You can’t buy freedom with the faces of slaveowners on every dollar.
Imagine a people enslaved for 250 years, forced to provide free labor. Then when slavery ends, the slaveowners receive compensation for “lost property.” The enslaved receive nothing.
Now imagine that same government spending the next 160 years paying reparations to Japanese internees, Alaska Natives, and victims of forced sterilization—while refusing to compensate descendants of those who built the country for free.
You don’t have to imagine it.
In 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signed the District of Columbia Compensated Emancipation Act into law. The legislation freed approximately 3,100 enslaved people in the nation’s capital and paid their former owners up to $300 per person—roughly $8,000 to $10,000 in today’s currency—as compensation for “lost property.” The newly freed Black people received nothing.
To this day, the United States has never implemented a comprehensive reparations program for descendants of enslaved Africans. But it has paid reparations to others.
And every February, it “encourages” Black Americans to celebrate.
The U.S. restricts the teaching of Black history, sanitizes its violence, bans its honest telling, and then sells it back to us as a celebration.
It’s time to cancel Black History Month. Not because Black history doesn’t matter—but because America has proven it’s not serious about honoring it.
Who Got Paid — And Why Black Americans Didn’t
In 1988, Congress passed the Civil Liberties Act, paying $20,000 to each surviving Japanese American internee—approximately 82,000 people. The program cost $1.6 billion. President Reagan called the internment “a grave injustice.”
The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971 transferred 44 million acres of land and $962.5 million to Alaska Native corporations as compensation for land seizures.
Several states have created funds to compensate victims of forced sterilization, paying survivors $25,000 to $50,000 each.
These programs exist. They were funded. They were executed.
What Black Americans Got:
After the Civil War, General William Tecumseh Sherman issued Special Field Order No. 15, redistributing 400,000 acres to formerly enslaved families—”40 acres and a mule.”
President Andrew Johnson reversed it within months. Black families were evicted. No equivalent federal program followed.
Federal wealth-building programs systematically excluded Black Americans:
- – The Homestead Act transferred 270 million acres to white settlers. Black people were largely barred.
- – The GI Bill’s housing benefits were blocked by redlining for Black veterans.
- – Social Security initially excluded agricultural and domestic workers—jobs employing most Black Americans in the 1930s.
According to the Federal Reserve’s 2022 Survey of Consumer Finances, the median white family holds approximately $285,000 in wealth. The median Black family holds approximately $45,000. That’s roughly a 6-to-1 ratio traced directly to slavery, Jim Crow, and exclusion from federal programs.
The United States has paid reparations before. It compensated slaveowners, Japanese American internees, and Alaska Natives. It has never paid descendants of enslaved Africans.
Black Inventors Built America. America Let Them Die Without Wealth.
Garrett Morgan invented an early traffic signal system in 1923 and sold the patent to General Electric for $40,000. While GE profited significantly from traffic control technology, Morgan’s descendants saw none of it. Every time you stop at a red light, you’re using technology a Black man pioneered. His name isn’t on it.
Lewis Latimer created the carbon filament that made Edison’s light bulb commercially practical in 1881. He worked for Edison and General Electric but did not receive wealth comparable to Edison despite his critical contributions. Edison is synonymous with the light bulb. Latimer’s name is barely taught.
Jan Ernst Matzeliger revolutionized shoe manufacturing in 1883 with his lasting machine. He sold his patent stake for limited compensation and died at 37. The United Shoe Machinery Corporation built fortunes on his invention. The American shoe industry was transformed by his work.
Granville T. Woods held over 50 patents, including the multiplex telegraph. He sold many patents to General Electric, Bell Telephone, and Westinghouse to avoid litigation and bankruptcy. He died with minimal personal wealth. Called the “Black Edison,” but Edison got monuments. Woods got forgotten.
Dr. Charles Drew pioneered blood plasma storage, saving millions during World War II. The American Red Cross adopted his methods but maintained segregated blood supplies—a policy Drew protested by resigning from his position. His innovation saved soldiers while the military maintained pseudoscientific racial blood segregation.
Mary Beatrice Davidson Kenner invented the sanitary belt, foundational technology for modern menstrual products. When the Sonn-Nap-Pack Company discovered she was Black, they withdrew their commercialization offer. The feminine hygiene industry is worth over $30 billion today. Kenner never saw meaningful financial return from her invention.
The Pattern: Black inventors created critical American infrastructure. They sold patents for limited compensation or were denied commercialization entirely. They died without wealth accumulation while corporations made billions. Now their stories are told in February, with no reparations for their descendants.
They Ban Black History 11 Months. Then Celebrate It in February.
Florida’s “Stop WOKE Act” restricts teaching about systemic racism and makes educators liable for discussing how historical events create present inequalities.
Texas educational materials have been documented referring to enslaved people as “workers” and “immigrants” in proposed worksheets and textbooks.
PEN America reports over 4,000 book bans nationwide in recent school years, with a disproportionate number targeting books by or about Black people—The Bluest Eye, Beloved, The Hate U Give.
The College Board removed content on Black queer studies, reparations, and the Movement for Black Lives from its AP African American Studies course after Florida threatened to ban it.
