The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in October hosted a meeting of a state-supported reparations committee, where two of its professors and one of its researchers advocated in favor of reparations.
“The first problem, an analysis of Black workers’ lived experiences in Illinois, reveals two dominant relationships,” said Sundiata Keita Cha-Jua, a professor in the school’s history department. “They shared with White workers labor exploitation. That is the hallmark of capitalism: theft.”
Cha-Jua, fellow professor LaKisha David and doctoral student Naomi Simmons-Thorne spoke at the October meeting held by the African Descent-Citizens Reparations Commission.
The commission was established by the Illinois General Assembly, in part to study reparations and “discuss the implementation of measures to ensure equity, equality, and parity for African American descendants of slavery.” The commission reports its findings to the general assembly.
Cha-Jua said that “the most frequent lived experience of the African American people has been as enslaved persons, sharecroppers, farm laborers, domestic servants, washerwomen, wageworkers, non-industrial or industrial workers, menial laborers in the public sector and as contemporary sub-proletarians laboring in part-time, temporary, low-wage un-unionized and benefit-less jobs.”
He also said that after emancipation, Black male workers were subject to what he termed “super-exploitation” and “racial terrorism,” and took the audience through a litany of 19th century atrocities perpetrated against Black people in America.
“It’s not about individual reparations,” he concluded. “We constitute a nationality that simply does not have a state. But we are a nation of people, so what we want to talk about is collective reparations. Reparations to communities and reparations to the African American people, as well as individual payments.”
Simmons-Thorne, who studies philosophy at UIUC, discussed the “three species of justice,” one of them being “rectificatory justice.”
“It is this type of justice that is at the heart of the reparations movement, but it is also the type of justice that has been least thought about in the history of philosophy,” she said.
“I often hear this, that reparations is just [Critical Race Theory] or DEI, when ancient philosophers in the fourth century BCE were talking about this kind of justice. So this is not just a modern thing, or some kind of modern excess.”
Simmons-Thorne, in her capacity as a member of an Urbana-Champaign reparations committee, devised a survey to report to lawmakers sentiments on what aspects of reparations are “most salient to people.” The survey focuses on whether educators are properly teaching students about reparations precedents.
“We want to know whether our educational institutions, whether our centers of public information, is doing a good job of educating residents and citizens, both local and statewide, about reparations precedents, like the one that happened of course in Evanston or in Rosewood, Florida, and whether our educational institutions are teaching about the principles of international law and where, you know, reparations is enshrined in the right to remedy and repair crimes against humanity.”
In 2019, Evanston, Illinois, became the first locality to implement reparations in the form of cash payments. Eligible African Americans could receive up to $25,000 in cash payments. As of June, about $6.3 million in reparations had been paid, according to the Evanston RoundTable.
In 1923, a mob burned Rosewood, Florida, a mostly-Black town, to the ground. The attack killed at least six people, and the rest of the town fled in terror. In 1994, the Florida Legislature awarded $2.1 million to victims and descendants of victims of the attack.
Other parts of Simmons-Thorne’s survey quizzed African Americans on the social histories of their families that could “form the basis of a reparations claim,” and specifically which Illinois institution would be most culpable for negative social experiences.
Summarizing preliminary data from 61 respondents, she said educators are not doing enough to teach people about the history of reparations precedents, and that survey respondents want financial compensation and “guarantees of non-repetition” of slavery as forms of reparation.
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At the end of her speech, Simmons-Thorne pivoted to the forthcoming expected generational wealth transfer from baby boomers to younger generations, particularly millennials.
She recounted a story about a friend who she said received a six-figure sum in inheritance after a relative died, but complained that she and her husband didn’t receive any inheritance when his grandfather recently passed away.
David is an assistant professor in UIUC’s anthropology department. She is also the head of The African Kinship Reunion (TAKiR), which helps “African American families in Illinois trace their ancestry and connect with their roots” via DNA analysis, according to its website. That foundation runs the Illinois Family Roots Pilot Program.
“This is really speaking from some recent things that happened, and you know, I wonder when we think of how people think of us as Black people in this country, at what point will it become obvious that we respond to our environment, you know, just like any other human responds to the environment,” she said. “So we have the right to respond to trauma and things like that as if we are traumatized. That is a human condition.”
She then explained the Illinois Family Roots Pilot Program, which offers free DNA testing to help African American families trace their ancestry, “to help to build a more cohesive family narrative,” which she said is in itself a form of reparations.
“The program emphasizes African heritage because it is housed within my broader research initiative, The African Kinship Reunion at the University of Illinois, which focuses on repairing genealogical harm caused by slavery and forced family separation,” David told Fox News Digital.
“That emphasis reflects the historical reality that African American family records were uniquely and systematically destroyed, not a restriction on participation. Access to family history is also closely tied to psychological well-being, identity development, and a sense of belonging — outcomes the state already supports through adoption records, family reunification and archival access.
“The envisioned Office of Genealogical Affairs would be open to all people and would treat genealogy as a public service, extending support to individuals whose documentation is incomplete through no fault of their own. The core issue is equitable access to family history and its psychological well-being benefits.”
Simmons-Thorne, Cha-Jua and the University of Illinois did not respond to requests for comment.
