​Reparations

At Yearly Meeting 2022, Quakers committed to making practical reparations for the transatlantic slave trade, colonialism and economic exploitation. This page offers some resources to help meetings think about this work.

Yearly Meeting's decision asked all individuals and bodies within the Yearly Meeting to learn about the background to the reparations movement and to consider how reparations might be made for Quaker involvement in the transatlantic slave trade and colonialism. This page provides background and resources to help you to do this, individually and with your Quaker community, and will showcase work happening across the Yearly Meeting on this.

Background to our decision

To better understand the decision please see:

• minutes from Yearly Meeting (PDF), especially Minute 27 and Minute 33
• Yearly Meeting 2022 Epistle (PDF) (the letter to all Quakers summarising the detail and spirit of the Yearly Meeting) is also helpful
• the Swarthmore Lecture (offsite link), 'Perceiving the temperature of the water' by Helen Minnis, which addressing issues of white privilege within the Quaker movement and scientific community
• Ann Morgan, of Lancaster Meeting, shares her research about Quaker involvement in the slave trade in the 18th century - watch now on Vimeo

If this is new, then you may find preparation materials and session information from Yearly Meeting 2022 and 2021 helpful.