Residents in Evanston, Illinois, are now the first in the United States to receive reparations payments.
So far, 16 residents of the Chicago suburb have received their payments in either a cash or voucher form.
The payments for alleged discrimination and limited access to housing are being issued from a $10 million reparations package.
The package is to be distributed over the course of 10 years.
To qualify for the reparations payments, an individual must have been at least 18 years of age and lived in the city between 1919 and 1969.
Marijuana and real-estate transfer taxes are supposed to be the source of the reparations payment, although the marijuana sales tax revenue decreased after a second dispensary’s opening was delayed.
According to the head of the Thurgood Marshall Civil Rights Center at Howard University, Justin Hansford, the reparations payment plan is “a test run for the whole country.”
Reporting from Slay News:
Resident and civil rights activist Bennett Johnson accused the city’s 1969 cutoff year of being “totally arbitrary” despite the city passing a fair-housing law at that time. ... “I believe that [Evanston is] doing the same thing that we’ve done in the past, downgrading the ability of black people to do things for themselves,” Johnson stated. “We could realize that if we don’t let Black people control this, we [are] still doing the same thing that we’ve done in the past.”
