I heard about the United Nations General Assembly’s resolution on slavery about the same time I finished reading The Zorg: A Tale of Greed and Murder that Inspired the Abolition of Slavery by Siddharth Kara. The resolution declared the transatlantic chattel slave trade as the “gravest crime against humanity.” It affirmed reparations as a necessary step towards “remedying historical wrongs,” an echoing demand for centuries from descendants of the transatlantic slave trade.

The Zorg filled critical gaps in my understanding of the slave trade that I had never given much thought to. My dogged focus was always on two things: the treacherous journey from the Motherland to North America, and our existence once we arrived on these shores. I never thought about the sophisticated infrastructure of the slavery trade. Four centuries? Insurance companies? Medical personnel as ship crew? Pirates?

Kara’s research is detailed, informing a riveting storyline. The subject matter is hard enough to deal with, but the author spares no mercy in forcing the reader to push our noses into the stench of the slave trade’s inherent depravity. He was quite vivid in his accounting of the horrors heaped upon Black bodies, whether at sea or on land.

So, when the UN Assembly took its vote, my heart and soul were right there. March 25 commemorates the International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade. We can’t remember if we don’t know. If we don’t know about the atrocities of slavery, we can’t fight for reparations.

It was expected that the U.S., Israel, and Argentina would be flat out opposed to the resolution. It was no surprise that the European countries abstained. As former slavery traders and colonizers, their refusal to acknowledge their role was predictable.

It was a mirror response to the declaration drafted at the 2001 UN Conference on Racism in Durban, South Africa. Many of us saw the declaration as a labor of love as we lobbied NGOs and official government delegates to recognize “slavery and the slave trade as crimes against humanity.” The declaration, and any momentum it would have, was brought to a screeching halt with the attack on the World Trade Center. Our excitement to push the U.S. reparations movement was temporarily diverted to organize against the repressive laws passed in the name of national security and anti-terrorism.

The lesson of the unlikely alliance of abolitionists and the insurance companies to force the courts to rule on the humanity of slaves is not lost on this strategist. I believe that the purity of the social justice movements is preventing the formation of such bold relationships and coalitions around a radical agenda to secure reparations.

The demand for restitution for the consequences of slavery and colonialism is legitimate. The struggle for reparations is a righteous one and will never die. As a literary classic, The Zorg has made a compelling contribution to the case for African reparations.