Randall Robinson

About the author: Randall Robinson is the author of The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks, a widely read book on the issue of slavery reparations, and the source of the following viewpoint. From 1979 to 2001 he served as founder and president of TransAfrica, a research group that analyzes U.S. policy in Africa, the Caribbean, and Latin America.

African Americans must be compensated by the U.S. government for the centuries of unpaid labor they gave the nation and for the human rights crimes that were perpetrated upon them during and after slavery. Ex-slaves in the aftermath of the Civil War were left destitute and at the mercy of white Southerners, who, for decades, denied blacks the right to own land, vote, and receive an adequate...