Universities need to combat historical misinformation on civil rights to understand how slavery continues to impact today’s world, said panelists participating in a forum Friday called “Reparations, Redress and Restorative Justice.”
“The South won an ideological victory (after the Civil War),” said panelist Roy Brooks, professor at the University of San Diego School of Law. As a result, the nation suffers from “collective amnesia” about slavery and its lingering effects.
Brooks was among eight panelists who spoke during the forum, which was sponsored by the Ford Foundation with the School of Communication. The foundation sponsors the school’s Difficult Dialogues seminar series titled “Negotiating Memory and Difference,” which focuses on multicultural issues in America.
The forum drew speakers from universities across the country and was split into two panels. The morning panel discussed the damaging legacies of slavery and lack of education on slavery and civil rights in schools. The afternoon panel focused on the complacent attitude of the American legal system toward civil rights. About 40 people attended each session in Harris Hall.
In the morning panel, Brooks stressed the need to clarify and correct the historical record.
“An episode of forgetting is upon us,” he said. “When I was in school in the 1960s, I learned a tremendous amount in classes on civil rights and history. Today we don’t have that. The problem is not only in secondary education, but universities. It should be a required course.”
The panelists discussed methods of reparation, including giving money directly to the descendents of slaves or establishing education funds and museums to honor victims of slavery.
Reparation cases face challenges when courts decide the statute of limitations has expired, said panelist Ald. Lionel Jean-Baptiste (2nd), an Evanston attorney who litigates against corporations that have benefited directly from the contributions of slavery.
“But crime against humanity has no statute of limitation, like murder,” he said.
The second panel focused on the American legal system’s weak role in prosecuting civil rights offenders.
Police and courts deliberately created “an atmosphere of fear and sanctioning of violence,” said Rita Bender, an activist and the widow of civil rights worker Michael Schwerner.
Flint Taylor, an attorney with the People’s Law Office in Chicago and NU School of Law ’72, detailed the wrongful convictions, torture and execution of blacks in Chicago during the 1970s-80s. The crimes were committed by a torture ring led by Chicago Police Cmdr. Jon Burge, who brought back torture tactics after serving in Vietnam and used them in Chicago for 19 years, from 1972 to 1991.
The methods included electric shock, simulated suffocation, mock executions and sexual attacks on black men.
Or, as Taylor said, “Things you would have thought didn’t happen here.”
Then-Cook County State’s Attorney Richard M. Daley, who is now the mayor of Chicago, and his assistant, Richard Devine, did not follow through on investigations of Burge when confronted by the public during the 1980s. Burge was eventually fired in 1991, but only after extensive litigation and public outrage, Taylor said.
Men were on death row because of false confessions induced by torture, Taylor said. He said the victims should receive reparations for their ongoing psychological and physical trauma, but the courts have invoked a statute of limitation.
“The nightmare hasn’t ended,” Taylor said. “If it takes us 20, 30, 40 years, we’re going to bring these people to justice.”
African-American studies and history professor Martha Biondi, the organizer of the event, said she was pleased with the turnout, discussion, and interest in the forum.
“The goal of the forum was to connect past and present injustices to contemporary discourses of accountability and responsibility,” Biondi said.
There is an education and opportunity gap between races that can be traced from slavery to today, said Breyana Drew, a Communication freshman.
“Even being at Northwestern, you can see there aren’t as many minorities, which could be because of finances and opportunity deficiencies (for blacks),” she said.
