Meet Lotte Lieb Dula: FFRN! Advocate, Inaugural Contributor, and Reparations Champion

Briayna Cuffie (L) and Lotte Lieb Dula with Reparations4Slavery.

Within 24 hours of finding her 2nd great grandfather’s plantation ledger and discovering she had ancestral connections with enslavers, Lotte realized reparations was something she must  commit to.  But what, she wondered, should a white person do?

This was in January of 2018, before reparations became a “mainstream” topic.  She’d found the N’COBRA website (National Coalition of Black for Reparations in America), learned more about why reparations are due, but had found nothing to help guide her as a white person wanting to make reparations.

Later that year, Lotte discovered  Coming to the Table, a group committed to “Taking America Beyond the Legacy of Slavery.” After studying their Reparations Guide, joining their Reparations Working Group and co-founding a CTTT chapter in Denver, her work began in earnest.  She envisioned creating a portal for white people, to help navigate the reparations landscape: from understanding  the role slavery and its afteraffects played in creating the racial wealth gap, to helping people discover where their own families’ genealogy  intersects with this history, to guiding them though options and ideas for creating their own path of repair.

From the beginning, Lotte explains, the Reparations4Slavery (R4S) site was a collaboration between herself and Briayna Cuffie.  Briayna is Lotte’s African-American partner on the site; she provides racial equity input for all materials added to the site, created the site’s extensive library and writes essays on the topic of repair.   The two met mid-2018 though CTTT. 

After 6 months of long conversations between Lotte and Briayna, and hundreds of hours of research, Reparations4Slavery.com launched in January of 2019.  There’s  breadth and depth to its compendium of information – including personal stories, educational curricula, resources for personal reparative work, and reparations updates.  It’s as user friendly and engaging as a website can be.  R4S also sends a regular newsletter that has 1000+ subscribers.  Check it out! 

Lotte’s goal?   In her own words, “… to help white people become fearless in committing to reparations work.  If I can share resources, or shed light,” she says, “so that others are able to step up and commit to repair, I’ll have accomplished my goal..”  She sees herself as a reparations cartographer, who charted a path of repair for herself and now has tools to offer others on their journeys.  “It has to be personal,” she explains, “it’s about more than writing a check, it’s about repairing the harm our families have perpetrated and then working with African Americans to heal our communities.”

In addition to her work with R4S and CTTT, Lotte lectures to organizations and convenes  a 24- session course based on the website’s curricula.   She partners with the African American Redress Network in offering  independent study and research projects  to HBCU students, and has recently founded  Reparations Circle Denver, at The Denver Foundation.  Lotte has also collaborated with FFRN! in its work with   a grassroots coalition of 350 organizations  advocating for passage of the reparations bill  HR-40.

When FRNN! launched in January 2019, a year after R4S,  Lotte was its first contributor and continues to be a generous supporter.   “FFRN is doing really important work in supporting NAARC’s 10-Point Reparations Plan,” Lotte explains, ‘NAARC is one of the pre-eminent African-American organizations in the reparations movement, and the first to create a way for white people to participate”   I always recommend that  white people join  the Fund For Reparations NOW!,  and I’m honored  to  collaborate  with FFRN! myself .”