ENGLEWOOD — Residents are weighing in on an outline for the city’s reparations agenda that could provide restitution to Black Chicagoans for centuries of racist policies dating back to the era of chattel slavery.
Mayor Brandon Johnson’s office launched the Repair Chicago community engagement series last month, which saw its first town hall Thursday evening at Kennedy-King College, 6301 S. Halsted St., in Englewood. About 25 neighbors attended the two-hour event in the college’s auditorium to engage in a dialogue with city leaders.
“Reparations … are an ongoing commitment to redressing historic and ongoing systemic and structural harms that are human rights violations unjustly inflicted on Black residents and communities due to their shared racial and ethnic identity,” said Carla Kupe, the city’s Chief Equity Officer.
Kupe and Vetress Boyce of the city’s Reparations Task Force outlined a five-point approach to creating and implementing a plan to make reparations to Black Chicagoans:
- Acknowledgment, truth-telling and cultural restoration
- Direct financial repair and restitution
- Institutional reform, legal redress and accountability
- Community repair, healing and access to opportunity
- Long-term investment in community and economic development
The city’s Reparations Task Force was formed in 2024 to examine Chicago’s history of racist policies and programs, such as Jim Crow Laws and redlining, and strategize on how to repair the systemic ills inflicted against Black Chicagoans for generations.
Charles Beavers, 64, described watching Englewood slowly deteriorate over his lifetime as businesses left the community one-by-one.
“When I was driving down Halsted, it just made me cry to see the economic plight that has occurred in this community,” he said. “I remember when Woolworth’s was across the street. I remember when all the banks were here.”
The South Side neighborhood used to be home to the second-largest commercial district in the city near 63rd and Halsted. Now, much of the neighborhood’s retail space lies derelict or flat out doesn’t exist, with over 850 buildings demolished from 2008-2018, according to the Sun-Times.
Beavers paused and scanned the room.
“My daddy picked cotton. This didn’t happen that long ago. My wife’s father, he picked cotton too,” he said. “I know exactly where my people come from. … If I had to defend my right to reparations, we’d be here all day.”
Boyce suggested that reparations could include expanded educational programs in Chicago Public Schools exploring the history of racism in the United States; full tuition coverage for Black college students in Chicago; down-payment assistance for Black home buyers in Chicago to alleviate the impacts of redlining; and high-quality health care for all.
Desiree Burks, another neighbor at Thursday’s town hall, said access to health care was at the top of her list of issues she would like the city to address.
“I’m the oldest of eight siblings so it’s hard for me to take myself out of a community mindset,” said Burks. “The first thing that pops in my mind about caring for a community is health care, because if we’re not healthy, we can’t work. We can’t create. We can’t build community with each other. It’s the thing we all dream of, and that can’t exist if health care isn’t available or safe.”
Judith, who didn’t share her last name, described walking through her Woodlawn community and watching developments spring up without drawing from the existing labor force in the neighborhood.
“I do a lot of walking in my community, and I am noticing a lot of new infrastructure,” she said. “Affordable housing is going up, but I don’t see many people who look like me working on those projects. … But I think that it’s really, really important to get [our community] involved in these contracts.”
Kupe pledged that the task force would “hold the line” against a presidential administration combative diversity initiatives as it works to develop Chicago’s reparations plan.
“The task force members are grappling with [anti-DEI policy] in terms of being as explicit as possible and calling things in that we want to, the way we want to call them, while also understanding that it will draw some resistance or even offense,” Kupe said. “So that’s something that we should protect and we will hold the line.”
A preliminary reparations discussion panel was held March 24 at It Takes A Village Academy, 4930 S. Cottage Grove Ave. Another town hall, bus tours and a City Hall hearing are scheduled over the next two months for the series.
Concrete policy initiatives will be finalized after the task force receives and gauges community input, according to Boyce and Kupe.
In conjunction with the in-person events, the Repair Chicago initiative released a survey for Black Chicagoans to share their thoughts and experiences on “how systemic racism has shaped life, opportunity, and overall well-being.” The survey is open until May 31.
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