0:09

Hey everyone, it's Tremaine Lee, MSNBC

0:11

correspondent and host of the podcast,

0:13

Into America. This Black

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History Month, Into America is presenting

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a special series, Uncounted

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Millions, The Power of Reparations.

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I'm exploring the untold story

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of Gabriel Coakley, one of

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the only Black Americans ever

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compensated for slavery. This

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is a story that's had my mind racing for

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months, wondering how this man did

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this, how it shaped his family, and

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what the implications might be for our

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current debate on reparations. Our

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story begins in the thick of

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the Civil War, in an America

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torn between holding to its traditions

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of slavery and moving closer to

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its messy ideals of freedom, a

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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

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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

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one of those jaw-dropping chapters in

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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

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in America. Enslaved

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people were capital. They were like stocks.

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If you were low on cash,

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you sold an enslaved person. They

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had a precedent for this because

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when the UK, when Great Britain

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frees or emancipates its enslaved population,

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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

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money, to compensate up to $300 per

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slave. And

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so slave owners would go to the

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commission and file a claim for compensation.

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This sounds a lot like reparations

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to me. Is this... It is

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reparations. It is reparations. Reparations, absolutely.

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It's reparations for slave owners, for

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the people who owned enslaved people.

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

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as outlandish as it does now, hearing

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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

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and some of the Radical Republicans, yes, it

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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

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would ease the transition, that it

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would help slave owners resign themselves

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to the fact that emancipation was

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going to happen. Nearly

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1,000 white enslavers were compensated

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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

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was no money allocated for the

3:24

enslaved themselves, except the

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$100,000 fund for colonization. So

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if you wanted to leave the country,

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Congress would support you. So

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

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

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but how about you consider going to

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Liberia or the UK or

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Canada? We don't know what

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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

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to me, left for us. And

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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

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we think about the physical

4:36

and emotional ramifications, the trauma

4:39

of being enslaved and now

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being sort of set free, there's

4:44

a real reckoning with what

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do I do with this? You're

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still in this quasi

4:52

position legally of

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trying to define your own

4:57

personhood when you are

4:59

no longer enslaved, but you

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are still not yet American.

5:03

And I think that is

5:06

the struggle that all black people deal

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with up until this present day. No,

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we're no longer slaves. But what does

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that mean? For

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people like Gabriel Cokley, it

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meant taking every opportunity available

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to snatch what security and justice he

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could for his family, even

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if it wasn't meant for him. When

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the DC Emancipation Act is passed and

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word comes out that that folks can

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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

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