Juneteenth celebrations denote the day of June 19, 1865 when Major General Gordon Graham arrived in Galveston, Texas to announce that the slaves were free, 2 and 1/2 years after slavery else where had ended. Juneteenth is not only fast becoming a holiday in the Black Community, but increasingly it is a day that revives the debate over slave reparations.

Since 1989, Michigan Black Congressman John Conyers, Jr. has introduced legislation calling for a comprehensive study of reparations, and every year the legislation has been defeated. Other local supportive legislative efforts have been more successful in Washington, D. C., Chicago, Dallas, and Cleveland. On June 19, 2001 at its Juneteenth Luncheon, the San Francisco Black Chamber of Commerce presented an award to Alameda County Supervisor Keith Carson for introducing legislation to examine the impacts of slavery and explore reparations to African American descendants of slaves. Also, a California law effective this year, requires insurance companies to report if they or their predecessor companies sold policies insuring slave owners against the loss of their slaves.

However, for many white Americans and even some Black Americans, the question is raised, "Why should African Americans get slavery reparations since there are no living victims such as the Jews in Germany and Austria or the Japanese in America during World War II?" But others retort that the descendants of American Indians and Alaska Natives have received reparations. Still others respond that many whites are benefiting from wealth, land, political and social domination accumulated through slavery. Surprisingly, a popular emerging agreement to seek affirmative action rather than a monetary payment, is advanced by Stuart Eizenstat, a former senior official in the Clinton administration who negotiated settlements for Holocaust victims of over $8 billion. He states, "For slavery, qua slavery, I think the appropriate remedy is affirmative government action in general, rather than reparations."

The interest or present day value on that 40 acres of land compensation for freed slaves, derailed out of the Freedman's Bureau Act of 1865, might well exceed the June 16, 2001 payments from the $4.4 billion German fund to compensate the slaves and forced laborers of the Nazis during World War II. However, every demand for reparations has first called for the study of the impacts of slavery on its African American descendants, which to many appear to be the most divided ethnic group in the world. Black Americans and others should be mindful of when the teacher of slavery, Wiley Lynch, standing on the banks of the James River in Virginia in 1712, spoke to slave owners of how to breed "fear, distrust and envy" among the slaves as a means of controlling them. In closing he said, "I guarantee everyone of you, that if installed it will control the slaves for at least three hundred years." Think about it!