To the members of the African Descent-Citizens Reparations Commission,

My name is Siphiwe Baleka and my story is the story of my great, great, great, great, great grandfather Brassa Nchabra, his capture as a boy of eight years from his village of Untche in what is known today as the Republic of Guinea Bissau, his trafficking as a prisoner of the Dum Diversas War across the Atlantic to Charleston, SC where he was sold into slavery in Cary, North Carolina and was subject to state-sanctioned ethnocide - the destruction of his ancestral identity - which continues to this day. His great, great, great, great grandson, my father, Jeremiah Nathaniel Blake graduated from Fisk University in Nashville, TN and was employed by Northern Illinois Gas Company in the late 1960’s. In trying to find housing, he suffered from Chicago’s infamous discrimination and “red-lining”. Ultimately, he moved our family to the all-white Oswego suburb of Boulder Hill where we were just the second black family to live there. The rest of my story, how I became an Illinois state-champion swimmer, a graduate of Yale University and the first African American named to the All-Ivy League Swim Team and attempted to become the first black swimmer on the United States Olympic swim team, has been documented by Sports Illustrated and Fox Sports, which earned a sports Emmy for the most outstanding short documentary, Changing Lanes: The Siphiwe Baleka Story. Since then I have become equally famous or infamous, for my genealogy work and becoming the first in my family after 250 years to return to our ancestral village of Untche. I have now lived in Guinea Bissau for almost four years and am the first to receive citizenship there and have launched the country’s Decade of Return initiative. Early this year, twenty more Afro Descendants followed me and received their citizenship in their ancestral homeland through this program, including Illinois resident Joshua Roberts, thereby beginning the process of reversing and repairing the ethnocide.

The United Nations General Assembly Resolution 3384 (XXX) of 10 November 1975 known as the Declaration on the Use of Scientific and Technological Progress in the Interests of Peace and for the Benefit of Mankind proclaims that all states shall take the necessary measures, including legislative measures, to ensure that the utilization of scientific and technological achievements promotes the fullest realization of human rights and fundamental freedoms and to satisfy the material and spiritual needs for all sectors of the population.

The 2001 World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance in its resolution, the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action, acknowledged that people of African descent were victims of slavery, the slave trade and colonialism, and continue to be victims of their consequences. States agreed that slavery and slave trade are a crime against humanity and should always have been so. The advent of genetic testing that allows for the identification of one’s maternal and paternal lineages and, through autosomal genetic testing, current family linkages, is a miracle that allows for the complete reversal and repair of the ethnocide caused by enslavement. UN Resolution 3384 requires that genetic testing now be required reparations for Afro Descendants, defined at a 2002 United Nations Conference for the Rights of Minorities in La Ceiba, Honduras by nineteen (19) countries from North America, South America, Central America, to refer to the people who:

Were forcibly disposed of their homeland, Africa;
Were transported to the Americas and Slavery Diaspora for the purpose of enslavement;
Were subjected to slavery;
Were subjected to forced mixed breeding and rape;
Have experienced, through force, the loss of mother tongue, culture, and religion;
Have experienced racial discrimination due to lost ties from their original identity.

On May 25, 2023, the State of Illinois House of Representatives 103rd General Assembly passed House Resolution No. 292. The resolution calls upon the State to immediately, through its African Descent-Citizens Reparations Commission (ADCRC), provide matrilineal and patrilineal DNA testing through African Ancestry to determine the ancestral lineages and territories of origin of its Black residents so that they can seek citizenship in their ancestral homelands, if so desired. It further calls upon the State to become the first to conduct a repatriation census.

On April 10, 2024, the State of Illinois House of Representatives 103rd General Assembly passed House Resolution No. 0453 that urges support for the Family Roots Genealogy Pilot Program as it provides African American descendants of enslaved individuals the opportunity to trace their roots back to their ancestral homelands to reconnect to their ancestral heritage and to promote their well-being.

Both resolutions support the desire expressed by President Abraham Lincoln in the Emancipation Proclamation to establish a voluntary repatriation program for African descendants to return to their African ancestral homelands.

I must emphasize, however, that it is now possible, theoretically, to completely restore the ancestral lineages and genealogies of Black Illinoisians by combining the African Ancestry matrilineal and patrilineal testing with autosomal testing provided that a comprehensive database of reference populations for each ancestral group is established. Then it is a straightforward process:

Afro Descendant Illinois resident takes the African Ancestry matrilineal and patrilineal testing provided by the State of Illinois per HR 292.
Afro Descendant Illinois resident provides saliva sample to the African Kinship Reunion (TAKIR) provided by the State of Illinois per HR 0453’s Family Roots Genealogy Pilot Program.
TAKIR to assist Afro Descendant Illinois residents, through Decade of Return/Family Reunion Events, to visit the country of their maternal or paternal ancestor and matched village to meet the identified family members.

