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Special preview of Into America presents: Uncounted Millions

Special preview of Into America presents: Uncounted Millions

BonusReleased Thursday, 15th February 2024
Good episode? Give it some love!
Special preview of Into America presents: Uncounted Millions

Special preview of Into America presents: Uncounted Millions

Special preview of Into America presents: Uncounted Millions

Special preview of Into America presents: Uncounted Millions

BonusThursday, 15th February 2024
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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

0:15

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

0:24

of Gabriel Coakley, one of

0:26

the only Black Americans ever

0:28

compensated for slavery. This

0:31

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

0:38

what the implications might be for our

0:40

current debate on reparations. Our

0:42

story begins in the thick of

0:44

the Civil War, in an America

0:46

torn between holding to its traditions

0:48

of slavery and moving closer to

0:50

its messy ideals of freedom, a

0:53

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

1:25

one of those jaw-dropping chapters in

1:27

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

1:37

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

2:07

million dollars, hundreds of millions in today's

2:09

money, to compensate up to $300 per

2:11

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

2:21

to me. Is this... It is

2:24

reparations. It is reparations. Reparations, absolutely.

2:26

It's reparations for slave owners, for

2:28

the people who owned enslaved people.

2:31

Well, this is... What this says, this play

2:34

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

2:40

then? It does sound crazy. And

2:43

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

2:59

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

3:35

can you imagine that? You'll get money, but

3:38

you can't stay here. You'll get money,

3:40

but how about you consider going to

3:42

Liberia or the UK or

3:44

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

4:22

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

4:36

and emotional ramifications, the trauma

4:39

of being enslaved and now

4:41

being sort of set free, there's

4:44

a real reckoning with what

4:46

do I do with this? You're

4:49

still in this quasi

4:52

position legally of

4:55

trying to define your own

4:57

personhood when you are

4:59

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

5:08

with up until this present day. No,

5:11

we're no longer slaves. But what does

5:13

that mean? For

5:15

people like Gabriel Cokley, it

5:18

meant taking every opportunity available

5:21

to snatch what security and justice he

5:23

could for his family, even

5:25

if it wasn't meant for him. When

5:28

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

6:02

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