Slavery and Reparations:

The historical legacy of American slavery figured prominently into much of the Message’s editorial content during this period. In the words and ideas of the newspaper's staff, the enslavement and forced relocation of Africans to the United States did not represent a past, unrelated reality, but an enduring legacy that continued to shape American life. During the late 1990's and early 2000's, the Message devoted itself to undermining arguments that slavery could merely be forgotten and and forgiven without continued affirmative action policies along with other official efforts to apologize for slavery and undermine the "Lost Cause" mythology.

For staff writers Larry Houpe and B. Dwight Foster, Americans both black and white needed to face the long-standing consequences of slavery in North America. Although one article addresses a suit by a Harvard Law Professor aimed at securing reparations for descendants of slaves while the other article focuses on apologies for slavery, the need for increased government action to redress structural inequalities remains a common theme throughout both articles.

B. Dwight Foster’s “An Essay to Jefferson Davis,” criticized both white and black Americans who deny the need for a contemporary conversation about the modern implications of slavery. For example, Foster decried Dr. John Hope Franklin’s “thoughtless advice to President William Jefferson Clinton that Clinton should not apologize for slavery.” According to Foster, Clinton’s role as the chief executive of a nation in which “hate was systematically carried out by our government” and where slave labor built the majority of the material wealth. Although Foster calls for an apology from the President, he also states that all Americans should “pray to God” for forgiveness and to measure “social progress” by improving human relations instead of the development of technology.

For Houpe reparations for slavery along with an official apology represented necessary, but short-term solutions to redress the years of bondage endured by African-Americans in the United States. Moreover, he worried that “winning a large amount of money will only cause problems among our people,” by creating divisions within the black community. Instead, over the long term, Houpe argues that he would “rather see compensation in the form of reinstating affirmative action in states, such as California and Texas and preventing it from being abolished in the rest of the states.”  For both writers, the lack of an apology from the U.S. Government over years of bondage indicated for the Message staff that white Americans could not overcome modern racial prejudice without understanding the past crimes committed against enslaved Africans brought to the United States.