[2] The American Descendants of Slavery movement was founded by Yvette Carnell and Antonio Moore,[1] who co-host online ADOS radio shows.
[3] The movement has become "lightning rod for criticism on the left,"[2] and pro-Trump and right-wing figures, such as Ann Coulter and Ali Alexander, have used the #ADOS hashtag.
[3] The claim that Harris was not authentically black was amplified by right-wing figures, including Donald Trump Jr., and criticized by civil rights leaders,[3] who accused Carnell of engaging in xenophobic "birtherism.
[3] The group's first national conference, held in October 2019 at Simmons College in Louisville, Kentucky, attracted more than a thousand attendees; guest speakers included Marianne Williamson and Cornel West.
[6] In a 2020 article in Misinformation Review, a journal published by the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government (HKS), a group of authors, including academics and journalists, some affiliated with the Democratic Party-linked activist group MoveOn, analyzed postings with the #ADOS hashtag on Twitter in the runup to that year's elections, where ADOS had urged voters not to cast a presidential vote for any Democrat unless the party formally endorsed reparations.
The authors concluded that ADOS was a disinformation operation that served the interests of the political right by discouraging Black people from voting.
Stockman questioned in November 2019 whether the movement was large enough to warrant discussion on a national level but decided to print an article about the group in The Times.
"[10] Gregory Carr, co-chairman of Afro-American studies at Howard University and a longtime reparations supporter, called ADOS a "weaponized" movement that had become "indefensibly xenophobic and nativist.
[2] Alvin Bernard Tillery, Jr., an associate professor at Northwestern University, states that the issues ADOS raised on who should receive reparations will have to be reflected upon by the black community.