Multiple states have restricted or banned use of materials from the 1619, a New York Times Magazine in August 2019 that seeks to reframe U.S. history around slavery and the contributions of Black Americans, using the year 1619 as a symbolic “founding” moment.
Under the Trump administration, the National Park Service removed an exhibit documenting nine enslaved people George Washington held from his Philadelphia home—without public notice.
The Tulsa Race Massacre wasn’t taught in Oklahoma schools for nearly a century.
You can’t celebrate Black history in February while silencing the African American perspective, rewriting and softening the role White America played in that same history in September.
San Francisco’s Reparations Task Force: All Talk, No Payment
In 2023, San Francisco’s African American Reparations Advisory Committee released a comprehensive plan recommending $5 million per eligible Black resident, debt forgiveness, and guaranteed income.
The proposal was based on documented harms: redlining, urban renewal displacement, discriminatory policing, and economic exclusion.
The response? The San Francisco Board of Supervisors accepted the report, applauded the work, and allocated exactly $0 for implementation.
There’s no payment timeline. No accountability. Instead, the city created an Office of Reparations—a bureaucratic entity with no funding mechanism to deliver what was promised.
The Pattern: Cities and states commission studies, issue reports, hold press conferences, and do nothing. Evanston, Illinois allocated $10 million for housing assistance in 2021—symbolic but limited. Asheville, North Carolina apologized and promised investments that haven’t materialized.
Reparations become a political talking point, not policy. The process becomes the product. And Black people are told to be grateful for the conversation.]
You Can’t Buy Freedom With the Currency of Slaveholders
Imagine trying to buy your freedom with currency containing the faces of individuals who owned your ancestors.
$1 — George Washington: Enslaved 317 people. He signed the Fugitive Slave Act and rotated enslaved people through Philadelphia to exploit abolition loopholes.
$2 — Thomas Jefferson: Enslaved over 600 people. Wrote that Black people were “inferior,” sexually exploited Sally Hemings beginning when she was 14, and sold people to pay debts.
$5 — Abraham Lincoln: Didn’t own slaves but said, “I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and Black races.” Supported colonization—shipping freed Black people to Africa.
$20 — Andrew Jackson: Enslaved approximately 300 people. Offered rewards for recapturing escapees and “ten dollars extra, for every hundred lashes.” Signed the Indian Removal Act, causing approximately 15,000 Cherokee deaths on the Trail of Tears.
$100 — Benjamin Franklin: Owned at least seven enslaved people and published slave sale advertisements before later becoming an abolitionist. His conversion doesn’t erase decades of participation.
The Irony: Harriet Tubman was supposed to replace Jackson on the $20 in 2016. The Trump administration delayed it indefinitely. A Black woman who freed enslaved people still can’t replace a white man who enslaved 300.
Every person on U.S. currency either enslaved people, facilitated slavery, or enacted racist policies. The wealth gap exists because these men built systems excluding Black people from capital.
And America still uses their faces to symbolize value.
You can’t buy freedom with the currency of slaveholders.
What Reparations Could Look Like—If America Were Serious
Economist William Darity Jr. estimates closing the racial wealth gap requires $10 to $12 trillion. Individual payments could range from $150,000 to $350,000 per descendant.
Alternative models include: targeted investment in Black communities, land redistribution, debt forgiveness, and trust funds for future generations.
H.R. 40—a bill to study reparations—has been introduced every year since 1989. It has never received a floor vote. The bill doesn’t mandate payments. It calls for a commission to examine slavery’s legacy.
Even that has been too much.
Approximately 68% of white Americans oppose reparations. Approximately 77% of Black Americans support them. Reparations are about bridging the wealth gap. White slaveowners took advantage of 250 years of free labor, then received reparations when it ended. It’s time to level the playing field.
Conclusion: Cancel Black History Month
Get ready for the sales, commercials, and posters from companies that profit from Black history while refusing to invest in a prosperous Black future. Black History Month is a 28-day performance designed to avoid 365 days of accountability.
Until America commits to truth, reparations, and systemic change, Black History Month is an insult.
Cancel it. We don’t need a month. We need what we’re owed. Most importantly, we get to alter the perspective ourselves. We are not Black history. We are human history.
What You Can Do Instead
1. Buy the books they banned.
America doesn’t want your children reading these. That’s exactly why you should buy them. Support Source of Knowledge Bookstore, a Black-owned bookstore preserving the stories they’re trying to erase.
Essential Banned Books:
- The Color Purple — Alice Walker
- Black Boy — Richard Wright
- The Bluest Eye — Toni Morrison
- Kindred — Octavia Butler
- The Hate U Give — Angie Thomas
- Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You — Ibram X. Kendi & Jason Reynolds
- All American Boys — Jason Reynolds & Brendan Kiely
- New Kid & Class Act — Jerry Craft
- The New Jim Crow — Michelle Alexander
- Between the World and Me — Ta-Nehisi Coates
- Who Was Maya Angelou? — Ellen Labrecque
2. Support H.R. 40.
The bill to study reparations has been introduced every year since 1989. It’s never received a floor vote. Call your representatives. Demand action.
3. Share this article.
Don’t let February pass without confronting what we’re actually “celebrating.” Send this to someone who needs to read it.
Everyday is Black History. Never let anyone tell you otherwise.
