The City Council in Evanston, Illinois, voted 8-1 on Monday night to approve a plan to make reparations available to black residents about past discrimination and the lingering effects of slavery.
The plan, which may be the first of its kind in the United States, is to distribute $ 400,000 to eligible black families. The Associated Press reported that qualified families in the city of 73,000 would be eligible to receive $ 25,000 for home repairs or property advances.
Ald. Robin Rue Simmons, the legislator who proposed the initiative in 2019, called approval for a first step, but said more needs to be done.
“It is, alone, not enough,” she said, according to the Chicago Tribune. “We all know that the path to redress and justice in the black community will be a generation of work. There will be many programs and initiatives and more funding.”
She told the New York Times: “It’s a reckoning. We are really proud as a city to lead the nation towards reparation and justice.”
The program’s funding will come from the 3% tax on the sale of recreational marijuana and donations. The city expects to spend about $ 10 million over 10 years.
Qualified residents must have lived or be the direct descendants of a black person who lived in Evanston between 1919 and 1969 and suffered discrimination in housing because of municipal laws, policies or practices.
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Simmons said that reparations groups offered free legal assistance if the program was challenged in court.
The City Council acted after dozens of citizens addressed the body and the plan was rejected by several.
Councilwoman Cicely Fleming, the only vote against the plan, said she supports the repairs, but what the City Council was debating is a housing plan that is being called repairs. She said the people should dictate the terms of how their complaints will be repaired. Fleming described the program as patronizing and assumes that blacks cannot manage their own money.
In January, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, reintroduced legislation that would fund a commission to study and develop proposals to award damages to African Americans. Reparations became an especially controversial topic last year and met with resistance from Congressional Republicans.
Hundreds of communities and organizations across the country are considering providing compensation to blacks. They range from the state of California to cities like Amherst, Massachusetts, Providence, Rhode Island, Asheville, North Carolina and Iowa City, Iowa; religious denominations like the Episcopal Church; and prominent colleges like Georgetown University in Washington.
President Biden signaled support.
Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, told reporters last month, according to Hill.
“He would certainly support a repair study. He understands that we don’t need a study to act on systemic racism now, so he wants to take action within his own government in the meantime, ”she said.
Sam Dorman of Fox News and the Associated Press contributed to this report