The National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America
*The National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (N'COBRA) was founded on this date in 1987. Founded in Washington, D.C., N'COBRA is an organization that advocates for financial compensation for the descendants of formerly enslaved people in the United States.
The National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America spreads information and supports the long-term goal of gaining reparations for slavery in the United States. N'COBRA's founders were Imari Obadele and Chokwe Lumumba; other founders included the National Conference of Black Lawyers, the New Afrikan Peoples Organization, and the Republic of New Afrika. In 1994, N'COBRA hosted a national gathering of members in Detroit. One of the speakers was Queen Mother Moore, a founder of the Republic of New Afrika.
The work of N'COBRA is based on nine national commissions:
N'COBRA membership has three categories: individual members, national and local organizational chapters, and organizational affiliates. It is found in many parts of the United States (such as Philadelphia) and parts of Africa, Europe, Central and South America, and the Caribbean. A national board of directors handles primary leadership for the organization.
The stated mission of the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America is to win full Reparations for Black African Descendants residing in the United States and its territories for the genocidal war against Africans that created the Trans-Atlantic Slave "Trade" Chattel Slavery, Jim Crow and Chattel Slavery's continuing vestiges (the Maafa).
To that end, NCOBRA shall organize and mobilize all strata of these Black communities into an effective mass-based reparations movement. NCOBRA shall also serve as a coordinating body for reparation efforts in the United States. Further, through its leadership role in the reparation movement within the United States and its territories, NCOBRA recognizes reparations are a just demand for all African peoples and shall join others in building the international reparations movement. Since at least 2017, N'COBRA has advocated for reparations compensation to be in the form of community rehabilitation and not payments to individual descendants of slavery.
Critics of N'COBRA claim that the organization has done little to advance the cause of reparations in the U.S. Reparations scholar William A. Darity Jr., for instance, wrote, "The ... NCOBRA agenda will not result in a reparations plan that will provide direct payments to black American descendants of U.S. slavery."
