In 1988, Massachusetts’ first Black senator Bill Owens sponsored a bill that called for the state to pay reparations to descendants of enslaved Africans.
Since the commonwealth economically benefitted from the brutal enslavement of African people, the government should be held liable to pay reparations because of how slavery deprived African people of their livelihood, Owens told the Boston Globe in a 1989 interview.
“You can call it racism if you wish,” Owens said, “but it’s the result of what happened during slavery.”
- Read More: Bill Owens, Massachusetts’ first Black Senator and the ‘Godfather of Reparations’, dies at 84
His efforts toward restitution led Owens to be nicknamed across the country the “Godfather of Reparations.” Unfortunately, Owens died in January of 2022 after dealing with health complications and testing positive for COVID-19. He was 84.
Although the “Godfather of Reparations” is dead, his dream still lives on. In recent years, several Massachusetts communities have been taking the first steps in providing reparations to their respective African American residents.
Boston creates a Reparations Task Force
On Dec. 14, 2022, Boston City Councilors unanimously voted to create a reparations task force that would study how the city could provide reparations toward its African American residents.
The 15-member task force is comprised of representatives from five local Black organizations and 10 people recommended by said representatives. Over the next 18 months, the group will study and collect data on the racial disparities experienced by Black Bostonians. An initial report on the task force’s findings is due to both the mayor’s office and the city council by 2024.
The task force will work in three phases. The first phase will be to research and document Boston’s role in the African slave trade. The second phase will assess Boston’s actions to address the legacy of chattel slavery. The third phase will make recommendations to the city regarding how it can atone for its role in the African slave trade.
By 2026, Boston city Mayor Michelle Wu says she plans for the city will start taking the necessary “steps” recommended in the task force’s report.
Joseph D. Feaster Jr., who is the chair of the Reparations Task Force, likens reparations to a mortgage payment.
“I liken it to a mortgage loan because if, for instance, that original debtor passes away, I’ve never seen a lender say that the debt is no longer owed,” Feaster Jr. said. “They say that the estate is responsible for paying that debt and that’s what we’re talking about here with this committee.”
Cambridge passes policies to atone for slavery, War on Drugs
In 2021, the Cambridge City Council unanimously passed two policies that would each use tax revenue from the city’s cannabis sales to help redress the “historic injustices” slavery and drug criminalization had on the city’s Black and Brown community, according to the Harvard Crimson.
Each order was introduced as a separate, but related issue, according to Cambridge city councilor, Quinton Y. Zondervan, a co-sponsor of the policy.
The pilot reparations program distributes a pre-determined percentage of revenue from cannabis sales to Black-owned businesses in the city. The program was based on a similar model that was piloted in 2019 by the Evanston, Illinois City Council, which was the first city in U.S. history to pay reparations for slavery.
Evanston city councilors used tax dollars from the city’s booming marijuana sector to fund $25,000 grants to 16 of their Black residents. The money used by the residents went toward homeownership and generational equity-building, according to the policy order.
Meanwhile, the restitution policy will be allocating the city’s cannabis revenue toward victims of the War on Drugs.
“I think one of our biggest obstacles in Cambridge when we talk about these issues is that we like to think we don’t have them,” Cambridge city councilor Marc C. McGovern said to the Crimson. “We’ve got to get over that hurdle to admitting that even here in the People’s Republic, we have major issues and structural racism.”
Amherst creates a $2 million reparations bank
In 2022, the Amherst city council voted to create a reparations bank that would total $2 million over the course of a single decade.
The money will be placed into the reparations bank each year from Amherst’s cannabis tax revenue from the previous year. Meanwhile, the town will be capped at an annual contribution of $205,000.
During a town hearing in October of 2022, Amherst residents weighed in on their ideas on how the reparations money should be spent, New England Public Media reported. One resident said the town should invest the money into bringing in more educators of color, while another resident said the money should go toward Black residents who are financially strained
While some speakers believed the money should be invested in educators of color or Black residents who were financially strained, several speakers said they doubted the money would go far.
However, Amilcar Shabazz, who is a professor of history and Africana studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a member of the African Heritage Reparation Assembly, said he believed Amherst’s efforts go beyond the town.
“What we hope is that Amherst joins Evanston, [Illinois], joins the work being done across the country — Providence [Rhode Island], the state of California — that it begins to build this momentum that can embolden Congress, that can embolden the executive branch,” professor Shabazz said to NEPM.
The African Heritage Reparation Assembly’s proposals to the town council are due in June.
Northampton to consider a reparations committee
On Thursday, the Northampton city council will vote on a resolution to create an official reparations commission to study the city’s historic inequality surrounding its Black residents and to provide solutions toward said inequities.
The resolution also asks for the commission, which would be appointed by both the mayor and the city council, to have half its members be Black.
The resolution was sponsored by councilors Jamila Gore, Marissa Elkins and Garrick Perry. Gore and Perry joined the council last year, becoming the second and third Black people to serve on it. John Thorpe, the first Black person on the council, was elected in 2019 and declined to run for reelection two years later.
In October, a group of Northampton residents began a petition to get Mayor Gina-Louise Sciarra and the City Council to create an official city commission to research historical racial injustice in Northampton. The group’s petition has gathered over 1,200 signatures.
One member of the group, Northampton resident and University of Massachusetts assistant professor of English Sarah Patterson, said in October the goal of a reparations commission should be to create policies and programs that can bolster Black residents’ economic and educational opportunities.
“It starts at the local level,” Gore said at during a city council meeting on Feb. 2. “This is one area where we can really be on the forefront of things and put ourselves on the map as far as reparations goes.”
MassLive reporter Will Katcher contributed to this report.
