There have been past attempts to collect reparations for slavery. Today, there are more recent attempts to receive compensation. Precedents have been set because others have successfully won their claims. There are many opinions supporting and opposing reparations. All of these topics will be discussed in the literature review. .
Past Attempts:.
There are proposals to compensate former slaves or their descendants for injustice and immoral acts imposed upon them. There were attempts to collect restitution for slaves that began soon after slavery was abolished by the thirteenth amendment of the U.S Constitution. The Cotton Tax Case of 1915 is one of the earlier cases (Robinson 2000). Cornelius J. Jones was one of the first advocates to try to collect reparations as a former slave. Jones filed a lawsuit against the United States Department of the Treasury in an attempt to recover $68 million for former slaves (Robinson 2000). He argued that, through a federal tax placed on raw cotton, the federal government had benefited financially from the sale of cotton that slave labor had produced. The black men, women, and children who produced the cotton had not been paid. The United States government acknowledged a debt existed, but the federal court of appeals held that the U.S could not be sued without its consent and dismissed the case. .
The Southern Homestead Act was an intentionally poor attempt by the government to try to make amends for slavery (Robinson 2000). Ex-slaves were given six months to purchase land at reasonably low rates without competition from white southerners or northern investors (Robinson 2000). Few ex-slaves were able to take advantage because of their destitution. The ex-slaves who did take advantage found the soil to be poor and unsuitable for farming. They also had no more money on which to live for months while waiting for neither crops nor money to purchase farming tools. Needless to say, the program failed.