(FinalCall.com) -- A 1790s U.S. Treasury Department note read: "Please pay to John Hurie the balance due for the hire of Negro Emanuel for the year 1794." Few entries in America�s history ledger note the uncompensated economic contributions of enslaved Africans in the U.S. as John Hurie�s request for payment for his hired slave. The government paid Mr. Hurie, but now some of today�s Blacks want Emanuel�s descendents to be compensated for their ongoing plight on these shores.

Government�s debt to Blacks has been pending a long time. On December 2, 1863, when the "Freedom" statue was hoisted atop the dome of the U.S. Capitol, it was due to the workmanship of a slave at the Bladensburg (Maryland) Foundry, Philip Reid. He was responsible for the bronze casting that is a symbol of freedom around the world.

Between 1790 and 1863, artisans like Reid comprised half the workforce that built the White House and the Capitol. America�s Capitol City was built on the backs of slaves: Those who worked Virginia�s quarries, digging and transporting the stones to Washington; performing work required to place the cut stones on the walls; digging the trenches and ditches; and hauling lumber and other materials.

Over a 70-year period, slaves toiled from dawn to dusk building the temples to represent a country were "all men are created equal." Slaves cleared the trees and brush for the Mall and Washington boulevards that lead to the seat of a government "with liberty and justice for all."

Reid & Company never received a fair day�s pay, but the Irish and German immigrant workers who labored beside them were paid from $4.65 to $10.50 a week. Enslavers like Hurie and Reid�s owner Clark Mills received $5 a week for each of their slave�s labors.

On August 17, 2002, a million Black Americans are scheduled to convene at the U.S. Capitol to demand compensation for the works of Reid, and other ancestors who built the Capitol, and the country�s capitalistic system. Even though Colin Powell and Condeleezza Rice won�t be among them, people who feel America still owes them a debt will press their case for Black reparations. Bryan Gumbel may be missing, but those attending will be standing up for contemporary victims of "America�s Holocaust."

Before Phillip Reid�s ancestors reached America, 15 to 25 million other Africans were killed in the Middle Passage. Subsequently, enslavement of Blacks in America lasted 246 years; followed by a century of legal racial segregation and discrimination. Though America refuses to apologize to African Americans for slavery and its vestiges, the periods constitute the world�s longest running crime against humanity.

Though the Blacks in corporate America won�t be totally represented, those that do come will speak for millions of Blacks who remain economically and socially disabled by American slavery and the century of government-embraced racial discrimination that followed it. Marchers don�t expect Department of Justice�s Larry Thompson to be there, but many there will decry the disproportionate number of Black men populating America�s prisons. They�ll be there for remedies for the high rate of birth defects among impoverished Black mothers, educational opportunities, and discuss why Black unemployment rates double that of Whites year after year.

As a result of the ravages of slavery and racial strictures that followed it, Blacks in America have been consigned to the Nation�s economic bottom. A static economic gap has existed for Blacks since the Emancipation Proclamation.

On August 17th, an aggrieved community of slave descendents will gather beneath the stature of Freedom to that centuries-old debts to them will be addressed once and for all.