Anti-Freedmenism: Naming, Defining, and Confronting a Modern Form of Erasure

The Freedmen Reparations Fund Trust has issued a formal Declaration on Anti-Freedmenism to address a growing and systematic pattern of erasure, misclassification, and obstruction directed at Verified Freedmen in the United States.

Anti-Freedmenism is not abstract. It is observable, repeatable, and increasingly institutionalized. It operates through policy choices, cultural narratives, administrative classifications, and economic barriers that deny or dilute the distinct legal and historical status of Freedmen whose status derives from U.S. chattel slavery and post-1865 emancipation.

Read Declaration Here!

What Anti-Freedmenism Is

Anti-Freedmenism is defined as any action, ideology, institutional policy, omission, or suppression—direct or indirect—that denies, obscures, or obstructs the political, economic, historical, or social identity and rights of Verified Freedmen as a distinct American people.

This includes practices that:

• Reclassify Freedmen under broad racial, pan-ethnic, or immigrant-based identities that erase status

• Exclude Freedmen from status-based reparative programs through race-neutral or race-substitution frameworks

• Co-opt Freedmen history, symbols, holidays, or terminology for unrelated agendas or economic gain

• Suppress or omit Freedmen identity in education, data systems, government forms, or public discourse

• Target Freedmen advocates through harassment, defamation, or institutional retaliation

• Block Freedmen-governed entities from accessing capital, licensing, or partnerships due to status-based advocacy

Anti-Freedmenism functions much like other recognized forms of discrimination, but it is uniquely tied to status erasure rather than race alone.

Why This Declaration Matters

For decades, Freedmen have been spoken about but rarely recognized as a protected status group with enforceable standing. As reparations discussions expand nationally, a parallel trend has emerged: the expansion of eligibility frameworks that deliberately avoid recognizing Freedmen status, even while drawing on Freedmen history and labor as moral justification.

This contradiction creates material harm. When status is erased, remedies are misdirected, accountability disappears, and Freedmen are excluded from the very programs built on their ancestors’ suffering.

The Declaration establishes a clear institutional position:

Freedmen status is not optional, symbolic, or interchangeable.

Trust Standing and Enforcement

The Freedmen Reparations Fund Trust asserts standing to:

• Publicly designate Anti-Freedmenism where it occurs

• Initiate enforcement actions and formal complaints through its legal protection arm

• Restrict unauthorized use of Freedmen-governed cultural assets, terminology, and symbols

• Provide protective oversight for Verified Freedmen facing retaliation for asserting status

This is not a rhetorical document. It is a governance instrument.

Moving Forward

Anti-Freedmenism thrives in ambiguity. This Declaration removes ambiguity.

Institutions, organizations, and individuals engaging in reparative work are now on notice:

Ignoring Freedmen status while invoking Freedmen history is no longer neutral—it is discriminatory.

Recognition is not fragmentation.

Precision is not exclusion.

And status protection is not optional.

The era of silent erasure is ending.