UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

CECILE “WHOOPI” GOLDBERG, on behalf of herself and all others similarly situated,
Plaintiff,

v. **Civil Action No.: _________

THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Defendant.

CLASS ACTION COMPLAINT FOR COMPENSATORY DAMAGES, UNJUST ENRICHMENT, AND DECLARATORY RELIEF
DEMAND FOR JURY TRIAL

I. NATURE OF THE ACTION

1. This is a class action lawsuit seeking redress for one of the most profound and unrectified crimes against humanity and labor exploitation in the history of the United States. The Plaintiff Class, descendants of enslaved and subsequently exploited Afro-American agricultural laborers, seek compensation for centuries of forced and under-compensated labor that built the foundational wealth of the nation, specifically focusing on the cultivation and harvesting of cotton.
2. This action addresses the systemic, government-sanctioned theft of labor, spanning the period of chattel slavery (1619-1865) through the era of de facto slavery under Jim Crow, sharecropping, and convict leasing, which functionally extended involuntary, uncompensated, or grossly under-compensated cotton labor well into the 20th century.
3. The lawsuit seeks damages for 1) Lost Wages for labor perpetually extracted without compensation or with compensation rendered meaningless by state-sponsored fraud and coercion, and 2) Physical Injury and Pain and Suffering due to the inherent dangers of cotton harvesting, including permanent damage to fingers and hands from cotton boll husks and thorns, injuries the Defendant’s legal and economic systems ignored.

II. JURISDICTION AND VENUE

4. Jurisdiction is conferred upon this Court pursuant to the Federal Tort Claims Act, 28 U.S.C. §§ 1346(b), 2671-2680, and pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1331 (federal question). This action also arises under the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution.
5. Venue is proper in this District pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1391(e) because the Defendant resides here and a substantial part of the events giving rise to the claims occurred under the authority of federal officers located in this District.

III. PARTIES

6. Plaintiff Cecile “Whoopi” Goldberg is a citizen of the United States and a resident of New York. Ms. Goldberg is a descendant of persons enslaved in the Southern United States who were forced to labor in cotton cultivation. She brings this action on behalf of herself and as representative of the Plaintiff Class.
7. Defendant The United States of America is a federal sovereign entity that, through its laws, policies, active enforcement, and deliberate failures to protect, authorized, perpetuated, and profited from the system of chattel slavery and its successor systems of labor exploitation specifically in the cotton industry.

IV. CLASS ALLEGATIONS

8. Plaintiff brings this action pursuant to Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 23(a) and 23(b)(2) and (b)(3) on behalf of the following class (the “Class”):
   All living Afro-American descendants of persons who were forced to labor in the cultivation and harvesting of cotton in the United States from 1619 through the 20th century under conditions of slavery, peonage, sharecropping, or convict leasing.
9. The Class is so numerous that joinder of all members is impracticable. Millions of individuals are estimated to be within the Class.
10. There are questions of law and fact common to the Class that predominate over any questions affecting only individual members, including:
    a. Whether the Defendant, through its organic laws and actions, established and maintained a system of cotton labor that constituted unlawful taking and unjust enrichment;
    b. Whether the Defendant failed in its most basic duty to protect a class of persons from brutal exploitation, resulting in systemic physical injury and economic deprivation;
    c. The appropriate methods for calculating the aggregate value of stolen wages and labor;
    d. The nature and extent of physical injuries endemic to forced cotton harvesting.
11. The claims of the named Plaintiff are typical of the claims of the Class.
12. The named Plaintiff will fairly and adequately protect the interests of the Class.
13. A class action is superior to other available methods for the fair and efficient adjudication of this controversy.

V. FACTUAL ALLEGATIONS
A. The System of Government-Sanctioned Theft

14. From the colonial period through 1865, the federal and state governments legally defined persons of African descent as chattel property, creating the legal framework for their uncompensated labor in cotton fields.
15. The Defendant, through its Constitution prior to 1865, expressly protected the institution of slavery (e.g., Three-Fifths Clause, Fugitive Slave Clause) and used its military and judicial power to enforce the return of enslaved persons, directly facilitating the cotton labor system.
16. Post-1865, the Defendant, through acts of omission and commission, allowed the rise of “Black Codes,” sharecropping, peonage, and convict leasing—systems of debt bondage and coercion that perpetuated involuntary, underpaid labor in cotton fields for generations after nominal emancipation.
17. Federal and state governments systematically failed to enforce contracts with sharecroppers, allowed fraudulent accounting by landowners, and refused to prosecute violence and intimidation used to bind laborers to the land, creating a de facto continuation of uncompensated cotton labor.
18. The Defendant and its constituent states profited immensely from this labor system through tax revenues, economic growth, and global trade dominance built on the backbone of stolen Afro-American labor.

B. The Specific Injury of Cotton Harvesting

19. The manual harvesting of cotton is and has been an injurious process. The cotton boll, the fruit of the plant, is surrounded by a hard, sharp husk.
20. For centuries, Plaintiff Class members were forced to pick cotton by hand, repeatedly reaching into these husks, resulting in inevitable and constant lacerations, puncture wounds, and abrasions to the fingers and hands.
21. These injuries led to chronic pain, infection, permanent scarring, loss of sensitivity, and disfigurement. This was a known and unavoidable hazard of the work.
22. The Defendant’s legal and economic system treated the persons performing this labor as property or as expendable commodities, offering no right to safe working conditions, no compensation for injury, and no recourse for the permanent physical damage inflicted.

