Reparations town hall panelists reflect on their work, path forward

4th Annual National Symposium for State and Local Reparations Town Hall at Second Baptist Church.
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The Town Hall panelists from left to right Nikko Ross (Evanston resident and grandson of late Delores Holmes), Vanessa Hall-Harper council member of City of Tulsa, Areva Martin attorney from Los Angeles CA, Joanne M. Braxton president of Braxton Institute for Sustainability, Resiliency & Reparations for Lakeland Now, Iva Curruthers professor emeritus and former chairperson of the sociology department at NIU, and Karli Butler City of Evanston resident.

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To celebrate five years since the passage of the Evanston’s reparations program, the city’s Reparations Committee held a town hall meeting Thursday at which panelists from around the nation discussed the impact of the program here and other reparations movements. 

About 100 attendees, some from the local community and others visiting for the 2024 National Symposium for Local and State Reparations, lined the pews at Second Baptist Church at 1717 Benson Ave. Thursday evening. Second Baptist was the first Black Baptist church founded in Evanston. Cook County Circuit Judge Lionel Jean-Baptiste moderated the town hall’s panel. 

In the five years since the reparations program began, the City of Evanston has disbursed more than $5 million to Black residents who lived in Evanston between 1919 and 1969 — an era of racial discrimination in housing — as well as their direct descendants.

“The harm was state-sponsored, therefore it was correct for the state to remediate,” Jean-Baptiste said to the crowd Thursday evening. 

Reflections from Evanston residents

Iva Carruthers, a former resident of Evanston’s Fifth Ward and former chair of the Sociology Department at Northern Illinois University, recalled that her grandparents came to the city in 1919 to escape lynching culture, and her mother followed in 1922. The transgenerational racial trauma they experienced “is deadly and it is real,” Carruthers said.

For her, reparations come as a “vision of a world born out of a sense of ethical and humane compassion for one another in the spirit.” 

4th Annual National Symposium for State and Local Reparations Town Hall at Second Baptist Church.
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Iva Carruthers professor emeritus and former chairperson of the sociology department at NIU and Karli Butler, City of Evanston resident.

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“We collectively have a particular and unique call to organize around Pan African principles and the quest for reparations as a process beyond just payments for housing supplements, but towards transforming the world order and the empire,” Carruthers said.

Karli Butler, an Evanston resident and Evanston Community Foundation’s director of community leadership, shared that her grandparents were repeatedly denied housing loans from white banks. A white banker would end up making a call on their behalf to get her grandparents a house. Butler’s grandfather passed away at the age of 94 before he could receive a reparations benefit.

“I wanted my grandfather to get something, like anything, and unfortunately he didn’t get to see it,” Butler said. “But I was fortunate to be able to go to the city and then have that $25,000 go to his heirs. I feel my grandfather here in this space. I feel like the offering was someone seeing him and validating his experiences.”

Nikko Ross, grandson of the late City Council Member Delores Holmes, grew up around the “freedom fighter” teachings. Holmes supported the reparations program from its inception. Ross’ goal is to continue teaching Evanston’s youth about their history.

Ross said that his grandmother had taught him “as long as I have a pulse, I have a purpose,” adding, “That resonated with me throughout my whole entire life, but the second lesson I learned was to serve, and to serve humanity with grace and contribute to your community.”

Around the country

Cities elsewhere around the country are tackling their own reparations commissions or are in the process of starting their own. 

Areva Martin, an attorney from Palm Springs, California, said that the first question she had to answer for her 1,000 plaintiffs was “what was the harm done?”

During the 1960s, Black and Latino families had their segregated neighborhood burned down by the city of Palm Springs to clear the way for development, as the city was on the rise as a tourist hot spot. Martin said an economic study found that Black residents suffered a $2 billion economic loss. Survivors recently won a $5.9 million settlement that includes direct cash payments from the city. 

4th Annual National Symposium for State and Local Reparations Town Hall at Second Baptist Church.
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The Town Hall panelists from left to right Nikko Ross (Evanston resident and grandson of late Delores Holmes), Vanessa Hall-Harper council member of City of Tulsa, Areva Martin attorney from Los Angeles CA, Joanne M. Braxton president of Braxton Institute for Sustainability, Resiliency & Reparations for Lakeland Now, Iva Curruthers professor emeritus and former chairperson of the sociology department at NIU, and Karli Butler City of Evanston resident.

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“This work is possible, and there are inspirations like what happened in Evanston,” Martin said. “And then through community building, coalition building, grassroots organizing, sophisticated media campaigns and narrative storytelling, we can achieve reparative justice for communities.” 

In Tulsa, Oklahoma, the City Council is organizing its own reparations committee in response to the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. Five-term Tulsa Council Member Vanessa Hall-Harper said she saw the Black institutions she grew up with slowly fade over time. She emphasized how Black organizations and land ownership are critical, and in response she founded the Black Wall Street Chamber of Commerce. 

“We always have to be working to establish our own institutions for us, by us, so that we can control our futures, for our children, for us today and for our future,” she said. 

Joanne M. Braxton, president of the Braxton Institute for Sustainability, Resilience and Joy, is a leader in the Reparations For Lakeland Now! campaign in Lakeland, Maryland, which lost roughly 70% of its Black population in the 1970s as eminent domain claims displaced residents for an urban renewal project. The reparations effort is fighting for recognition of the mental and emotional trauma from the segregation and forceful displacement of Black Lakeland residents. 

“Moral injury compounds traumatic distress, and makes one even more vulnerable to weathering these invisible wounds which many of us carry [and] are rarely recognized, and therefore rarely tallied among the harms that require repair,” Braxton said. 

Exhibit honoring reparations journey

Reparations Committee Chair and FirstRepair founder Robin Rue Simmons closed out the town hall by thanking Evanston. 

“I want you to see the community that did this, and I want you to see your own community in us, because this exists wherever you are,” Rue Simmons said. “I want you to know that it is my community, it is Evanston that did this. I’m not unique in that regard. I am special because I am one of a body of Evanston.”

In honor of the road to reparations, the Evanston Public Library will feature an exhibit running through Jan. 21.

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