House, Callie and the Fight for Reperations
by
John C Abercrombie
Today is day 19 of the 31-day 2023 Tribute to Black Women We Should All Know, featuring Callie House.
After picking up on an argument in favor of reparations for ex-enslaved persons, Callie House formed an organization to fight for the cause. With an organization in the hundreds of thousands of members, the government issued a fraud order that forbid them from sending mail or cashing money orders.
At the same time the pension bills submitted to Congress, the petition of the Blacks was not taken seriously and were indefinitely postponed. House cites to the commissioner that the Constitution of the United States grants citizens the right to petition Congress for redress of grievances.
House led a class action lawsuit (Johnson v McAdoo against the United States Treasury for sixty-eight million dollars, the amount collected between 1862 and 1868 for cotton taxes. The government denied the order because the government can only be sued if they agree to being sued.
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Callie House is not a household name. Few are aware of her or the scope of her work on the part of ex-slaves. Armed with limited education but a powerful desire to fix a wrong, she fearlessly made this her life’s work. We will look at her life and the opposition to her work by the United States government.
House was born Callie Guy in Rutherford County, Tennessee a small town near Nashville, Tennessee. Born as a slave in 1861 she had the opportunity for a primitive education, possibly going to fourth grade. Keep in mind that there were extreme limits on the amount of education a Black could receive, if any at all.
When she as twenty-two, she married William House and they had six children of which five survived. Three girls and two boys. After her husband William died, she supported herself and family as so many Blacks found one of the few occupations available that of a washerwoman and seamstress. This occupation took a toll on the hands of these women because of the constant exposure to lye soap and other chemicals. The newly enslaved people were no strangers to hardd work, nor were they without intelligence. They only sought the opportunity to profit from their labor and the chance to own land.
Slavery was officially abolished by the 13th amendment, but we find people who owned nothing. No land, no savings and a hostile environment of land owned by those who profited and became rich from the free labor and who did not welcome their freedom. It was a hard row to hoe. Poor Whites were not friendly to them as the small class of Slaveowners had alienated them against the Blacks by telling them that that Black had stolen their job.
With the end of slavery, there was no promise of economic relief or security or any of the other matters that ensured an opportunity to survive, let alone thrive. This forced many into sharecropping and doing menial labor.
House had been influenced by a written pamphlet that was being distributed calling for pension for the ex-slaves. This pamphlet was being distributed by a White man who was profiting from the sale of the pamphlets. House decided that the ex-slaves could speak for themselves and after several inquiries dedicated herself to the challenge.
The only tools Callie House had were her determination which she maximized, and this should serve as a model to all who question their ability to accomplish their intended mission.
She had sought council from Isaiah H Dickerson who had worked for the gentleman who wrote and distributed the pamphlets.
House and Isaiah H. Dickerson traveled to former slave states to gather support for the National Ex-Slave Mutual Relief, Bounty and Pension Association (MRB&PA). Mostly on her own, she developed the national organization to over 300,000 members and this is a governmental count, and conservative and an undercount.
However, there were a number of Americans supportive of elderly war veterans receiving pensions which gave the previously enslaved people hope that they may receive pensions for the centuries of unpaid labor that they and their ancestors had furnished to make this country an economic powerhouse. The struggle for ex-slave pensions gained momentum and the MRB&PA was chartered in 1897.
There were two main goals
- Petition Congress for a bill that would grand compensation to former enslaved person
- Provide mutual aid and burial expenses to those who could not obtain insurance
It became the leading grassroots organization for ex-slave pensions and had membership in the hundreds of thousands. As the organization grew three federal agencies began to focus surveillance on the organization
- The Bureau of Pensions
- Post Office Department
- Department of Justice
Without evidence the Post Office accused the organization of fraud and argued that the US mail was being used to defraud ex-slaves into getting what they deserved from the United States government.
A fraud order was issued September 20, 1899, that forbid the MRB&PA from sending mail or cashing money orders. House hired an attorney, and they invoked the 1st, 14th and 15th amendments, however the Post Office was determined to invoke the order to limit the organizations influence.
At the same time the pension bills submitted to Congress, the petition of the Blacks were not taken seriously and were indefinitely postponed. House cites to the commissioner that the Constitution of the United States grants citizens the right to petition Congress for redress of grievances.
After Dickerson died in 1909, House became leader of the organization. Despite interference with mail the organization struggled, and House decided to take the pension movement to the courts.
House led the association in a class action lawsuit known as Johnson v McAdoo it was filed against the US Treasury Department for sixty-eight million dollars. Why this specific amount? They had previously confirmed this amount in the account raised by the cotton tax collected between 1862 and 1868. Their argument is that this money was due to the plaintiffs as they had produced the cotton during involuntary servitude. The United States Court of Appeals denied the claim based on government immunity (the government can only be sued if they agree to being sued). This allows the government to refuse to be sued if there is a chance they may lose.
