EVANSTON, Ill. — The proposal in Evanston, a lakefront suburb of
Chicago, was both pioneering and rare: a blueprint to begin distributing $10
million in reparations to Black residents of the city in the form of housing
grants.
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“It is the start,” said Robin Rue Simmons, an alderman and an
architect of the measure. “It is the reckoning. We’re really proud as a city to
be leading the nation toward repair and justice.”
In Evanston, a city of 73,000 people that is home to
Northwestern University and known for its liberal politics, members of the City
Council said they were taking concrete steps that go beyond proposals that have
emerged in American cities in recent years, committing funds to a city
reparations program intended to address historical racism and discrimination.
But as the details of how the money would be distributed are
beginning to take shape, elected officials, residents and activists for racial
equity in the city say they are far from united on the specifics.
When the City Council overwhelmingly agreed in 2019 to create a
reparations fund, it planned to use private donations and tax revenue from the
sales of recreational marijuana, now legal in Illinois. The first phase of
spending from the reparations fund will begin with $400,000 in housing grants
toward home repairs, mortgage assistance or down payments toward a new home.
The grants take a different approach from the common view of
reparations as cash payments to a wider group of Black Americans who have
suffered from discrimination rooted in slavery.
In Evanston, the housing grants are more narrowly targeted to
residents who can show that they or their ancestors were victims of redlining
and other discriminatory 20th-century housing practices in the city that
limited the neighborhoods where Black people could live. Eligible applicants
could be descendants of an Evanston resident who lived in the city between 1919
and 1969; or they could have experienced housing discrimination because of city
policies after 1969.
It is not clear how many people in Evanston would qualify, city
officials said, and the number of available grants — of up to $25,000 each — is
small. The population of Evanston is 17 percent Black, 59 percent white and 12
percent Latino, according to census data.
The choice to provide housing grants rather than cash payments
has raised concern among some Evanston residents, including one member of the
City Council, Cicely L. Fleming, who voted against the first phase of spending
on the reparations plan in a vote Monday night.
“I want to be clear, I 100 percent support reparations,” she
said in an interview. “What I can’t support is a housing program being termed
as reparations. We are potentially setting precedent.”
The resolution passed 8-1, and dozens of residents spoke at the
meeting, with most in favor of the measure.
City officials say they do not have the authority to give direct
payments to residents without leaving them with a tax burden; under the housing
program, grants are paid directly to banks or businesses. And the officials
said they hoped the reparations fund would be complemented by larger efforts
from the federal government and other entities.
In Washington, Congress has debated a bill that would create a
commission to study the reparations issue more closely.
The bill, HR 40, was last considered in 2019, and it refers to
the Civil War-era broken promise to give former slaves “402m and a mule.” Under
the bill, $12 million would be spent to establish a commission to study the
history of slavery and discrimination and create a proposal for remedies.
At a hearing of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on
Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties last month, Herschel Walker, a
former football star who is Black, argued against reparations, saying they are
divisive.
“Reparations teach separation,” Walker said. “Slavery ended over
130 years ago. How can a father ask his son to spend prison time for a crime he
committed?”
Leaders of the Jesuit conference of priests said last week that
they would pledge $100 million to benefit the descendants of the enslaved
people the order once owned, the largest effort toward reparations by the
Catholic Church yet.
In Evanston, the remainder of the $10 million fund has yet to be
determined, but the process is expected to unfold in a series of public
meetings this year.
Many residents, in a city where signs in front yards promoting
racial justice and equity are commonplace, say they are watching the
reparations debate closely, whether or not they will personally receive money
from it.
Sebastian Nalls, a 20-year-old junior at Purdue University who
ran unsuccessfully for Evanston mayor, said he worried that the current plan
was not expansive enough and that other cities would mimic the housing program
and refer to it as reparations.
“It’s detrimental to the larger movement of reparations,” he
said. “Because media and municipalities will take this program at face value
and they will use it as a blueprint. Giving $400,000 to 16 Black people in a town
of 12,000 Black residents is not reparation.”
Mark Christian, 51, an operations manager from Evanston, said
that he was in favor of the city’s efforts on reparations, as he walked through
a park in the city Monday afternoon.
He is a native of Milwaukee, and his family had not lived in
Evanston long enough to be eligible under the housing program that was debated.
But he was supportive of its goals.
“I think anything to help Black people get what they’ve lost due
to slavery and systemic racism — every little bit helps,” he said.
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