To Your Excellency, President of the Republic of Ghana, His Excellency John Dramani Mahama. To Honorable Ministers of State, Majesties and Royalties, Esteemed Traditional Leaders, Representatives of the African Union and the United Nations, to my Ghanaian sisters and brothers, Her Excellency Dr. Erieka Bennett, American businessmen George and Tim, Maurice Cheatham, K.O.D., Natalie Jackson, Ariane Simone, and to my brothers and sisters of the global African family. I greet you in humility.
I greet you in solidarity. As a member of the African diaspora living in America, it is my profound honor to stand here in the motherland to be here not as a guest, but as family, not as an observer, but as a descendant carrying the history in my bones. Yesterday, Your Excellency, I spent the day revisiting Cape Coast with my wife and 25 American lawyers in my delegation.
I walked the path our ancestors were forced to walk. I touched the waters they were made to bathe in. I stood in the dungeons where humanity was denied, but the African spirit was never broken.
And then I stepped through the door of no return, but unlike our ancestors, I was granted the privilege they never knew. I walked back through the door of return, and above that door were the words that changed me. They said, “welcome back home.”
It was not symbolism, that was truth. The African diaspora did not lose Africa. We were taken from Africa, but Africa never left us.
As Dr. Kwame Nkrumah reminded the world with his powerful pan-African vision, I am not African because I was born in Africa, but because Africa was born in me. Africa was born in our resistance. Africa was born in our survival.
Africa was born in our insistence on dignity and justice and repair. I stand before you as the civil rights lawyer who championed justice for Trayvon Martin, the 17-year-old black American in 2012 who was walking home with his hoodie and a bag of Skittles and a can of iced tea and was racially profiled and shot and killed by a neighborhood watch volunteer. And President Barack Obama said, “if I had a son, he would look like Trayvon.”
I stand before you as the civil rights lawyer who represented Breonna Taylor, our sister in Louisville, Kentucky, who the police kicked in her front door at one o’clock in the morning, executing a no-knock warrant and mutilated that young princess’s body with eight bullet holes while she was practically naked in her own home. And I stand before you as the civil rights lawyer who championed justice for George Floyd, who was killed in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with a police officer’s knee on his neck for nine minutes and 29 seconds while he said, I can’t breathe, 28 times. And the whole world said, until we get justice for George Floyd, none of us can breathe.
But more importantly, I stand before you as a descendant of the survivors of the transatlantic slave trade. I represent families across the diaspora who still live with the consequences of enslavement, colonialism, racial violence. For us, reparative justice is not abstract.
It is a lived reality. We are one people. No one can divide us but us.
No one can unite us but us. Reparative justice, just as the enemies of equality believe and are unapologetic in their white supremacist beliefs, we, as children of Africa, must be unapologetic defenders of black life, black liberty, and black humanity. Reparations are not charity.
They are not symbolic gestures. They are not moral. They are a moral and legal obligation owed for centuries for our stolen labor, our stolen land, our stolen resources, our stolen lives, and our stolen futures.
I so humbly thank His Excellency President John Dramati Mahama for that historic speech in New York City at the United Nations. I applaud you. We stand for you for that historic proclamation on behalf of all of Africa.
Because President Mahama, your leadership has let Ghana show the world what moral leadership looks like. And we need it now today more than ever by opening the door of the return, by welcoming the diaspora home, by affirming that Africa’s future is inseparable from the fate of her dispersed children. Ghana’s leadership sends a message that echoes beyond the continent.
That message is one that healing requires truth, justice requires courage, and reconciliation without repair is incomplete. Let this summit here in Accra, Ghana, mark a turning point where Africa and her diaspora stand together, not divided by oceans, not imprisoned by history, but united in purpose, not asking for recognition, but demanding repair, not waiting for justice, but organizing to claim it ourselves. In conclusion, I stand with you.
I walk with you. I commit my voice, my work, to ensure that the descendants of the Africa enslaved and the colonized are no longer to wait for justice that is already overdue. May our solidarity be unwavering, may our actions be collected, and may Africa and her diaspora rise together to shape the future we deserve.
Just like we made winning legal arguments for Trayvon Martin to get justice, and we made winning legal arguments for Breonna Taylor to get justice, and we made winning arguments for George Floyd to get justice, we are prepared to make winning arguments for Africa and all of the diaspora to get reparations now, reparations today, reparations for Africa.
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