In the 1860s,  Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared “”that all persons held as slaves” within the rebellious states “are, and henceforward shall be free.” 

But this by itself did not unlock one single bolt from any chain anywhere.

America was in the third year of a bloody civil war. 

A battle started not so much over the freedom of slaves but the value of their labor to poorer Southern cities.

What Lincoln’s words actually did was change the scope of the battles taking place on farms, knolls and streets up and down the eastern seaboard. 

It would however take another two years of military thrusts and pares to achieve the surrender of General Robert Lee and his troops and force the Southern Confederacy to yield to the notion that Negroes could “labor faithfully for reasonable wages”

Of course that fight — the struggle to achieve those reasonable wages – continues today.

Much has been made about the notion of reparations to African American families for hundreds of years of oppression — not only the physical bonds of slavery but also for the economic and political form of bondage that still binds many communities more than a hundred and thirty six years after Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.

In the beginning of this debate, I believed strongly that the reparations issue would become a distraction to the present day battles for economic, political and social equality.

But recently I began to think about what most wars are about —  money. 

The Civil War was no different although the byproduct was freedom. 

It started because Southern capitalists were dead-set against losing tremendous amounts of money generated from the textile, tobacco, fruit and so many other industries – businesses that previously profited from free labor. 

Despite losing the argument and the war, much of the wealth created all those years ago has multiplied exponentially. 

It is the kind of money that still influences power in this country just as effectively — if not, more so— than any threat of military action. 

It is the kind of power that influenced the government to look the other way while a so-called free people continued to live in squalor, degradation and fear for another 100 years.

To me it seems that money, that tremendous wealth, came off the backs of people who did nothing except be born of a different race from those who controlled the money. 

They should be compensated for their unpaid work.

We all know about the famed and grossly unfulfilled promise of 40-acres and a mule to freed slaves. 

A handful of slaves received some land and most of those only at the behest of guilt-inflicted white people or those who wanted to keep some around for what  became cheap labor instead of free labor.

Since that money, in my opinion, continues to block the true evolution of the same people who helped create it, it is clear that some of it needs to be re-directed. 

Consider it an emancipation endowment repayment for goods and services due.

There are many of my conservative friends who will say  “how can you possibly draw an accurate account of that? Something like that could bankrupt the nation or big business and send the country further into ruin.” 

The same was said of big tobacco when it began to pay out billions to states and individual court cases that portrayed it as an industry that not only poisoned people but also got people addicted to the poison.

Ironically, big tobacco is one of the long-standing industries that benefited from the free labor of slaves and the cheap labor of freed black people.

Think of reparations as money owed for services rendered.

I do not think it should be put into some huge trough to be dipped into by every single black person in America. 

I would hope that it would become an endowment of sorts to help with the growth of blighted communities, undereducated children, under-funded entrepreneurial dreams.

Possible? Yes.

Likely? Not really, I think.

— Gary Anthony Ramsay is a weekend anchor
and journalist on the all-news
cable station NY1 and along-time resident of Queens.