LANSING — A Lansing church made good on a commitment to raise money as amends for the Black community as “repentance, reconciliation and reparations” on Sunday.
The First Presbyterian Church of Lansing turned over a check for about $40,000, which was on top of an $18,000 payment in 2023. The church also pledged another $40,000, still to be raised, for a total commitment of about $100,000, according to the Justice League of Greater Lansing.
Church leadership voted previously to raise money and send it to the Justice League, a group whose mission is to collect reparations for Greater Lansing’s African American community members.
The congregation intends to add to the total with income from the church’s endowment for up to 10 years. Sunday’s contribution continues a commitment the church made to the reparations effort about two years ago.
Willye Bryan, a member of the church who founded the Justice League in 2021, previously said she had asked churches that want to make financial amends to transfer those funds to the Black community in the spirit of “repentance, reconciliation and reparations” that would be used to help start and fund Black businesses, mortgages and education.
“The vision of the Justice League is to gain reparations for the (thousands of) African Americans living within the capital area region,” Prince Solace, president of the league, told the State Journal in 2022.
The league’s all-Black board will be responsible for allocating reparations.
“Churches have been just as complicit in slavery as any other group in the country and sometimes even more so,” Bryan said.
The Rev. Stanley Jenkins, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church at 510 W Ottawa St., said the Justice League has raised $400,000 so far, and the all-Black board membership will soon be working on designating $50,000 for scholarships.
“We are trying to get it right,” he said, adding that reparations are intended to have a big change locally, but the bigger hope is to build support for reparations and actions that can have broader national effects.
“We’re an ordinary church, ordinary people, not wealthy or powerful and it is astonishing that we can do this,” he said. “And we want everyone to know this is possible.”
Jenkins said the Justice League plans to meet with all of the donor churches at 6:30 p.m. Feb. 28 at the East Lansing Public Library, 950 Abbott Road, to discuss how the donations will be used.
Legislators and community leaders across the nation have been addressing the topic of reparations.
California became the first state with a reparations task force that, in 2022, called for extensive reforms in housing, education and the justice system. Detroit has launched a reparations task force aimed at issuing recommendations to help housing and economic development programs that address historical discrimination against the city’s Black community.
Correction: This story has been updated to reflect the money contributed by the First Presbyterian Church of Lansing. An earlier version based on a press release was incorrect.
Contact Mike Ellis at mellis@lsj.com or 517-267-0415