A new city task force is investigating whether and how Philadelphia should provide reparations to Black residents descended from enslaved ancestors, such as direct payments, targeted social services, and political and economic reforms.
The Philadelphia Reparations Task Force formally launched last week and held its first public listening session. The group plans to hold public meetings and conduct surveys with the goal of producing a report with recommendations.
“Until we look into our past with the determination to uncover the entire truth — no matter how ugly or scary that truth may be — our nation’s original sin will continue to toxify the present and future,” said Councilmember Jamie Gauthier, a co-sponsor of the legislation creating the panel.
With the launch of the task force, Philadelphia joins a short list of cities and states that have studied ways — and in a few cases, committed funding — to try to repair persistent harms that have their roots in slavery, the Jim Crow era, and institutional racism.
Reparations have been discussed in places around the country for more than two centuries but rarely implemented. Calls for benefits have gained momentum in recent years as part of the social justice movements that grew in strength following the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer in 2020, and the killings of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and others.
In Philly, the call for action was spearheaded by faith leaders and by the local chapter of National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (N’COBRA PHL), whose co-chairs are leading the new panel.
Here’s some background on reparations and the city task force.
A Quaker meeting group took the first step
The recent push for reparations in Philadelphia has its roots in the work of several religious and activist groups.
Around 2017, Green Streets Friends, a Quaker meeting group in Germantown, started talking about new ways to use their budget to advance social justice.
They launched a reparations committee, and in 2020 decided they would spend about $50,000 a year on reparations for a decade, for a total of $500,000. Initial funds have gone toward legal clinics to help Black homeowners and potential homeowners resolve wills, tangled titles, deed transfers, and other barriers to free and clear ownership of their homes.
That year, then-Mayor Jim Kenney also created the Mayor’s Commission On Faith-Based And Interfaith Affairs, whose goals include reducing poverty, and appointed Rev. Naomi Washington-Leapheart to lead the new office.
In June 2022, the commission, along with POWER Interfaith, the Truth Telling Project, and the regional Quaker organization Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, held a Juneteeth event called “Rise Up for Reparations” to encourage people to think about the need for reparations.
The commission followed up with a four-day workshop with several religious congregations in January 2023. Participants discussed how reparations fit into Christian religious traditions and tasked themselves to act on their findings, as Green Street Friends did.
The presenters included Rashaun Williams, who at the time was an organizer with the Philadelphia chapter of N’COBRA, a group founded in Washington, D.C. in 1987 to advocate for reparations.
“Specific repairs for each specific harm”
Following that meeting, some of the participants held a rally outside City Hall to demand the establishment of an official task force. Attendees included Gauthier, Councilmember Cindy Bass, and former councilmember and mayoral candidate Derek Green.
The task force should study the history of the slave trade and institutionalized racism in Philadelphia and Pennsylvania, and create recommendations on how to “create specific repairs for each specific harm, all the way from slavery to a present day harm that is still being done,” Breanna Moore, co-chair of N’COBRA PHL, told Billy Penn.
A city spokesperson expressed support for the idea.
Philadelphia previously passed a law in 2005 requiring firms doing business with the city to disclose any profits derived from chattel slavery, and incorporate financial reparations into their business model. Some reparation advocates say it’s rarely enforced and have suggested that a task force or commission could fix that.
In addition to N’COBRA and religious groups, the proposal had the support of the Japanese American Citizens League’s Philadelphia chapter. The group noted that the Japanese-American community is one of the few to receive federal reparations, for their internment during World War II, and said support from Black civil rights leaders was essential to Asian Americans gaining citizenship and other rights.
Gauthier and her Council colleagues Kendra Brooks and Isaiah Thomas co-sponsored a resolution creating the task force, which passed last June.
Moore and others said that, in addition to historical wrongs, the task force could study a wide range of current problems such as underfunded schools, poor health, food deserts, environmental racism, and pollution.
Task force members look for community help
Members of the task force must be Philadelphians who are the “descendants of enslaved Africans in the United States, the descendants of Black, Negro, or Colored Americans since 1865, and/or the descendants of Freedmen emancipated from slavery,” according to a City Council press release.
The co-chairs are Moore and Williams, who also co-chair the local N’COBRA chapter. The other members are:
- Program Manager: VanJessica Gladney, a graduate student in history at UPenn.
- Atlantic World History Coordinator: Richard White, an N’COBRA Philadelphia co-founder who studies local Black history.
- Education Coordinator: Ayanna Stephens (Walker), a high school principal.
- Economic Justice Coordinator: Kevin Mansa, formerly Kevin Thomas Jr., a financial professional and educator.
- Criminal & Legal Justice System Coordinator: Cara McClellan, a Penn Law professor and founder of the Advocacy for Racial and Civil (ARC) Justice Clinic.
- Health & Wellness Coordinator: Jourdyn A. Lawrence, an assistant professor at Drexel University’s Dornsife School of Public Health.
- Law & Policy Coordinator: Rev. Jacqueline (Jackie) Newsome, an assistant public defender in Philadelphia.
- Urban Planning & Sustainable Development Coordinator: Dominique London, an artist and executive director for the UC Green tree tender group.
Gauthier said the task force includes various experts because reparation can come in different forms, including through the housing market, criminal justice system, development policies, or addressing the overdose crisis and the impact of the war on drugs.
The task force is looking for community members to help in each of its eight focus areas. Those interested can fill out a form on the group’s website, Rep215.com.
A scattering of programs across the country
If the task force recommends spending city money on reparations, and Council and the mayor sign off on them, Philadelphia would join a very small group of jurisdictions that have done so.
They include Evanston, Illinois, which approved a $10 million reparations program in 2019, and has so far given 16 randomly-selected residents $25,000 each in housing assistance.
Asheville, North Carolina, has budgeted but not yet spent $2.1 million for a Guaranteed Income pilot and other economic development projects. Amherst, Mass. plans to spend $2 million from marijuana taxes, potentially on youth programs, affordable housing and grants for businesses.
Providence, Rhode Island created a $10 million reparations program in 2022 to fund workforce training, homeownership and financial literacy courses, small business accelerators, and other programs. Since it is funded by federal COVID-19 recovery dollars, it must be spent in a race-neutral manner, so some white residents may benefit from it.
Other places have returned unjustly seized properties to the previous owners or descendants, or proposed doing so. Last week, California legislators advanced a package of reparations-related bills, including one that would compensate people whose properties were taken through eminent domain.
Some other countries have also provided reparations for race-related wrongs. South Africa reportedly paid about $4,000 each to 17,000 victims of the racist Apartheid system, and has another $100 million in unspent assets remaining. Last year a Canadian court approved a $23 billion government settlement with indigenous First Nations families whose healthcare and other services were underfunded for decades.