About The Book
Reparations: Payment for a debt owed; the act of repairing
a wrong or injury; to atone for wrongdoings; to make
amends; to make one whole again; the payment of
damages to repair a nation; compensation in money, land,
or materials for damages.
National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (N’COBRA)
Author Raymond A. Winbush presents a compilation of the most compelling cases of reparations made for the Transatlantic Slave Trade, highlighting on Belinda’s Petition, the first formal recorded appeal for Black redress.
Belinda, an ex-slave abandoned by her former employer Isaac Royall, who fled to Nova Scotia at the beginning of the war, claimed that she had been “denied the enjoyment of one morsel of that immense wealth, a part whereof hath been accumulated by her own industry.”
Eight years after her former enslaver fled to Canada, Belinda decided to petition the Massachusetts legislature for the unpaid years of serving her former “master”. Her Petition of an African Slave is an eloquent statement that captures the essence of the reparations struggle of Africans in America.
Belinda was granted $15.00 a month as reparations for the damage done to her person, a result of her kidnapping from Ghana and her trauma due to the separation from her homeland, her parents, her friends and her sense of self.
These and other accounts of reparations for the heinous slave trade industry are documented in this enlightening and compelling book.
ISBN13 (TP) 978-1-4415-1443-1
ISBN13 (HB) 978-1-4415-1444-8
