ST. LOUIS—Twenty-five years after the World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa, placed reparations for slavery and colonialism before the nations of the earth, organizers and activists gathered in St. Louis with a message: Black people are no longer asking for justice. They are demanding it.
The Black Is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations held its 18th Annual Conference Aug. 29 and 30 on the north side of St. Louis and virtually under the theme “Remember Durban, Reparations Now!”
The gathering brought together organizations and supporters from across the United States and around the world for political education, discussion and commitment to a united struggle.
The conference commemorated the 25th anniversary of the 2001 Durban conference and its Declaration and Program of Action. It also placed the question of reparations within the present condition of Black people throughout the diaspora who continue to face economic exploitation, political oppression, displacement and attacks on our communities.
Chairman Omali Yeshitela of the African People’s Socialist Party and chair of the Black Is Back Coalition told The Final Call, the organization has kept the meaning of Durban and the demand for reparations before the world.
“We commemorate and hold up for ourselves and for the world the significance of Durban and the reparations issue,” Chairman Yeshitela said. He pointed to a March 2026 United Nations action declaring the trafficking and enslavement of African people among history’s gravest crimes against humanity.
“That is an extraordinary thing coming from the United Nations,” he said. “It means that the vast majority of the people of the world formally at this point have united with the struggle of African people not just here but globally.”
For Chairman Yeshitela, the issue begins with defining the condition of Black African people separated from their homeland through slavery and colonialism. “Africans are not immigrants.
We’re captives and we think it’s important to make that distinction,” he said. “That’s one of the reasons we are talking about the question of reparations. We want payment. We want everything.”
He cited the Caribbean Community’s estimate that African people are owed approximately $131 trillion and recalled that the African People’s Socialist Party organized a reparations tribunal in 1982. That tribunal calculated $4.1 trillion in 1982 dollars for stolen labor alone, he said.
The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, National Representative of the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad, spoke on the subject of what America, Europe and White people who enslaved Black people and amassed tremendous wealth off of our labor, oppression and abuse owe to Black people they held in bondage and continue to colonize.
During his historic 1990 “Stop the Killing” tour, Minister Farrakhan delivered a message, “A Case For Reparations: Add It Up!” on reparations before more than 20,000 people in Atlanta on April 28,1990.
“America, you owe us something. We don’t want you to dole it out in welfare checks. If you give us what you owe us, we’ll take it from there. But will America do that? We don’t know,” Minister Farrakhan said.
Kamm Howard, co-convenor of the Global Circle for Reparations and Healing and commissioner with the National African American Reparations Commission, said the St. Louis gathering is part of a movement rising throughout the world.
“Currently we are experiencing a global reparations revolution,” Mr. Howard told The Final Call. He compared it to the anti-colonial revolution of the 1950s through the 1970s when people in Africa, Asia, South America and Central America waged armed struggle and negotiated independence from European domination.
“Today Africans and people of African descent are demanding redress from all around the world from the same enslaving and colonial powers,” he said.
He urged reparations advocates to focus plainly on the crimes. “Many Americans are timid in calling the actions of America criminal,” Mr. Howard said. “We use soft words like sins, harms and inappropriate actions. No, they were crimes against humanity in 2001 and the gravest crimes against humanity in 2026 in human history.”
Crimes against humanity carry a mandatory obligation for redress when continuing injury remains, he explained. For that reason, the movement must keep the criminal acts at the center instead of allowing the demand to be reduced to apology or symbolic recognition.
Mr. Howard also called for an end to internal contention over race and lineage. Reparations demands contain race, crime, harm or continuing injury and lineage components, he said. The unifying point is that Black African people are seeking redress for the gravest crimes in human history. His message placed the coalition’s work within that worldwide movement for repair.
That spirit moved Belinda Parker Brown of Louisiana United International. She described the presentations as powerful but said knowledge must be joined to a new posture.
“We cannot constantly keep going around begging, whining and crying and asking permission, expecting that they are going to do something for us when they never intended to do it in the first place,” Ms. Parker Brown told The Final Call.
She questioned why Black people are still asking for what is rightfully owed while other groups have received redress. Her answer was unity and organized demand. “The power is in a united force.
We have to unite and demand reparations right now,” she said. “Technology and social media are tools readily in our hands. We have to let it be heard and let it be known that we are not asking anymore. We are demanding reparations right now.”
For Zaki Baruti of the Universal African People’s Organization, unity among organizations is essential. His organization joined the Black Is Back Coalition in 2015 after participating in the Ferguson uprising that followed the police killing of Michael Brown Jr.
“It is essential that various organizations that speak truth to power and have a track record of working to uplift humanity unite around a common agenda,” Mr. Baruti said.
“One of the common agendas that we should rally around is reparations because as a race of people we have been attacked historically and currently by one of the most vicious economic systems of capitalism and by racism.”
He said the coalition includes progressive and revolutionary organizations led by people with histories of struggle for the liberation of African people in the United States and throughout the world.
Betty Davis of the New Abolitionist Movement, a New York educator for more than 50 years, warned that reparations cannot be separated from self-determination and the ability of Black communities to defend what they possess.
Ms. Davis argued that educational institutions must be accountable to the Black community and its concepts of liberation and freedom. Public school budgets in major Black cities are among the largest public resources, but Black communities do not control them, she said.
“When you control those institutions that’s self-determination,” she explained. “But that’s not the same thing as reparations.” Ms. Davis pointed to the displacement of Black people from New York City.
The loss of intergenerational wealth and the sale of churches and community institutions under economic pressure. Black people are being pushed into other communities where they often face environmental hazards and failing public systems, she said.
The Durban gathering in 2001 declared slavery and the slave trade crimes against humanity and strengthened the international demand for repair. Twenty-five years later, the St. Louis conference made clear that declarations alone have not restored what was stolen.
The Black Is Back Coalition was founded as an organization of various groups and a political instrument through which member groups could exercise united will. Its annual conference continues to bring together different ideological traditions around the principle that Black people have the right to self-determination.
—J.A. Salaam, Contributing Writer
