Kathleen Koch: Slavery reparations rally

CNN Correspondent Kathleen Koch

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Supporters of a movement to compensate African-Americans for the suffering of their ancestors during slavery rallied in Washington on Saturday to focus public attention on their cause.

CNN Correspondent Kathleen Koch covered the event.

KOCH: The theme here today is they owe us, and basically what members of the African-American community are saying is they should be compensated for the unpaid labors and untold suffering under slavery that their ancestors underwent.

And they point to a promise that was made back in 1865. It was a field order made by Civil War Gen. William T. Sherman, and that was when he uttered that famous phrase that every freed slave would get "40 acres and a mule." And largely, that promise was not kept.

So organizers here say that they should get some form of compensation, if not from the U.S. government, then from firms today that are still in existence that profited from the fruits of slave labor.

They point to, say, survivors of the Holocaust, who have won reparations since the end of World War II; to Japanese-Americans who were interned during World War II and in 1988 won an official apology from the U.S. government, as well as a payment of $20,000 per person for those Japanese-Americans who were interned.

There is division, though, within the community, within the supporters of reparations as to what form exactly the reparations should take -- whether or not there should be a check for every individual or every family, or whether or not all the money should be put into some sort of national trust fund that then would be drawn on to address pressing needs in the African-American community, such as education or health care.

They're expecting people to be coming here today from roughly 60 cities. They'll be hearing from lawmakers Cynthia McKinney (D-Georgia), John Conyers, the Michigan Democrat, who, as a matter of fact, has every year since 1989 introduced legislation calling for a national commission to take a look at this issue of reparations. But the bill has never made it out of committee.

We are looking for some attendance today, but clearly not the roughly 100,000 that organizers are hoping for.