Born in 1861 into slaveholding Rutherford County, Callie Guy, later known as Callie House, was a pioneering African American political activist who campaigned for slave reparations in the burgeoning Jim Crow-era American South. In her youth, Callie House lived with her widowed mother, sister, and her sister’s husband, Charlie House. In 1883, she married William House, a possible relation to her sister’s husband, and together they had five children. For an occupation, House took in laundry from other African Americans and from white patrons to support her family. In the mid-1890s, possibly spurred by greater economic opportunities and wider kinship networks, Callie House moved her family to south Nashville.
In south Nashville, various pro-reparations movements, advertised in pamphlets circulated throughout the local African American community, intrigued House. Inspired, House teamed with Isaiah Dickerson to organize the National Ex-Slave Mutual Relief, Bounty, and Pension Association in 1894. Before moving to Nashville, Dickerson worked as a political activist for William Vaughan, a white newspaper editor of the Omaha, Nebraska, Daily Democrat, who sought reparations for African Americans as a way to supply the South with much needed capital. Dissatisfied with the paternalistic mission of Vaughn’s organization, Callie House and Isaiah Dickerson traveled extensively throughout southern and border states gathering support for the new organization that would provide relief and services on a local level while agitating for reparations on a national level. In 1898, Tennessee laws chartered the Ex-Slave Pension Association that House and Dickerson started. This organization, unique among other assistance organizations, was open to everyone regardless of religious affiliation, financial standing, or color, and functioned on both a local and national level.
On a local level, the National Ex-Slave Mutual Relief, Bounty, and Pension Association functioned similarly to immigrant aid societies that emerged in urban areas in the early 1900s and existed throughout African American communities following the demise of the Freedman’s Bureau.
The need to HEAL from the Traumatic impact of the enslavement of our Ancestors and by default, our current experiences, behaviors and ideological beliefs about self and others, has not changed. Our Beloved SiStren Goddess Callie [Guy] House noted the need for REPARATIONS even BACK THEN. Consider M.E. moving in the SPIRIT or Our Beloved Mother Callie House!
N'COBRA: National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America
