1.   But recent legal steps in California and on the East Coast have made Lee and other African Americans think twice about the issue of slave reparations.

2.   In the past, demands for slave reparations have never found a place in the courts or Congress.

3.   Rep. John Conyers Jr., a Michigan Democrat, has sponsored a U.S. House bill to form a commission to study slave reparations.

4.   The original plan for slave reparations dates to the waning days of the Civil War.

5.   Those organizing billion-dollar class action suits against the likes of big tobacco or over slave reparations come knocking, not the other way around.