NYC Council OKs reparations study, racial injustice bill package
The New York City Council voted to pass a package of reparations bills last week that would study the city’s role in the enslavement of Africans, indigenous Americans, and their descendants in U.S. history and address continuing racial injustices — a movement that’s been met with resistance in some cities.
New York State took the historic step of creating a nine-member Community Commission on Reparations Remedies last December. The state commission is tasked with producing a written report examining the state’s legacy of slavery and making recommendations within a year. It’s only the second state after California to launch a reparations commission.
“I want to see this happen in my lifetime,” said Iyafin Olatunji, a 95-year-old Crown Heights resident, at the press conference.
There have been numerous local and citywide reparations efforts across the nation, including in Providence, Rhode Island; Evanston, Illinois; Asheville, North Carolina; and Greenbelt, Maryland.
“This monumental step will address the persistent disparities that continue to affect Black communities,” said Councilmember Farah Louis at the Sept. 12 press conference.
“The reparations movement is often misunderstood as merely a powerful compensation for the enslaved Africans, who built this country and this city, but it is far more than that,” Louis continued. “It is a testament of our unwavering commitment to acknowledging and addressing the deep rooted injustices that have plagued our societies for centuries. Generations of oppression need and require study into generations of harm.”
New York City legally sanctioned the practice of slavery for more than 200 years, and in 1730, had one of the highest rates of slave ownership in the country outside of Charleston, South Carolina, according to the New York Public Library (NYPL) Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Wall Street, between Pearl and Water Streets, hosted a world-renowned slave market for decades. The enslaved population, as the library put it, “literally built the city and was the engine that made its economy run.”
Even though the Wall Street slave market closed in 1762, Black men, women, and children were still bought and sold throughout the city. This continued well past the statewide slavery ban in 1827, said the NYPL.
“The Declaration of Independence proudly declares that all Americans are entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Yet, this promise has been repeatedly denied to Black and Brown Americans,” Louis said. “We see other groups receive restitutions for generational disenfranchisement while Black Americans are met with resistance. Told that reparations are too difficult, too controversial, too expensive. But we must defy these dismissals. I stand firm and our belief that injustice cannot be deferred. Our fight for reparations is about ensuring that the dream of equality becomes the reality for all of us.”
Louis sponsored Intro. 279-A, which would require the NYC Commission on Racial Equity (CORE) to study the city’s role in perpetrating and perpetuating slavery and other racial injustices, and then recommend potential measures to help remedy or redress associated harms.
Intro. 471-A, sponsored by Council Members Nantasha Williams and Christopher Marte, will establish a task force designated to create two Freedom Trails commemorating historical sites tied to abolition and civil rights. One path will be citywide while the other will concentrate on lower Manhattan.
“When you find out that the first commodity on Wall Street was actual human beings that looked like myself and my relatives, that does a lot to you,” said Williams.
Marte, who represents lower Manhattan, told the AmNews the trails will map out a history the city often attempts to ignore.
“We need to highlight the civil rights activists who walked these streets, who lived in our buildings and had historic events here in New York City,” he said.
The New York Historical Society, where Marte himself learned about the city’s role in the slave trade, offers a substantial archive. Individual historians will also play a role in putting together trails, and the Landmarks Commission can identify buildings with historical significance. The taskforce will help gather these different institutions in order to put together a recommendation within a year.
Other bills in the reparations package include Intro. 242-A, sponsored by Councilmember Crystal Hudson, and Intro. 833-A, sponsored by Public Advocate Jumaane Williams This legislation comes after a majority voted to pass the 2022 Racial Justice Commission’s (RJC) ballot measures that called for an address to racial inequity.
Senator James Sanders Jr. and Assemblymember Michaelle C. Solages, who sponsored the state reparations commission bill, along with local racial justice groups like the December 12th Movement and BLIS (which stands for Black Liberation-Indigenous Sovereignty) Collective also attended the rally to show their support.
Since the reparations movement started making earnest legislative strides, there has been resistance from the right.
In Chicago, Evanston became the first local municipality to offer $20 million reparations to Black Americans for past housing discrimination in 2021. Eligible residents and their descendants could receive $25,000 in direct cash payment towards buying a home or housing related debts.
Currently, a conservative legal group filed a lawsuit against Evanston claiming that the reparations package is a violation of the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment and unconstitutionally discriminates against non-Black residents. This is an extension of the ramped-up Republican backlash against diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs and affirmative action practices on college campuses and universities.
Most recently in Atlanta, a Black-owned, women-led venture capital firm called Fearless Fund was forced to reach a settlement after being hit with a lawsuit. Yet another conservative group, the American Alliance for Equal Rights under Ed Blum, had filed alleging that their grant contest to support Black women business owners was discriminatory on the basis of race, the Associated Press reported.
In liberal New York’s Republican pockets, conservative city officials and residents are stewing over the state and city bills and have vowed to never pay reparations.
“These are just tactics to reinstitute white supremacy,” said Nicole Carty, executive director of Get Free Together, about the Republican pushback.
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