Reparations for Black people: Group urges City Council to create task force and enforce existing law

A Black liberation group is calling on City Council to study the effect of slavery on Black Philadelphians today and recommend ways to execute reparations.

The National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America, or N’COBRA, the organization’s local chapter, requested a task force Thursday morning, before the Council’s first session of the new year.

N’COBRA also urged the city to enforce a reparations law that has been on the books since 2005 but never enforced, according to the group. That law requires city-contracted businesses and banks to disclose their historic connections to the institution of slavery and submit proposals on financial initiatives or programs designed to benefit Black people.

“Time’s up,” Breanna Moore, cochair of the local N’COBRA chapter, said in an interview.

“We really need the city to put money behind researchers. We can’t just take the word of these financial [institutions].”

“This is the first City Council hearing of the year and Black people are paramount, and far too long we’ve been ignored,” cochair Rashaun Williams said.

Black Americans wouldn’t be the first in the United States to receive reparations from the government.

The United States paid enslavers reparations after President Abraham Lincoln abolished slavery in Washington, D.C., in 1862, paying slaveholders for each freed African American they’d formerly enslaved.

The country also issued cash reparations in 1988 to Japanese Americans who were wrongfully imprisoned during World War II. Robert Buscher of the Japanese American Citizens League said Thursday his family benefited from the payments and the national apology.

“Reparations doesn’t erase the hurt. … That exists for generations,” Buscher said. “But what it has done is create an opportunity for us to have a meaningful conversation about healing.”

N’COBRA/ was joined Thursday by Councilmembers Cindy Bass and Jamie Gauthier, mayoral candidate and former Councilmember Derek Green, and Donavan S. West, a City Council at-large candidate and member of the Mayor’s Commission on African American Males, among several others.

Gauthier said there’s a direct correlation between “the decades of disinvestment in Black neighborhoods” and the gun violence epidemic today.

Andre Simms of DayOneNotDayTwo, a nonprofit focused on youth development and restorative justice, said investing in education, building youth skills, and connecting children to loving mentors – “sounds like reparations to me.” The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention considers all of these things to be solutions to gun violence.

“There is no coincidence that [Black people] have been living in poverty and just making do. Reparations are necessary to put us on solid footing,” Bass said Thursday.

The 2005 slave disclosure ordinances came after a depository lending study found banks gave fewer home loans to African Americans and fewer business loans to people of color in general, despite Black people and people of color making up most of the city’s population.

Mayor Jim Kenney’s administration stopped short of expressing support for a reparations task force.

“At this time, we are open to exploring our options and will continue gathering necessary information as well as having internal conversations to identify an appropriate path forward,”city spokesperson Sarah Peterson said.

Peterson said that the slavery disclosure and reparations law is enforced by the Procurement Department, and that contracted businesses are in compliance. While the city relies on corporations to examine themselves, Peterson said, “[a]ny information that is withheld or submitted as fraudulent can lead to disbarment.”

The call to provide financial reparations for African Americans has gained some national momentum in recent years. In 2021, a federal reparations task force bill introduced more than three decades ago passed the House Judiciary Committee in a historic vote — a symbolic move that quickly stalled out. (Officials in Washington have since called on President Joe Biden to enact the measure by executive order.)

Cities and states across the country have passed reparations legislation and created task forces to study the issue. In 2020, Asheville, N.C., approved a measure its council called “community reparations.” The city has since established a commission and approved $2.1 million to invest in the project, but the initiative lacks a concrete spending plan more than two years after the first vote.

Evanston, Ill., established in 2021 what it called a $400,000 reparations fund for home repairs, mortgage assistance, and first-time homeownership. Each recipient received $25,000, meaning the initial program benefited 16 people, with more than 100 more on a waiting list. The city of 78,000 has committed to contributing $10 million to the fund over 10 years.

Meanwhile, California’s statewide reparations task force tapped economic consultants to calculate the compensation owed to Black state residents for specific housing discrimination and the resulting wealth gap, and found the figure to be more than $200,000 for some.

In Philadelphia, independent groups have spearheaded reparations initiatives. The Green Street Monthly Meeting of Friends pledged $500,000 over 10 years to various issues affecting Black wealth and equity. Locally, N’COBRA organizers said reparations from banks and other big businesses that profited from enslavement can start with transparency.

“The first thing is honesty,” Williams said. “We’re asking for focused activity and positive reparations.”

Response to the call for a reparations task force and for the enforcement of the already-on-the-books law was mixed from Council members reached by The Inquirer.

Councilmembers Gauthier, Bass, Mark Squilla, Jim Harrity, Isaiah Thomas, and Sharon Vaughn support both proposals, according to their offices.

Councilmember Katherine Gilmore Richardson came out in support of the creation of the task force. Councilmember Kendra Brooks’ office has been in contact with N’COBRA and said they are interested in and evaluating “what a task force could achieve in Philadelphia, and planning out what our involvement might look like.”

Councilmembers Darrell Clarke, Kenyatta Johnson, and David Oh each said they’d need more information about the task force proposal and the law, or deferred questions to other people and offices.

No Council member introduced a resolution to establish a reparations task force on Thursday.

On Thursday, Moore dreamed of the city’s future.

“We hope to have a press conference announcing the successful passing of the reparations task force and commission,” she said.