Reparations for slavery
Decision to make reparations for the transatlantic slave trade taken at Yearly Meeting in May.
Quakers acted on their commitment to anti-racism this year with a historic decision to make reparations for the transatlantic slave trade. The agreement, made at Yearly Meeting in May, followed an earlier announcement to rename the William Penn room at Friends House after abolitionist Benjamin Lay. The new name was suggested by staff at the Quiet Company, which manages Friends House. BYM said that Penn ‘made important contributions to religious freedom, democracy and pacifism, and these will be remembered. But we cannot ignore the truth that he was also a slaveholder, profiting from enslaved people, like many other Quakers’.
Meanwhile, Friends across the country committed to work towards improving diversity. In August, Edwina Peart, BYM’s diversity and inclusion coordinator, said that the Quaker community has made ‘good progress’, but ‘we need to be brave and continue to engage with what are often difficult conversations’.
The year ended with December’s Meeting for Sufferings reiterating the Quaker Life request that Friends cease using the term ‘overseer’.
Comments
Dear Friend
I am the Historian at the Darby Friends Meeting in Pennsylvania. While doing research on our Meeting’s historical role in abolitionism, I came across a very interesting document in our Library. It is entitled A brief statement of the rise and progress of the testimony of the religious society of Friends, against slavery and the slave trade… by the Kite brothers 1843. You can find it line at teh Library of Congress.
Starting on page 47, is a discussion of the actions taken by the Quakers at that time to address reparations. It states reparations committees were established by the Quarterlies to the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, and that that “by 1787, the Yearly Meeting states that the effecting of a satisfactory settlement for the past services of those who had been held in slavery was brought to a close.” The pamphlet goes on to discuss what was done in other jurisdictions.
Perhaps more historic research required?
By lucerne96 on 3rd May 2023 - 0:17
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