Two siblings and descendants of enslavers who operated successful cotton mills in North Carolina, Buck and Gracie Close are privately funding a basic income program in Louisiana. The program is designed to transfer wealth from them to victims of racist policing, which they see as reparations.
According to Business Insider, the program is part of the American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana under its Truth and Reconciliation Project. That project selected 12 individuals who, per the ACLU of Louisiana’s website, were “survivors of police misconduct who did not receive restitution in the courts.”
Since November 2023, each recipient selected by the project has received $1,000 a month, free financial coaching, mental health counseling, and legal expungement services. October 2024 is the last month for the payments, but the services are set to continue until at least November 2025.
According to the siblings, they were raised with the understanding that their family treated the people they enslaved with kindness, but they have since questioned that narrative.
As Gracie, who is based in Washington state, told the outlet, “We were raised with the myth of the Old South and how wonderful everybody was, and kind, and family-like with the slaves that they did hold.”
Buck told the outlet that it was a 2019 meeting with Maggy Baccinelli, a senior director with the Louisiana ACLU, that prompted him to focus on what his family was responsible for.
“She started talking about the roots of your generational wealth. She brought the subject up, and that was the spark, really, for me,” Buck said. “I was very acquainted with racism and the evils of that. But I never focused on the history of my own family.”
Buck continued, “I don’t think my mother and father hid anything from us. I think this was just the milieu of the South at that time. Nobody was questioning the methods by which ancestors had become prosperous.”
According to Baccinelli, the ACLU had begun “discussing what it would be like to go deeper into the family history and to study the arc of slavery to mass incarceration and overlay the family history onto that arc. We presented to Buck our idea about it, and he agreed, and he said that he wanted to invite his sister, Gracie, to participate.”
Gracie agreed and told Business Insider that it’s not about guilt, but responsibility. “It is time to spread the wealth and admit responsibility for our ancestors’ participation in slavery,” Gracie said. “To work for justice today, we have to consider our past.”
According to Buck, a guaranteed basic income fit what the siblings wanted to do.
“Our goal is to try to transfer wealth gained by us through the enslavement of others to descendants of the enslaved. So it fits that marker pretty well,” Buck said.
The siblings connected the benefits of their present-day luxury with the institution of slavery in a November 2023 Newsweek op-ed.
“For us, the benefits of slavery have not ended. They are a very real part of our day-to-day lives. The institution of slavery allows us to have high incomes without having
to work. It allows us the luxury of feeling secure in our lives. In contrast, the descendants of the people owned by our ancestors have had the opposite experience. Many experience poverty, and all experience structural racism, especially those in the South,” they wrote.The siblings concluded, encouraging others who benefit from a family legacy of enslavement to follow their lead.
“The decision to take this first step was not a hard one. People in similar positions as ourselves may be afraid to ask questions about their own history because they are afraid of the answers. But we have asked those questions and did not find anything to fear. Today, we encourage those of you whose families share our history as enslavers to consider doing the same. We have found joy in sharing our wealth and expect you will too.”
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