SOUTH BEND — With few clear templates for action, the city’s new Reparatory Justice Commission has started to discuss how South Bend institutions can be held accountable for their role in systemic racism against African Americans.
The commission’s work is governed by a core belief that resonates in a city still recovering from the downfall of industry decades ago.
“The past is not the past,” chairman Darryl Heller said. “The past is still present.”
At the commission’s first public meeting Tuesday night — held in the former Engman Public Natatorium, a large public pool on West Washington Street that excluded or segregated Black people until 1950 — members weren’t shy to concede that the questions they face can seem impossibly big.
But giving themselves a timeline of roughly 18 months, commissioners shared ideas for how to engage the public and form subgroups that focus on racial disparities in wealth, economic opportunity, education, housing and well-being.
The South Bend Common Council formed the commission last month, appointing 14 members with experience in various disciplines. One member, former South Bend schools employee Cordell Martin, backed out because of scheduling issues, Heller said.
The remaining members include lawyers, pastors, educators and activists. The commission has no assigned budget or timeline but is expected to present written findings and policy recommendations to the council. Members chose Heller, director of the Indiana University South Bend Civil Rights Heritage Center, as chairman.
“Our focus will be to examine harms perpetrated against African Americans as individuals and as a group,” Heller said Tuesday, reading a statement of purpose for the commission. “These may be harms perpetrated by explicit city policy or indirectly through structures or institutions under municipal authority.”
Heller said the sheer breadth of racism’s legacy in the U.S. demands a response from the federal government. But it’s been decades since the introduction of H.R. 40, a bill that would form a commission to study reparations nationwide, and still there’s not enough support for it to pass in Congress.
He believes local governments must act independently, and South Bend with its commission joins cities like Evanston, Ill.; Providence, R.I.; Oakland, Calif.; and St. Louis, Mo.
The commission’s findings will add to reports that already exist on the racial wealth divide in South Bend, long-term health disparities in St. Joseph County, and housing issues ranging from racist redlining practices to a lack of affordable rental properties to the prevalence of lead-based paint in west-side neighborhoods.
More:Waste was dumped in a South Bend neighborhood. The soil-based lead was finally treated.
The research shows that South Bend’s Black residents, who make up about 25% of the city, earn average household incomes half as large as white residents and are more likely to be unemployed. It shows that the Black homeownership rate, around 35% in 2017, is far lower than rates among other racial groups.
Health statistics show that the infant mortality rate among the county’s Black population is three times higher than that of its white residents, which is why Cassy White, a public health specialist for Beacon Health Systems who resigned from the St. Joseph County Health Department amid Republican pushback against health equity, is on the reparatory justice commission.
“The process of repair has to be ongoing,” Heller said. “I think what we want to come out of this with, at least from my perspective, in part is a set of recommendations of what structures and systems and institutions have been producing harms historically and presently, and what needs to happen to make them stop so that we’re actually creating the context for people to heal.”
On Tuesday, commissioners spent much of their time debating how to come up with attainable goals in the face of problems that may be beyond any city government’s ability to repair in total.
“As much as I’d like to say we’re going to be able to solve every problem and repair everybody’s damage, realistically that’s not going to happen,” said Judith Fox, a retired Notre Dame law professor who specializes in housing policy. “So I think we’re going to have to be somewhat strategic with what we focus on.
“Because if we try to do everything, we’re going to do nothing.”
Almost all agreed that reparations should start with research to uncover the consequences of local action or inaction that perpetuated racism. The commission plans to hold several public presentations of its findings and to gather the stories of afflicted Black residents.
From there, members say, city institutions should apologize for specific harm done to African Americans and consider programs to address historical and ongoing injustice. Reparations could mean money, Heller said, but it will more broadly mean restructuring.
The commission meets next on Saturday, Oct. 28, at 10 a.m. at the Civil Rights Heritage Center at 1040 W. Washington St.
Who is on the South Bend commission studying reparations?
The 13 members of South Bend’s Reparatory Justice Commission are:
- Darryl Heller is the director of the IUSB Civil Rights Heritage Center.
- Regina Williams-Preston is a former 2nd District councilwoman and a longtime South Bend Community School Corp. employee.
- Trina Robinson serves as president of the South Bend NAACP.
- Aladean DeRose is a former South Bend city attorney and attorney for the South Bend Human Rights Commission.
- Conrad Damian is the president of the Southeast Area Organized Residents.
- John Duffy is an English professor at Notre Dame and a faculty fellow in the Klau Center for Civil and Human Rights.
- Judith Fox is a former Notre Dame law professor who led the university’s Economic Justice Clinic, which offers legal aid to low-income residents facing predatory practices.
- David Buggs is a pastor at Cultivate Life Ministries on South Bend’s west side.
- Wilner Cusic is the equitable access coordinator for IN*SOURCE, an organization that supports parents whose children need special education services.
- James Lewis is an employment law attorney at THK Law and has practiced law in South Bend for more than 30 years.
- Alma Powell is the first African American woman to have served as principal in South Bend schools and was a leading advocate for desegregation of the local school system.
- Gilbert C. Washington is a pastor at St. Paul Bethel Missionary Baptist Church and worked on restorative justice in South Bend schools.
- Cassandra White is a public health specialist for Beacon Health System and the former director of health equity, epidemiology and data for the St. Joseph County Department of Health.
Email South Bend Tribune city reporter Jordan Smith at JTsmith@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter: @jordantsmith09