Real estate broker was father of black reparations movement

Ray Jenkins, a longtime Detroit resident, will be remembered for his work advocating slavery reparations for African-Americans from the federal government, his family said.

Mr. Jenkins believed reparations were the debt the country owed blacks for the enslavement of their ancestors.

During the late 1950s, Mr. Jenkins began speaking publicly about his cause of getting reparations for African-Americans. At the time, it was a very unpopular notion.

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Mr. Jenkins, known as "Reparations Ray," or the father of the reparations movement in the city's black community, died Friday, April 10, 2009 of complications of a blood infection in Providence Hospital in Southfield. He was 88.


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Ricardo Jenkins said his father never thought reparations should be a blank check to African-Americans.

He said his father wanted the U.S. government to repay blacks for slavery through educational trusts and home ownership programs.

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