Calie House Reparations Pioneer

Reparations or compensation for the ills and devastation of enslavement, apartheid, and racial and pigmentation oppression is a controversial and contentious topic.

- Junious Ricardo Stanton

There is no denying enslavement took a horrific toll on the lives, psyche, and physical conditions of people of African descent in this country. It is only natural that Black people would seek redress for the privation and exploitation we suffered and endured for centuries, but the ruling oligarchy is unwilling to--even address the issue, and they mean to keep the issue suppressed and out of public consciousness except when and where it suits their agenda.

One of the first Africans in America to call for relief and restitution for enslaved Africans was Callie Guy, who was born around 1861 into enslavement in Rutherford County near Nashville, Tennessee. At the age of twenty-two, she married William House, and together they had five children. Mrs. House worked as a washer woman and seamstress to support her family after her husband died. According to some records, Mrs. House did get some school learning.

Mrs. House was influenced by a pamphlet she read in 1891 entitled Freedmen’s Pension Bill: A Plea for American Freedmen, which intrigued her, and she became hooked on the idea. She collaborated with Isaiah Dickerson to form the National Ex-Slave Mutual Relief, Bounty, and Pension Association in 1894. Dickerson had worked with a white newspaperman named William Vaughn, who advocated reparations for ex-enslaved persons. Vaughn felt reparations would stimulate the Southern economy.