Johnson v. McAdoo

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Washington Railway Electric Company v. Scala

Johnson v. McAdoo, 244 U.S. 643 (1917)

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by the United States Supreme Court

Taylor v. Drainage District Number Fifty-Six of Emmet County Iowa

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Johnson v. McAdoo, 244 U.S. 643 (1917), was a class-action lawsuit filed in 1915 in US federal court seeking reparations for slavery in the amount of 68 million dollars, the amount of cotton tax that was collected between 1862 and 1868 on cotton and held by the U.S. Treasury Department. Since its collection in the 1860s, the tax money was held by the Treasury Department for next fifty years without distribution due to issues regarding the appropriateness of collecting the tax on cotton produced by slaves. Recognizing that the $68 million had no takers for the prior 50 years, the National Ex-Slave Mutual Relief, Bounty and Pension Association, an organization founded in 1896 by former slaves Callie House and Isaiah H. Dickerson as one of the first organizations to campaign for reparations for slavery in the United States, saw an opportunity for a court to give the government collected tax money to former slaves and their descendants in equity. The plaintiffs sought to have the court order the Treasury Department to perform the specific act of giving the $68 million to the plaintiff class made up of descendants of slaves and former slaves as being a fair resolution to the lawsuit. Lead plaintiff H. N. Johnson was a former slave. Defendant William G. McAdoo was the United States Secretary of the Treasury at the time the lawsuit was filed in 1915. Johnson v. McAdoo was the first documented chattel slavery reparations litigation in the US at the federal level. The lawsuit was unsuccessful and the U.S. Supreme Court agreed with the decision by the Court of Appeals of the District of Columbia to denied the claim.

4012760Johnson v. McAdoo, 244 U.S. 643 (1917) — Syllabus
1917the United States Supreme Court

United States Supreme Court

244 U.S. 643

H. N. Johnson et al. v. William G. McAdoo

Appeal from the Court of Appeals of the District of Columbia

No. 897 Argued: April 30, 1917. --- Decided: May 7, 1917.

Court Documents

Per Curiam Opinion of the Court

[p643]

Mr. Cornelius J. Jones for appellants.
Mr. Solicitor General Davis for appellee.
Motion to affirm submitted April 30, 1917.
Decided May 7, 1917.

Per Curium.

This work is in the public domain in the United States because it is a work of the United States federal government (see 17 U.S.C. 105).

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