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Tavis: Dr. Mary Frances Berry is a professor of American social thought and history at the University of Pennsylvania. From 1993 to 2004, that is, she served as the chairperson of the US Civil Rights Commission. Her latest project is a compelling new book on slave reparations, called 'My Face is Black is True: Callie House and the Struggle for Ex-Slave Reparations.' Dr. Berry joins us tonight from Washington. Doc, nice to have you on the program again.

Dr. Mary Frances Berry: Thank you for having me, Tavis.

Tavis: Before we jump into who Callie House was, and the struggle for reparations, which we tend to see as a contemporary struggle, not back during the days of the Civil War. Before we go back that far, though, tell me why you think a conversation or a book about reparations today is even in any way necessary or instructive.

Berry: Well, it's instructive because some people do think it's a contemporary issue. Here was a movement started by people who actually had been slaves in 1897 when they were getting old or dying out. They made claims for reparations for their hard work during slavery. Mobilized, had about 300,000 dues-paying poor, old people as members, and laid a claim then. They didn't sleep on their rights.

Now people say, you know, "they slept on their rights," you know. "It's too long. People are dead," whatever. They weren't dead. They were alive. They didn't sleep on their rights, and they had the courage to do this, and this has to be connected up, and that movement can be traced all the way through Marcus Garvey's movement up to the reparations movement today.

Tavis: All right, we'll come back in a moment to the reparations movement today. Let me go back, though, to back in the day. Tell me who Callie House was.

Berry: Well, she was a fascinating washer woman. Took in washing, and sewed people's clothes down in Tennessee. She was a widow woman, born a slave in 1861, had five children, and heard about this idea from some people talking in church. Some guy was selling a pamphlet. The guy who was selling it, he just wanted, he was a white guy. He wanted to make money so that - from the pamphlet, but she said, "Hey, this sounds like something we should organize and do.'

And she talked to some more educated people than she was. She only had a fourth grade education. And decided that she would get ex-slaves to sign petitions, send them off to Congress, and ask the Congress to give them reparations because she read the Constitution when she was in school, and it said you had the right to petition your government.

But, Tavis, quickly, the most important thing about her, too, was she had chapters all over the South, all in Kansas, Oklahoma, and the chapters engaged in not just signing petitions, but self-help. Helping each other, putting their pennies together, burying the dead. If somebody got sick, giving them medicine. She was a remarkable woman who did this.

Tavis: You've heard me say before, Dr. Berry, I was on the plane, with Bill Clinton when he went to Africa while President. There was a lot of conversation then about whether or not Bill Clinton would, in fact, offer an apology for slavery here in America while he was on African soil. On that plane, Air Force One, with the President, was every black leader you can imagine who could fit on Air Force One. Everybody wanted to go with President Clinton on that trip.

And the President ultimately did not apologize for slavery in the door of no return. He did not offer that apology, I believe, in retrospect, in large measure because the Negroes on the plane, half of them thought he should, the other half thought he shouldn't. There wasn't no consensus, even on Air Force One, so the President wasn't pushed as hard as he might have been to offer that apology for slavery while he was on African soil.

Now, why do I raise that? I raise that because there are a lot of folk today, black folk today, who are not aggressively addressing the issue of reparations for slavery. And you're telling me there was a black woman after the Civil War who was talking about reparations for Negroes?

Berry: In 1897, when there was lynching, Jim Crow, when people were harassed and assaulted, and they were poor. They were sharecroppers and tenant farmers, they had the courage to get up and say, "It's a matter of principal. We're gonna sign our names, and if we can't write, we're gonna get somebody to sign our name. And we're gonna ask, and we're gonna help each other at the same time, and we're gonna stay together.'

And had so many of them that the federal government harassed them and tried to put them out of business and put them in jail for having the nerve to organize to do that. And here we are today, not even willing to ask for an apology.

Tavis: Let me (laughs) - tell me the story, though, of the trouble that she did, because of her courage and her conviction and commitment, she did have a run-in, as one might suspect, with the government.

Berry: Yeah, the government got all these letters from people all over the south, saying, "The Negroes are meeting in the churches, and they come out all pumped up and singing, and we don't know what they're doing.' (laughs) And so, as Malcolm X said, you know, when you get a bunch of Negroes together, people start to worry about what they're doing.

And so they sent some people down and kept them under surveillance and reported back, "They're not doing anything except getting people to sign their names and counting their names and counting their pennies and burying people.' But they said, "Uh-uh!' I found this letter, smoking gun from high government officials saying, "When they find out we're not giving them anything, they're gonna riot.

And there are too many of them, 300,000 members.' And again, as Malcolm said, if the government said you had 300, you probably had 600,000. And so therefore, we gotta stop them, and that woman is the leader, she's the voice, so we need to put here in jail. So they put her in jail. For what? Using the mail to defraud. You know what the fraud was?

