Washington Will Spend $300K to Study Reparations. Multiracial Solidarity Made It Possible

When attorney and former Washington State Rep. Jesse Wineberry (for Districts 37 and 43) learned that Washington State would fund a $300,000 study of reparations for the descendants of victims of U.S. chattel slavery, he became emotional. Wineberry, the co-founder and director of Washington Equity Now Alliance (WENA), had seen up close how Black and Japanese American politicians and activists had worked to address reparations. 

"When I saw that the first money dedicated to this study in the history of the state was put in by [State Sen. Bob Hasegawa,] a Japanese American, I couldn't fight back tears," said Wineberry. 

This historic win could eventually lead to reparations for Washingtonians who can prove they are descended of victims of U.S. chattel slavery. 

This year, legislators allocated $300,000 to fund the Charles Mitchell and George Washington Bush Study on Reparative Action. To take place from 2025 through 2027, the study will focus on the impact of U.S. chattel slavery on the descendants of those who suffered under it. Gov. Bob Ferguson approved the state budget on May 20, which included funding for the study, though more must be raised to meet the goal of $1.5 million to fully cover the cost of the study. 

The study was named in part after Charles Mitchell, a 13-year-old African American born on a Maryland plantation who was enslaved in Washington Territory after being brought to the Northwest by his owner in 1855. Aided by Black residents of Vancouver Island in 1860, Mitchell escaped to Canada where he won his freedom when the Crown Colony Court ruled that any slave who made it to British territory was thereafter a free person.

With that history in mind, Wineberry says Washington was a good place to study reparations. "It [slavery] happened on Washington soil, in Washington Territory," said Wineberry.

The Fight for Redress

Wineberry became involved with the fight for reparations in 1988, after he was elected to the State House of Representatives, when he was contacted by the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL). They wanted to talk about Japanese reparations, which Wineberry knew nothing about.

"They took me in and trained me on the issue with workshops, seminars — I had to read a lot of history — and all they wanted me to do was to go back to Washington, D.C., and help lobby the members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) to vote for the Japanese Redress Act," Wineberry said.

JACL's website says it is the oldest Asian American civil rights organization in the nation, with a mission to secure and safeguard the civil rights of Asian and Pacific Islander Americans as well as others victimized by injustice. 

According to Hasegawa, JACL started the movement for reparations for Japanese Americans interned during World War II. People from Seattle were involved, Hasegawa added, and then-U.S. Rep. and future Gov. Mike Lowry sponsored a congressional bill seeking apology and reparations. 

State Rep. Sharon Tomiko Santos says that for countless Japanese Americans, time had to pass before they could talk about internment, a difficult and emotional subject.

"It took many, many years for people in my community to get over our grandparents' and great-grandparents' cultural aversion to being the nail that sticks up, because in our culture, the nail that sticks up is the one that gets hit on the head or pounded down," said Tomiko Santos. 

But for some Japanese Americans, it didn't take generations to push for change. Kyle Kinoshita remembered that his mother, Cherry, was not afraid of being the nail that stuck up. "She said, 'Don't just sit there, speak up,'" he said. 

Cherry Kinoshita, born in 1923, was a Japanese American activist and founding member of the Seattle Evacuation Redress Committee. Born in 1923, she had just graduated from high school and was only 18 when she was incarcerated at the Puyallup Assembly Center, also known as Camp Harmony, a holding facility for Japanese Americans during World War II. From there, she was taken to Minidoka Concentration Camp in Idaho, where she was held for the next three years.

Kyle Kinoshita, a faculty member at the University of Washington, recalled watching his mother fight for redress and reparations for Japanese Americans in the 1970s and '80s. She served as president of JACL's Seattle chapter and went on to become a national leader.

"She wasn't one of the naysayers that was too traumatized — she was traumatized, but she talked about the incarceration to me as a very young kid," he said. 

For Wineberry, it became necessary to share the knowledge gained from JACL with the CBC. A former CBC fellow, he asked its members to vote for what was then called the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, also known as the Japanese American Redress Act, which, along with offering a presidential apology to U.S. citizens and legal immigrants of Japanese ancestry who were incarcerated during World War II, would also provide them redress of $20,000. In return, CBC members asked Wineberry why he wasn't pressing for reparations for Black Americans whose ancestors experienced chattel slavery.

"I said, 'I really believe that if the U.S. awards reparations to Japanese Americans, it will lay the groundwork and set a precedent for us,'" said Wineberry.

CBC members voted for the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, signed by then-President Ronald Reagan. In 1989, CBC member U.S. Rep. John Conyers introduced H.R. 40, the Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act, which still awaits congressional action today.

Seattle JACL members then asked Wineberry to help pass out $20,000 redress checks. "One night at the Wing Luke Museum, [former Gov. and then-State Rep.] Gary Locke was on one end of the stage, and they put me on the other, and they called out the names of those folks who had gone through those incarceration camps," Wineberry said. "One by one, they came up, and Gary and I were handing out checks directly to them for reparations."

Solidarity in the Emerald City

According to Tomiko Santos, Seattle has a unique history of solidarity among different Communities of Color. 

"Seattle was a very racially restricted city, and when Seattle started receiving more immigrants, they were confined to certain parts of the city, and that was what we now call the Chinatown-International District," she said. "It wasn't just Asians that were forced to live there, but also African Americans, Jews, and Native persons." 

Tomiko Santos' husband, Bob Santos, was part of Seattle's "Four Amigos," a multiracial group of political activists who founded Seattle's Minority Executive Directors Coalition, which included Bernie Whitebear, Roberto Maestas, and Larry Gossett. 

The group was politically active through the late '60s and early '70s, and its members founded organizations that still provide services: Whitebear founded the Seattle Indian Health Board and the United Indians of All Tribes Foundation; Maestas started El Centro de la Raza; and Gossett was the executive director of the Central Area Motivation Program (CAMP), now known as Byrd Barr Place. 

Kyle Kinoshita, a member of Seattle JACL, said he is not surprised Japanese Washingtonians helped advocate for the current reparations study, recalling that Seattle's Japanese community members supported Africatown Community Land Trust's acquisition of Keiro Northwest, a former Japanese American nursing home, for the Benu Community Home, which serves as a low-barrier shelter for adult single males.

Hasegawa says reparations are due to the Black community for injustices that occurred post-slavery as well, such as Black farmers losing 90% of their land between 1910 and 1997.

Yet he's hopeful the study will lead to substantial reparations, which he sees as part of his life's work.

"Reparations is justice," said Hasegawa. "However those reparations turn out to be, hopefully it'll be in more long-lasting solutions, like turning real estate over, though that's not a perfect pick either, because the reality is all the real estate belongs to the Indigenous people."

Editors' Note: This article has been updated to correct the titles of individuals, clarify historical context, update the study timeline, and fix typographical errors.