Many people associate the idea of reparations with the 250 years of enslavement of kidnapped Africans and their descendants. Andrew W. Kahrl, associate professor of history and African-American studies at the University of Virginia, describes post-emancipation incidents of practices that effectively stole the land that African Americans had accumulated, which contributed to existing black-white wealth gap, ” 11 million acres black people had but lost, in many cases through fraud, deception and outright theft, much of it taken in the past 50 years.”  To read the complete essay, click here.

Reparations will be the subject of Not in Our Town Princeton’s July 1 Continuing Conversation.