They were sending out fliers, communicating, and they said, "Fraud is when you ask the government and organize to get the government to do something that the government's not gonna do.' That's fraud, which is what lobbyists do all the time, right? (laughs)

Tavis: Let me ask you on a serious note. To have this conversation today about Callie House, for me, certainly raises the backdrop, the specter, of the passing of now the late, great Rosa Parks. Is there a comparison here between the courage these two women had?

Berry: Absolutely. Miss Rosa Parks was in the parlance of black leadership, she was like a nobody. She wasn't some outstanding, educated and talented tent leader. Callie House was not either. She was a nobody; a barely educated woman who had courage. They both were seamstresses. Callie House took in washing and did sewing.

They both had this moment of courage and - and Rosa parks, some people think she just, you know, stayed in a seat on the bus, and that was the end of it. She had consistently had courage, even when she was ignored. I remember when she came to Washington, and helped us in the 'Free South Africa' movement. We tried to get people arrested at the embassy and one day we didn't have any big names to get arrested, and we asked her to come from Detroit, and she came.

In the dead of winter. It was like December or something. And came out there and got arrested. So they were both women of courage who weren't any somebodys, which proves that you don't have to be somebody to do something to make social change.

Tavis: All right so if one could argue, let me just try this out on you for size here. One could argue that Callie House and those she organized back in the day at the end of the Civil War had a right to be compensated, to be remunerated for the work that they have done.

They had done the work, they were living, they were around and deserved to be paid for the work they had done. How do you respond to folk who say today in part the reparations movement would never find any attraction because we ain't done none of the work for which we are trying to get paid?

Berry: Well, the answer is, even though those people had done the work, and there were about 1.9 million still alive ex-slaves in 1897, they still didn't get paid, although they made the claim. And the claim today, there are descendants of theirs running around here now, some of the folks in the African American community. Their claim is made, and even in the name of their claim, someone can argue that there ought to be some kind of reparations.

But whatever you think about reparations, whether you're for it, or against it, Callie House said, the principle is important, and the question needs to be raised so we can discuss it. And also, there ought to be some kind of commission that John Conyers, Congressman Conyers has been promoting to investigate the question, however you come out on the issue.

Tavis: All right, so as the former head of Civil Rights Commission, what is, in fact, your position on the notion of reparations?

Berry: My position is the Conyers Bill should be passed; we should have a thorough study of the question, just as we did with Japanese Americans, and we shall see what the outcome is. But at the very least, we ought to take that step.

Tavis: How likely then, one, do you think it is, John Conyers has been introducing this legislation as you know...

Berry: Forever. 1988.

Tavis: Exactly. Yeah, exactly. So one, he keeps introducing it every year. With all due respect to the Congressman, he ain't got it out of committee yet. So number one, how likely is it that will ever come out of committee. And number two, how likely is it that in your lifetime, my lifetime, anybody's lifetime, reparations for black folk might be a reality?

Berry: Tavis, if the people get behind it, and I hope that reading the story of these poor old ex-slaves will help them to get behind the idea, if they would mobilize to get a commission to look into the issue. That's all. Just get a commission to look into it, the bill would pass.

Tavis: One could argue though that the bill to establish the commission will in fact never pass because if in fact it does pass, that really is the first step toward somebody being allowed even to make the case legitimately in the halls of Congress for reparations.

Berry: Well, if they make the case, it's one thing to cut off debate so that people can't have the argument. But we should at least argue that the argument ought to take place. And if we mobilize enough, we can get that done just like we can get anything else done. I mean, if Rosa Parks had taken a poll before she refused to give up her seat on the bus, she would still be standing up.

Tavis: And ultimately if in fact reparations ever does happen in this country, there's great debate about this. I've got my thoughts, you've got yours. I wanna hear yours since it's your conversation. What form, what should reparations essentially be? Should it be a check to every Negro in America?

Berry: If there were to be reparations, I would begin by trying to look at the descendants of those people who filed and tried in the 1890s and seeing what we would do about them. Because those people in fact had a great deal of courage. And then I would look at the whole community and try to answer the question in terms of what we should do about it or not. But I don't know the answer to that question. I just know it should be explored.

Tavis: All right. The new book is 'My Face is Black is True: Callie House and the Struggle for Ex-Slave Reparations.' Did you learn anything about her, right quick, that you did not know before you got into the writing of the book?

Berry: I didn't know anything about her before writing the book. I couldn't imagine that some woman in the 1890s, and a black woman at that, when women couldn't vote, when black men could barely vote, a few of them. And when women didn't exercise leadership in organizations where there were women and men. I couldn't imagine that she would have had the courage, or somebody like her would've done this. So it's an amazing story.

Tavis: Well, thanks for writing the story, Dr. Berry. Nice to see you.

Berry: Okay. Thank you.

Tavis: All the best to you. Up next, singer-songwriter Liz Phair. Stay with us.