conversation with my husband and I was
1:13
like, yeah, I'm going to be talking about compensated
1:15
emancipation. And he's like, oh, and
1:17
slave people got money? They got
1:20
compensated? And I was like, no,
1:22
slaveholders got compensated. It's
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one of those jaw-dropping chapters in
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history, often left out
1:29
of our high school or college
1:31
history books and rarely brought up
1:33
in the contemporary conversation around reparations
1:35
in America. Enslaved
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people were capital. They were like stocks.
1:41
If you were low on cash,
1:43
you sold an enslaved person. They
1:46
had a precedent for this because
1:48
when the UK, when Great Britain
1:50
frees or emancipates its enslaved population,
1:54
they compensated slaveholders 20 million
1:57
pounds. By
2:00
1862, America was ready to do
2:02
the same thanks to the
2:05
D.C. Compensated Emancipation Act. Congress allocated a
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million dollars, hundreds of millions in today's
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money, to compensate up to $300 per
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slave. And
2:14
so slave owners would go to the
2:16
commission and file a claim for compensation.
2:19
This sounds a lot like reparations
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to me. Is this... It is
2:24
reparations. It is reparations. Reparations, absolutely.
2:26
It's reparations for slave owners, for
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the people who owned enslaved people.
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Well, this is... What this says, this play
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as outlandish as it does now, hearing
2:36
that sounds crazy to me, I'm sure
2:38
that folks listening, but like, was that crazy
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then? It does sound crazy. And
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to people like Charles Sumner and Thaddeus Stevens
2:46
and some of the Radical Republicans, yes, it
2:48
was. But they were always a small minority,
2:50
even within the Republican Party. And
2:52
so more moderate leaders, Abraham Lincoln among
2:54
them, they very much believed in compensation.
2:57
They thought this was... This
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would ease the transition, that it
3:01
would help slave owners resign themselves
3:03
to the fact that emancipation was
3:05
going to happen. Nearly
3:08
1,000 white enslavers were compensated
3:10
from the money that Congress had allocated.
3:13
A report in the Washington
3:15
Post estimated that the payout would translate
3:17
to more than $29 million today. There
3:21
was no money allocated for the
3:24
enslaved themselves, except the
3:27
$100,000 fund for colonization. So
3:30
if you wanted to leave the country,
3:32
Congress would support you. So
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can you imagine that? You'll get money, but
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you can't stay here. You'll get money,
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but how about you consider going to
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Liberia or the UK or
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Canada? We don't know what
3:46
to do with black people if they stay here. President
3:50
Lincoln was one of colonization's loudest
3:52
supporters. But the
3:54
vast majority of African-Americans, free
3:57
African-Americans, said, no, this
3:59
is our country. We deserve our
4:01
freedom right here where we
4:03
were born. So they resist
4:05
the colonization movement pretty strongly.
4:08
And it seemed like, you know, black abolitionists, people
4:10
like Frederick Douglass, who were like, no, we built
4:13
this country. This is our home. So
4:15
how about we work on equality? As
4:18
Douglass himself says, there
4:20
is but one destiny, it seems
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to me, left for us. And
4:25
that is to make ourselves and
4:27
be made by others a part
4:29
of the American people in every
4:31
sense of the word. When
4:34
we think about the physical
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and emotional ramifications, the trauma
4:39
of being enslaved and now
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being sort of set free, there's
4:44
a real reckoning with what
4:46
do I do with this? You're
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still in this quasi
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position legally of
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trying to define your own
4:57
personhood when you are
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no longer enslaved, but you
5:01
are still not yet American.
5:03
And I think that is
5:06
the struggle that all black people deal
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with up until this present day. No,
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we're no longer slaves. But what does
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that mean? For
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people like Gabriel Cokley, it
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meant taking every opportunity available
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to snatch what security and justice he
5:23
could for his family, even
5:25
if it wasn't meant for him. When
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the DC Emancipation Act is passed and
5:30
word comes out that that folks can
5:32
get compensated for for their, quote
5:35
unquote, property. Well, Gabriel Cokley and
5:37
and others say, wait a minute,
5:39
I can do this. Maybe
5:44
reparations aren't always something
5:46
given, but something that's
5:48
taken. By
6:00
listening to the full series, search for
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