A Black community in Illinois may finally be getting reparations.
This month, as we celebrate Black History Month, Black Evanston residents are celebrating the recently approved reparations program. On Feb 5, Evanston’s Reparations Committee announced plans to issue reparations payments to 44 additional residents this summer.
“Over the next few weeks, residents assigned numbers 127 through 171 will be contacted to let them know their payment is on the way,” Tasheik Kerr, assistant to the city manager, said per The Chicago Tribune.
The $25,000 payments each resident receives are intended to help cover housing costs.
In 2019, the Evanston Reparations Committee became the first government-funded initiative in the US to provide reparations to the direct descendants of Black Evanston Residents who experienced housing discrimination between 1919 and 1969. The city is also the first in the nation to pass a reparations plan with a pledge of $10 million over a decade.
Since then, the state has reportedly received $276,588 for the Reparations Fund through Evanston’s real estate transfer tax, per the Chicago Tribune. However, as of Jan. 31, the fund has not received any donations, which has impacted its ability to distribute reparations.
“It’s really important for people to understand we pay as we have the money, and it’s not that we’re withholding from paying everyone,” Harris said, according to The Daily Northwestern. “It’s just we have to accumulate the funds to make sure we can pay.”
As the city continues to explore different solutions to sustain the reparations fund, including the possibility of taxing Delta-8 THC products, the meeting also included updates on other initiatives supporting Black communities, such as its Family Roots Pilot Program, which aims to help Black communities connect with their ancestry through free DNA tests.
