Last autumn, as part of a consideration of reparations to descendants of enslaved people, the Becoming Beloved Community Task Force led a discussion of the powerful documentary film The Descendants. It chronicles the fate of the last Africans to be brought to the United States as slaves in 1859 on the ship the Clotilda, long after the importation of slaves was outlawed. In early December the television show 60 Minutes featured a segment on this same group of African-Americans that includes, remarkably, a meeting of both the descendants of the Clotilda slaves and the descendants of the white man who brought them into the country. The segment is compelling, and the Task Force recommends it to everyone, whether or not you attended the autumn discussion.