Due to relentless accusations House was arrested in 1916 and convicted by an all-White, all-male jury and sentenced to one year and one day in prison which she served in Jefferson City, Missouri. The arrest and conviction put a damper on the national movement.
Recent revelations of Callie House and her living relatives reveal the harm that history continues to perpetrate. Rather than being proud of her and her work, they are left with a lingering memory of a jailbird. What a shame the way history distorts the truth and the audacity of those who now claim it is revisionist history when it is factual presentation of history.
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.
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Callie House: My Face is Black is True
Mary Francis Berry reclaims Callie House, a magnificent heroine who, though so long forgotten that the site of her grave is unknown, emerges as a pioneering activist: a female forerunner of both Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.
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My Face is Black is True: Callie House and the Struggle for Ex-Slave Reparations
Award-winning Civil Rights advocate Mary Frances Berry sheds new light on the fight for reparations. Callie House, an ex-slave who led the fight, founded the Ex-Slave Mutual Relief, Bounty, and Pension Association in 1899. Defying conventions of race, class, and gender, Callie led the organization in an attempt to petition the government for the pension promised them as freedmen.
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Mobil Heart Monitors
Callie House: My Face is Black is True
Mary Francis Berry reclaims Callie House, a magnificent heroine who, though so long forgotten that the site of her grave is unknown, emerges as a pioneering activist: a female forerunner of both Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.
Born in to slavery in 1861, Callie House started the Ex-Slave Mutual Relief, Bounty and Pension Association, which sought African American pensions based on those offered Union soldiers, a movement so powerful it frightened the US government, upset Jim Crow legislatures across the South, and gave hope to hundreds of thousands of destitute former slaves.
Co-sponsored by the Museum of Afro American History and the Center for New Words.
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From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty-First Century
Racism and discrimination have choked economic opportunity for African Americans at nearly every turn. At several historic moments, the trajectory of racial inequality could have been altered dramatically. Perhaps no moment was more opportune than the early days of Reconstruction, when the U.S. government temporarily implemented a major redistribution of land from former slaveholders to the newly emancipated enslaved. But neither Reconstruction nor the New Deal nor the civil rights struggle led to an economically just and fair nation. Today, systematic inequality persists in the form of housing discrimination, unequal education, police brutality, mass incarceration, employment discrimination, and massive wealth and opportunity gaps. Economic data indicates that for every dollar the average white household holds in wealth the average black household possesses a mere ten cents.
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Large Screen Television
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CALLIE HOUSE #FBA REPARATION 3
Reading from the history of Callie House and the immediate fight for reparations for our ancestors.
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Entertaining Race: Performing Blackness in America
For more than 30 years, Michael Eric Dyson has played a prominent role in the nation as a public intellectual, university professor, cultural critic, social activist and ordained Baptist minister. He has presented a rich and resourceful set of ideas about American history and culture. Now for the first time he brings together the various components of his multihued identity and eclectic pursuits.
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Callie House Early Advocate For Reparations
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The Dangers of Whitewashing Black History | David Ikard | TEDxNashville
Should white people care about the whitewashing of black history? Most people will likely answer yes to this question, if only because it sounds politically correct to do so. What will hopefully become clear is that whites have as much to lose by whitewashing black history as their African American peers. David Ikard is a Professor of African American and Diaspora Studies at Vanderbilt University. His research and teaching interests include African American Literature, black feminist criticism, hip-hop culture, black masculinity and whiteness studies. He is the author/co-author of four books, including “Breaking The Silence: Toward a Black Male Feminist Criticism” (2007), “Nation of Cowards: Black Activism in Barack Obama’s Post-Racial America” (2012; co-authored with Martell Teasley and winner of the 2013 Best Scholarly Book Award by DISA), “Blinded by the Whites: Why Race Still Matters in 21st-Century America” (2013), and “Lovable Racists, Magical Negroes, and White Messiahs” (2017). His essays have appeared in African American Review, MELUS , Palimpsest, African and Black Diaspora Journal, The Journal of Black Studies, and Obsidian III. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx
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Black Genesis: A Resource Book for African-American Genealogy (Gale Genealogy and Local History)
Series: Gale Genealogy and Local History Paperback: 440 pages Publisher: Genealogical Publishing Company; 2 edition (January 1, 2003) Language: English ISBN-10: 0806317353 ISBN-13: 978-0806317359 Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 1 inches
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We rely on history to provide us with information on people, places, and events. In order to understand history, it is necessary to start with the facts. This is poorly done in our history classes. Without knowledge we are left with the belief that Blacks have not fought for what is rightfully theirs. Callie House is such a fighter and needs to be known and recognized her and her efforts.