 Fullinwider seems aware that protecting civil and political rights is not the same as making reparations, that the U.S. government did not fulfill all of its obligations to the Japanese it interred during World War II just because it released them after the war and protected their civil and political rights after that. But some write as if they believe that the post-Civil War governments would have fulfilled all of their obligations to their black citizens if only they had protected those citizens’ civil and political rights (Fullinwider 2004: 148). Others write that compensation in 1865 to the slaves for their forced or unpaid might have been “strong” (Bittker 2003: 12), and that “compensation in 1865 for blacks’ forced labor would certainly have been appropriate” (Bittker 2003: 28). But having conceded that monetary compensation would have been in order in 1865, Bittker then drops the point without comment.  Interestingly, too, he seems to think that unpaid labor is the only harm the transgressions of slavery caused the slaves or that merits any mention. This is a strange position to hold for a book titled The Case for Black Reparations, for of course unpaid labor was perhaps the least of the harms that the transgressions of slavery visited on the slaves. What about reparation for the theft of their liberty?