Slave Pensions

In Newark, N. J. one day last week a wrinkled old Negro with a fuzzy grey head sat on an ash can on Market Street, his bushy grey beard on his chest, one leathery hand extended for alms. Arrested, he was taken to the station house. The desk sergeant began the routine of booking him. Name? John Torthi. Birthplace? Lynchburg, Va. Date? June 4, 1824. The desk sergeant looked up astonished. Was this old fellow 107 years old? The Negro nodded his head, explained that he had been a slave nearly 40 years before being freed by the Proclamation of Emancipation (Jan. 1, 1863). He rambled on that he had been married five times, once cooked coffee for General Grant, had 49 grandchildren. At mention of the Civil War he mumbled about "lots of shooting" and "long roads." He broke into tears as he was led away to a cell.

If John Torthi was really a onetime slave, it was for him and his kind that Chicago's Representative Oscar De Priest, only Negro in Congress, last month introduced in the House a relief bill (H. R. 10098). The measure provided that all Negroes over 75 who were freed from slavery by President Lincoln's proclamation should be pensioned by the Federal Government at the rate of $30 per month.* According to the 1930 Census, there were in the U. S. 118,446 Negroes aged 75 or more of whom Congressman De Priest estimated not more than 100,000 were slaves. He placed the cost of his pension bill at $36,000,000 over a decade.

Congressman De Priest's argument for his pension bill: The first 20 Negro slaves were brought to America by a Dutch trading vessel in 1619. By 1863 there were in the U. S. 3,500,000 slaves and 500,000 free Blacks. During this 244-year period, at $50 per year, slaves earned $3,365,177,850 which they never got. Simple interest at 3% since Emancipation has raised this debt to the Negro race to $11,332,070,000. H. R. 10098 would wipe out the "debt." The Congress seemed distinctly uninterested in the De Priest proposal. '''Onetime slave owners and their heirs are estopped by the U. S. Constitution from collecting any claims for the loss of their "property."

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