All and all, an interesting piece.

Your reference to Ta-Nahesi Coates is well taken. Toni Morrison called him the literary reincarnation of perhaps 20th-century America's greatest author -- at least since James Baldwin's death in 1989. You are correct that Coates chronicled "the debt" owed to black folk after slavery and right on into this morning -- as did Randall Robinson of the Trans Africa Organization long before Coates penned his electrifying essay. Robinson’s seminal tome was appropriately entitled "The Debt."

But! What most people of whatever hue do not know is that immediately after slavery ended the ex-slaves themselves actually organized themselves to the tune of several hundred thousand and demanded payment for their 246 years of forced labor.

I wrote about that obviously unsuccessful effort eight years ago and republished it five years ago. That essay may be found here.