# Quote — Nikole Hannah-Jones, The 1619 Project: Born on the Water

> Reparations amount to a societal obligation in a nation where our Constitution sanctioned slavery, Congress passed laws protecting it, and our federal government initiated, condoned, and practiced legal racial segregation and discrimination against Black Americans until half a century ago. And so it is the federal government that would pay [reparations].

- Author: [Nikole Hannah-Jones](https://www.leafyquotes.com/nikole-hannah-jones.md)
- Book: [The 1619 Project: Born on the Water](https://www.leafyquotes.com/nikole-hannah-jones/the-1619-project-born-on-the-water.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Nikole_Hannah-Jones#The_1619_Project_(2019)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/nikole-hannah-jones/the-1619-project-born-on-the-water/reparations-amount-to-a-societal

## More from this book

> White Americans desire to be free of a past they do not want to remember, while Black Americans remain bound to a past they can never forget.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/nikole-hannah-jones/the-1619-project-born-on-the-water/white-americans-desire.md)

> While history is what happened, it is also, just as important, how we think about what happened and what we unearth and choose to remember about what happened

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/nikole-hannah-jones/the-1619-project-born-on-the-water/while-history-is-what.md)

> If we are truly a great nation, the truth cannot destroy us.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/nikole-hannah-jones/the-1619-project-born-on-the-water/if-we-are.md)