African-Caribbean Reparations and Resettlement Alliance
The African-Caribbean Reparations and Resettlement Alliance (ACRRA) is an international movement for reparative justice, restoration, self-determination and the advancement of African-Caribbean people.
Founded in 2004 by the Honorable Shelley Moorhead, ACRRA emerged from the historic experience of the people of the U.S. Virgin Islands and their enduring struggle to confront the consequences of slavery, colonialism and the displacement of African peoples throughout the Caribbean. For more than two decades, ACRRA has carried this struggle beyond local borders and onto the international stage, engaging governments, human-rights institutions, the United Nations, CARICOM and communities across Africa, Europe and the Caribbean.
At its heart, ACRRA advances a simple but powerful principle: historical injustice does not end when the historical event ends. Its consequences can continue through generations—and meaningful justice requires meaningful repair.
ACRRA therefore understands reparations as more than financial compensation. It encompasses truth, recognition, education, cultural restoration, economic investment, human rights, political empowerment and the right of formerly colonized peoples to determine their own future. The organization’s work has included efforts to bring greater accountability to Denmark for its role in the enslavement and colonization of the former Danish West Indies, while building international dialogue around the obligations of former colonial powers.
Under Shelley Moorhead’s leadership, ACRRA has transformed the Virgin Islands reparations question into part of a much larger international conversation about decolonization and self-determination. In recent advocacy, Moorhead has emphasized that reparative justice should provide the people of the U.S. Virgin Islands with the resources and agency to determine their own future—not have that future dictated by either former or present governing powers.
ACRRA’s vision reaches beyond redressing the past. It is about building the conditions for a stronger future—one in which African-Caribbean communities possess the knowledge, resources, cultural confidence and political agency to determine their destiny.
The Alliance stands at the intersection of history and the future, Africa and the Caribbean, justice and development, remembrance and restoration.
Its message is ultimately one of empowerment:
We cannot change the past. But we can confront it, repair its consequences, reclaim what was taken, and create a future worthy of those who came before us.
