While much of the debate around reparations has focused on government action, many non-governmental organizations and institutions profited from slavery and have been called out for their slaveholding pasts. This includes a number of corporations as well as colleges and universities. Prestigious schools such as Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia and the University of Virginia all profited or benefited from slavery or slave labor in their past. A number of them have been acknowledging their slave-related history and exploring ways to redress their pro-slavery legacies.

At least two schools have gone beyond exploring options to actually enacting compensation for their roles in slavery. Virginia Theological Seminary announced that it was setting aside nearly $2 million dollars to compensate descendants of people who were enslaved in service of the school. Meanwhile, after Georgetown University began giving admissions preference to descendants of 272 people who had been sold by the university in 1838, the student body went further. The school’s undergraduates voted overwhelmingly to charge themselves an additional fee of $27.20 per semester to go towards a fund to compensate the descendants of those 272 individuals.

Soon, more colleges and universities may have to provide compensation for their participation in slavery. In February, the Virginia House of Representatives passed a bill requiring five schools in the state to identify the descendants of people who were enslaved by the schools and to offer them academic scholarships. If enacted into law, the scholarship plan could go into effect as early as next year. Meanwhile, students at Brown University, dealing with revelations about the direct participation of the Brown family in the slave trade, just voted for the school to offer reparations in the form of community investment, recruitment and preferential treatment for descendants of slavery.

These examples of reparations have largely been exceptions to a general rule by which American institutions ignore or avoid the debilitating consequences of slavery in the country. Nevertheless, as widespread demands for racial justice and reparations, in particular, gain prominence and even mainstream acceptance, more efforts by governments and private entities may be enacted to redress the long and enduring legacies of American slavery.

Black-Sterilization

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