Juneteenth is a day that commemorates the formal emancipation of enslaved people in Texas by a Union general who took control of Galveston on June 19, 1865.
Among the many legacies of the long history of inequality: According to the Pew Research Center, the median white household in the U.S. has about $250,000 in wealth versus $27,000 for the median Black household.
Marketplace’s Mitchell Hartman has been reporting on the racial wealth gap through the lens of Tulsa, Oklahoma. Tulsa was once home to Black Wall Street — one of the most prosperous Black communities in America — until it was devastated by an armed white mob in the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921.
Hartman joined “Marketplace Morning Report” host David Brancaccio to discuss where reparations for Black Americans stand in Tulsa and at a national level. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.
Mitchell Hartman: Well, let’s start with Tulsa. So after decades of efforts to obtain reparations for the hundreds of deaths, the homes and businesses that were destroyed in that 1921 massacre — there was no government or insurance compensation afterward — just this month, Tulsa’s mayor announced a reparations plan. It’s a $105 million private fund. That is more than advocates expected by quite a lot. It’ll pay for affordable housing, education, small business development for Tulsa’s Black community. You know there have been efforts to provide reparations in other places. You’ve heard of Evanston, Illinois, for housing; Asheville, North Carolina; Amherst, Massachusetts.
David Brancaccio: Steps toward reparation. These are local, regional efforts, right? It’s not really addressing the racial wealth gap at a national scale.
Hartman: No, a lot of advocates for reparations for African Americans say it doesn’t do that. Here’s Kirsten Mullen. She’s co-author of “From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the 21st Century.”
Kirsten Mullen: We think of reparations as a federal project that has, as its major focus, the elimination of the racial wealth gap. They are the only entity that can possibly pay these funds and eliminate the racial wealth gap. It’s a tremendous sum.
Brancaccio: And, Mitchell, from your interviews and conversations, how do advocates of reparations think about how much is owed to Black Americans today?
Hartman: So, calculations of this often start with the moment of emancipation. Most enslaved people were sent into freedom without any resources or compensation. Reconstruction was eventually abandoned. Jim Crow segregation, lynchings and massacres like the one in Tulsa just kept on destroying Black intergenerational wealth. Meanwhile, as Mullins’ co-author, Duke public policy professor William Darity, points out, white Americans get to homestead out on the prairie, they get free land, they put down roots, and they build wealth.
William Darity: And so whites are given an enormous largesse as the nation completes its colonial settler project in the West, while Blacks who are newly emancipated are not even given the land that they formally tilled for their slave masters.
Hartman: And you know, Darity says it continues right through the 20th Century. You know, federal housing assistance for white veterans after World War II — that mostly excludes Black veterans and redlines Black neighborhoods. The list just goes on. All told, Darity estimates redressing the racial wealth gap now through reparations would cost the federal government $16 trillion.
Brancaccio: $16 trillion. Here in June 2025, Mitchell, where does the effort for reparations stand at the national level?
Hartman: There’s a House Bill H.R. 40 — that has been introduced in every Congress since 1989. It would start a process to study reparations for slavery at the federal level. That is not likely to go anywhere in this Congress. Overall, support for reparations for African Americans is a minority view. Pew Research Center finds that about 30% of Americans approve of the idea; 70% don’t. Among Blacks, more than 75% approve, while white approval is below 20%.