I say, theoreticalyl, because this has never been done before. However, we are close to proving that it can be done. As I stated, I have identified the village of my 5g grandfather who came from Untche. I have not yet identified if I am related to anyone in the village. This can easily be done, however, by testing members of the Balanta people in Untche through TAKIR/Family Roots Genealogy Pilot Program and adding them to the database of reference populations and then testing me to find a match. If successful, we will have proven that the simple process does indeed work. This goes beyond the current Family Roots Genealogy Pilot Program because it identifies the direct maternal and paternal ancestor that was trafficked as opposed to a remote ancestor which does not necessarily restore one’s unbroken direct ancestral lineage transmitted from mothers to daughters and fathers to sons.

The next step would then be to systematically test male and female heads of Balanta families in the thirty-nine sectors in the nine regions of Guinea Bissau and add them to the database and then test the ten Illinois members of the Balanta B’urassay History and Genealogy Society in America (BBHAGSIA), including reparations champions Kamm Howard and Robin Rue Simmons, and match them against the Balanta database. If actual Balanta family members in Guinea Bissau are identified, then the State of Illinois will have provided the most profound reparations and given to the world a process for reparative justice for what is arguably, the greatest crime against humanity. Those Illinoisians of Balanta origin could then apply for citizenship to Guinea Bissau through the Decade of Return initiative and this could be the model for lineage restoration used throughout the United States and Africa.

It should be noted that the New Afrikan Diplomatic and Civil Service Corps’ study, entitled Initial Plebiscite Survey Early Analysis, was recently released. Three hundred Afro Descendants participated from thirty-seven states with some of them living outside of the United States. Ages ranged from 16 to 85 with the average age being 51.2 with 52% males and 46% females from all demographic and political categories. Nineteen Afro Descendants living in Illinois completed the survey. Overall, questions 9 through 14 show that the majority of Descendants of Africans Enslaved in the United States still suffer ethnocide - the destruction of their natural ancestral identities (since they cannot identify who and where they come from in Africa) and proves that the original harm committed by colonial and state sanctioned ethnocide laws and policies still continue today unremedied. The study further showed that 75% of the respondents would take the African Ancestry DNA test if provided free of charge as a form of reparations.

Thus, ancestral lineage restoration needs to be among the highest priorities of the reparations movement. In Pan-Africanism and Nationality Rights For the Diaspora: A Contemporary Perspective, in Pan-Africanism, African Nationalism: Strengthening the Unity of Africa and its Diaspora edited by B.F. Banke & K. Mchombu, A. Bernard puts it this way:

“The Pan-Africanist Law of Return: Quintessential Reparations

At a very basic level, if reparation is to repair the wrongs committed against African peoples through slavery and its apprentices, colonization and imperialism, the first wrong committed was taking millions of peoples from their homeland. Those taken from Africa lost, among other things, their citizenship and this is the first thing that needs to be given back. It is morally and philosophically the first step in the journey of a thousand miles that needs to be undertaken if Africa and African peoples are to move forward in a forceful, positive and determined manner in the 21st Century.”

President Lincoln’s vision for justice at Emancipation was not limited to voluntary repatriation, however, but included autonomous self-governing colonies. General Sherman’s Special Field Order Number 15, dated 16 January 1865 provided for the newly emancipated freedmen with the self-governing colony on the South Carolina islands from Charleston south, the abandoned rice fields along the rivers for 30 miles back from the seas and the country bordering St. Johns River, Florida. Similar centers of the “New African nation” under New African Governments were established in Mississippi. Captain John Eaton, named Superintendent of Negro Affairs by General Ulysses Grant in 1862, had, by July 1864, settled 72,500 members of the new class “in cities on plantations and in freedman’s villages,” almost all of whom, Superintendent Eaton reported, were “entirely self-supporting.” Davis Bend, Mississippi was occupied by the Union Army in December 1864. Here a New African government was established with all the property under its control and with districts under New African sheriffs and judges and other officers.

I call to your attention this history so that this Commission will have a historical basis for recommending that Illinois Congressmen introduce a bill in Congress to designate the Underground Railroad locations in Illinois as a National Heritage Area (NHA) for the Afro Descendants. This is what was done for the Gullah Geechee in South Carolina, which is the only one of the fifty-five NHA’s that has been granted to Afro Descendants.

Finally, I encourage this Commission to recommend that the state of Illinois set aside territory for the Afro Descendants of Illinois to establish self-governing territories similar to the 326 Indian land areas in the U.S. administered as federal Indian territories with a view to their seeking complete decolonization and independence, as the other colonized African people on the continent of Africa have done, which is their right under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).

Members of the Commission,

I trust that I have properly framed reparations and highlighted the opportunity for the state of Illinois to become a world leader in repairing the damage of ethnocide caused by slavery and an example of protecting human rights. Your Resolutions 292 and 0453 provide a solid foundation to achieve this and only remains to be properly funded and implemented. Towards this end, I offer my services as a consultant.

Most respectfully,

Siphiwe Baleka