C. The Unjust Enrichment and Quantifiable Damages

23. Economists and historians have calculated the value of the labor extracted from enslaved Afro-Americans. Conservative estimates range into the tens of trillions of modern dollars.
24. The cotton-specific labor, which fueled the “King Cotton” economy, represented a substantial portion of this value. The Defendant, and the national economy it governed, was unjustly enriched by this stolen labor.
25. The Plaintiff Class, the direct descendants of those laborers, are the rightful beneficiaries of the value of that labor, which was systematically denied to their ancestors and thus denied to their familial lineages, contributing directly to the racial wealth gap that persists today.

VI. CAUSES OF ACTION
COUNT I: UNJUST ENRICHMENT AND RESTITUTION
(Against the United States)

26. Plaintiff repeats and realleges the preceding paragraphs as if fully set forth herein.
27. The United States, through its legal and political institutions, knowingly received, accepted, and retained the benefits of the forced, uncompensated, and under-compensated labor of the Plaintiff Class’s ancestors in the cotton industry.
28. It is against equity and good conscience for the United States to retain the enormous wealth and economic advantages derived from this stolen labor while the descendants of those laborers continue to suffer the economic and physical consequences.
29. The United States must be compelled to disgorge its unjust enrichment and provide restitution to the Plaintiff Class.

COUNT II: VIOLATION OF THE THIRTEENTH AMENDMENT – BADGES AND INCIDENTS OF SLAVERY
(Against the United States)

30. Plaintiff repeats and realleges the preceding paragraphs as if fully set forth herein.
31. The Thirteenth Amendment not only abolished slavery but granted Congress the power to eliminate its “badges and incidents.”
32. The Defendant’s failure to provide any remedy for centuries of stolen labor, and its active perpetuation of exploitative systems after 1865, created and perpetuated a permanent, inheritable economic disability—a direct “badge and incident” of slavery.
33. This unaddressed wrong constitutes a continuing violation of the Thirteenth Amendment’s guarantees.

COUNT III: NEGLIGENCE AND FAILURE TO PROTECT
(Pursuant to the Federal Tort Claims Act)

34. Plaintiff repeats and realleges the preceding paragraphs as if fully set forth herein.
35. The United States owed a duty of care to its residents, even in the face of state laws, to protect them from crimes against humanity and systemic labor exploitation.
36. The United States breached this duty by legally authorizing slavery, failing to prevent its continuation under other names, and failing to secure the basic civil and economic rights of freed persons, leaving them vulnerable to the same exploitative labor and physical injury.
37. This breach was the direct and proximate cause of the Plaintiff Class’s injuries: the loss of inherited wealth and the chronic, uncompensated physical damage from cotton harvesting suffered by their ancestors, the effects of which are felt intergenerationally.

VII. PRAYER FOR RELIEF

WHEREFORE, Plaintiff Cecile “Whoopi” Goldberg, individually and on behalf of the proposed Class, respectfully requests that this Court enter judgment against the United States of America as follows:
A. Certify the proposed Class and appoint Plaintiff and her counsel as Class Representatives and Class Counsel;
B. Declare that the Defendant unjustly enriched itself through the stolen labor of the Plaintiff Class’s ancestors in the cotton industry;
C. Award compensatory damages to the Class, in an amount to be proven at trial, for:
1. The fair market value of all wages and labor stolen from their ancestors through forced cotton cultivation;
2. Damages for the physical injury, pain and suffering, and permanent disability caused by the hazardous conditions of cotton harvesting;
D. Award restitution and disgorgement of all profits unjustly retained by the Defendant as a result of the stolen labor;
E. Grant any and all other relief that this Court deems just and proper.

VIII. DEMAND FOR JURY TRIAL

Plaintiff respectfully demands a trial by jury on all issues so triable.

Dated: December 21, 2025

Respectfully submitted,

By: ____________________________
CECILE “WHOOPI” GOLDBERG,
Individually and on behalf of all others similarly situated

Attorneys for Plaintiff and the Proposed Class

[Law Firm Information]

Calculating lost wages for centuries of forced and exploited labor in the cotton industry is an extraordinarily complex task, but economists and historians have developed methodologies for estimation. The final per-person payment would depend on the legal framework established, the claimant pool, and the scope of damages.

Here is a breakdown of the calculation, moving from the aggregate national economic injury to a potential per-person distribution.

Step 1: Estimating the Aggregate Value of Stolen Labor in Cotton (1619-1940)

This calculation focuses on the core period of forced cotton labor, from slavery through the peak of exploitative sharecropping.

