Callie House

Callie House (1861–1928) was a leader of the National Ex-Slave Mutual Relief, Bounty and Pension Association, one of the first organizations to campaign for reparations for slavery in the United States. She was prosecuted for her efforts to secure reparations and was jailed after her conviction by an all white male jury.

Biography Callie House, a widow, mother, and former slave, became a national leader of the ex-slave pension movement. House was born enslaved in Rutherford County, near Nashville, Tennessee. At the age of 22, she married William House. They had six children, five of whom survived. After William died, House supported her family by being a washerwoman. At 36, she began organizing hundreds of thousands of people calling for US reparations, building a powerful movement for which she was unjustly imprisoned in 1916.

National Ex-Slave Mutual Relief, Bounty, and Pension Association While slavery was officially abolished following the 13th Amendment, many former enslaved persons were forced into sharecropping and doing menial labor as they had no financial freedom or resources. With no promise of economic relief or security from the government, House and Isaiah H. Dickerson traveled to former slave states to gather support for the National Ex-Slave Mutual Relief, Bounty and Pension Association (MRB&PA). Without evidence, only the Post Office Department could accuse organizations such as MRB&PA by citing fraud and arguing that US mail was being used to defraud slaves.

Arrest, trial and imprisonment The US Postal Service's accusations of fraud culminated in 1916 with House's arrest. She was convicted by an all-male, all-white jury and sentenced to one year in prison in Jefferson City, Missouri. House's arrest dampened the national reparations movement, which struggled on through local branches until the 1930s.

Legacy In 2015 Vanderbilt University's African American and Diaspora Studies Program renamed its research arm the Callie House Research Center for the Study of Black Cultures and Politics.