Callie House

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Callie House
Callie House.jpg
Born1861
Rutherford County, near Nashville, Tennessee
Died1928(1928-00-00) (aged 66–67)

Callie House (1861 – 1928) was a leader of the National Ex-Slave Mutual Relief, Bounty and Pension Association, one of the first organizations to campaign for reparations for slavery in the United States.[1]

Biography[]

House was born a slave in Rutherford County, near Nashville, Tennessee. At the age of 22, she married William House. They had six children, five of which survived. After William died, House supported her family by being a washerwoman.[2] At 36, she began organizing hundreds of thousands of people calling for US reparations, building a powerful movement for which she was unjustly imprisoned in 1916.

National Ex-Slave Mutual Relief, Bounty, and Pension Association[]

House and Isaiah H. Dickerson traveled ex-slave states to gather support for the National Ex-Slave Mutual Relief, Bounty and Pension Association (MRB&PA). They visited black churches—one of the few places blacks could organize without white interference.[2] MRB&PA was chartered August 7, 1897, with the goal of providing compensation to ex-slaves, mutual aid, and burial costs. At its peak, it claimed membership in the hundreds of thousands.

Despite lack of evidence, the federal Post Office Department accused slavery reparation organizations like MRB&PA of defrauding their members. In 1899, the MRB&PA was forbidden to send mail or cash money orders. The Department of Justice opened an investigation of the MRB&PA. In 1901, Dickerson was found guilty of "swindling" but the conviction was later overturned. Upon Dickerson's death in 1909, House became the leader of the MRB&PA.[3] Despite interference with mails, the MRB&PA struggled on under House's leadership.[2]

Reparations lawsuit[]

In 1915, under House's leadership, the association filed a class action lawsuit, Johnson v. McAdoo, in federal court for $68 million against the U.S. Treasury Department. $68 million was the amount of cotton tax collected between 1862 and 1868 and was due to the plaintiffs because the cotton had produced by them and their ancestors as a result of their involuntary servitude. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia denied the claim as did the U.S. Supreme Court.[4]

Arrest, trial and imprisonment[]

The US Postal Service's accusations of fraud culminated in 1916 with House's arrest. She was convicted by an all-male, all-white jury and sentenced to one year in prison[5] in Jefferson City, Missouri. House's arrest dampened the national reparations movement, which struggled on through local branches until the 1930s.[6]

Legacy[]

In 2015 Vanderbilt University's African American and Diaspora Studies Program renamed its research arm the Callie House Research Center for the Study of Black Cultures and Politics.[7]

Further reading[]

  • Mary Frances Berry, My Face Is Black Is True: Callie House and the Struggle for Ex-Slave Reparations, Alfred A. Knopf, 2005.
  • Ana Lucia Araujo, Reparations for Slavery and the Slave Trade: A Transnational and Comparative History, Bloomsbury, 2017.
  • Raymond A.Winbush, Belinda's Petition: A Concise History of Reparations for the TransAtlantic Slave Trade, Xlibris, 2009.

References[]

  1. ^ Statom, Virgil. "Callie House 1861-1928". Tennessee History Encyclopedia of History and Culture. Tennessee Historical Society & University of Tennessee Press. Retrieved February 7, 2015.
  2. ^ Jump up to: a b c Berry, Mary Frances (2005). My Face Is Black Is True. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 1-4000-4003-5.
  3. ^ Perry, Miranda. "No Pensions for Ex-Slaves: How Federal Agencies Suppressed Movement To Aid Freedpeople". archives.gov. National Archives. Retrieved February 10, 2015.
  4. ^ Booker Perry, Miranda (Summer 2010). "No Pensions for Ex-Slaves: How Federal Agencies Suppressed Movement to Aid Freedpeople". Prologue Magazine, U.S. National Archives and Records Administration. 42 (2). Retrieved 2 May 2021.
  5. ^ Qualls, Quint (February 19, 2014). "Black History Month: Callie House led early push for reparations". Tennessean. Retrieved 2 May 2021.
  6. ^ Berry, Daina Ramey; Kali Nicole Gross (2020). A Black women's history of the United States. Boston. ISBN 978-0-8070-3355-5. OCLC 1096284843.
  7. ^ "Vanderbilt University Renames Black Studies Research Center After Former Slave and Early Reparations Activist Callie House". Good Black News. March 27, 2015. Retrieved April 2, 2015.
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