A. The Slavery Era (1619-1865):

• Key Study: Economist Thomas Craemer (Univ. of Connecticut) estimated in 2020 the present value of wages for all enslaved labor in the United States.
• Methodology: He used census data, slave prices, and historical wage rates for comparable free labor (e.g., farmhands), then compounded the total at a modest rate of interest (3%) to the present.
• Aggregate Finding: Craemer’s conservative estimate for all enslaved labor was $20 trillion in 2020 dollars. More ambitious models run as high as $97 trillion.
• Cotton-Specific Allocation: Historians estimate that at its peak, about 60% of all enslaved people were involved in cotton cultivation. Applying this percentage gives a conservative estimate:
  • Conservative: $20 trillion * 0.60 = $12 trillion from cotton slavery.
  • Higher-Range: $97 trillion * 0.60 = $58.2 trillion.

B. The Post-Slavery Exploitation Era (1865-1940):

• Period: “Emancipation” led to sharecropping, peonage, and convict leasing—systems that paid negligible wages (often resulting in net debt) and were maintained by fraud and violence.
• Calculation Method: This requires estimating the difference between the market wage for a free agricultural laborer and what was actually paid (or charged back via debt) to Black cotton workers.
• Historical Data: Per-day wages for farm labor circa 1900 were ~$0.75-$1.00. Sharecroppers often received a fraction of this or ended the year in debt.
• Aggregate Estimate: Economist Mark Paul (with others) has included post-1865 discrimination in broader reparations estimates. A reasonable, conservative estimate for 75 years of systematically underpaid cotton labor could be an additional 20-30% of the slavery-era value.
  • Add: $12 trillion * 0.25 = $3 trillion.

C. Total Aggregate Economic Loss from Cotton Labor:

• Conservative Ballpark: $12 trillion (slavery) + $3 trillion (post-slavery) = $15 trillion.
• Higher-Range Ballpark: $58.2 trillion + (~$14.5 trillion) = ~$72.7 trillion.

Step 2: Calculating Per-Person Distribution

This depends entirely on the definition of the claimant class.

Scenario A: Direct Lineal Descendants of Enslaved & Exploited Cotton Workers (The Most Likely Class)

• Estimated Class Size: According to the U.S. Census and genealogical studies, there are approximately 40-45 million Black Americans who are descendants of persons enslaved in the U.S.
• Per-Person Calculation (Conservative Aggregate):
  • $15,000,000,000,000 / 40,000,000 people = $375,000 per person.
• Per-Person Calculation (Higher-Range Aggregate):
  • $72,700,000,000,000 / 40,000,000 people = $1,817,500 per person.

Scenario B: Including Pain & Suffering Damages for Physical Injury
The complaint specifically mentions “damages to fingers from cotton thorns.” This is a non-economic damage component that a jury or legislative act could assign.

• Methodology: Could be a multiplier on the economic damages (e.g., 1.5x) or a flat sum added per claimant.
• Example Flat Sum: Adding a $50,000 “physical injury and suffering” award per claimant.
  • Conservative Example: $375,000 + $50,000 = $425,000 per person.

Step 3: Critical Caveats & Real-World Implementation Variables

1. Payment Structure: This would almost certainly not be a single cash payment. It would likely be a combination of:
   • Direct Cash Grants (for living individuals).
   • Creation of a Sovereign Wealth Fund for community investment (housing, education, business grants).
   • Direct Payments to Elderly Claimants (e.g., those over 55), with trusts/funds for younger generations.
   • Debt Cancellation & Homeownership Grants.
2. Defining the Class: The biggest legal and logistical hurdle. Would it require documented lineage to a specific enslaved or sharecropping ancestor? Or would it use a broader proxy (e.g., self-identified Black American descendant with at least one ancestor living in the U.S. before 1900)? The tighter the definition, the smaller the class and the higher the per-person payment.
3. Scope of the Lawsuit: This complaint focuses only on cotton. A comprehensive reparations plan would include other stolen labor (tobacco, rice, domestic work, construction, etc.), stolen inheritances (e.g., destroyed Black Wall Streets), and systematic devaluation of property (redlining). Cotton, however, represents the single largest sector.

Summary Table of Estimates

Component	Conservative Estimate (2020 $)	Higher-Range Estimate (2020 $)	Notes
1. Stolen Cotton Labor (1619-1865)	$12 Trillion	$58.2 Trillion	Based on 60% allocation of total enslaved labor value.
2. Stolen/Underpaid Wages (1865-1940)	+ $3 Trillion	+ ~$14.5 Trillion	Estimate for exploitative sharecropping/peonage era.
3. TOTAL AGGREGATE LOSS	$15 Trillion	~$72.7 Trillion	Base for per-person calculation.
4. Per Person (40M claimants)	$375,000	$1,817,500	Direct lineal descendants only.
5. + Pain & Suffering Add-On	+$50,000	+$50,000 (or %)	For chronic physical injury.
6. FINAL PER PERSON RANGE	~$425,000	~$1.85 Million+	Could be paid as hybrid cash/trust/grants.

Conclusion: Based on established economic models, a lawsuit or reparations program focused solely on lost wages from cotton labor could justify a per-person payment to descendants ranging from several hundred thousand dollars to over $1.8 million, depending on the aggressiveness of the calculations and the final definition of the claimant class. This represents a quantifiable effort to return a fraction of the wealth created by generations of stolen labor and physical suffering.