The impact of the nation’s first cash reparations program for Black residents

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• Geoff Bennett:

  In 2019, Evanston, Illinois passed the first reparations law in American history. It set out to address decades of segregation and legalized housing discrimination.

  Economics correspondent Paul Solman recently visited the Chicago suburb to follow up on the progress of the program. It's part of our ongoing series, Race Matters.

• Lou Weathers, Reparations Recipient:

  Evanston, Illinois: Evanston Hospital wouldn't accept Black mothers, so my father had to drive me to Cook County Hospital to be born. But, as a baby, I came back tot house. My father bought the house in 1930.

• Paul Solman:

  Eighty-eight-year-old Lou Weathers' house in Evanston, Illinois, home to a longstanding Black community which comprises some 16 percent of the city's 75,000 inhabitants, some of whom, like Donna Walker, still bitter about the past.

• Donna Walker, Owner, Cutting Edge Hair Gallery:

  I am truly waiting for 40 acres and a mule. A jackass would be fine for me, but just give me some acreage, and I will be OK.

• Paul Solman:

  Evanston isn't offering the acreage, but, given the persistent and huge wealth and health gaps ever since slavery, it is trying to make amends with a first-of-its-kind reparations project that's spreading.

• Robin Rue Simmons, Chair, Evanston Reparations Committee:

  We had an official side event at the United Nations last week sharing the model, the growth, that it was Evanston in 2019. And, today, there are over 100 localities that have taken a first step towards reparations for their community.

• Paul Solman:

  Former City Councillor Robin Rue Simmons spearheaded reparations here in 2019, $10 million to be spent over 10 years, funded by taxes on newly legalized cannabis sales and by real estate transfers, so far, 16 recipients of, $25,000 each.

• Lou Weathers:

  I just figured the country would not approve nothing like that.

• Paul Solman:

  Lou Weathers wasn't just surprised.

  Yes.

• Lou Weathers:

  I was shocked.

• Paul Solman:

  Shocked.

• Lou Weathers:

  Yes.

• Paul Solman:

  Weathers used his $25,000 to reduce his son's mortgage here in Evanston.

• Lou Weathers:

  Well, any time you can reduce your mortgage, your mortgage payment is going to be lower. His bill is going to be lower. He can use the money for other things.

• Donna Walker:

  I have said from the beginning that we were not going to see this money at all.

• Paul Solman:

  But hairdresser Donna Walker was wrong.

• Donna Walker:

  Some people did see it, and I'm very happy that they did. And I'm happy that the elders are able to pay taxes on their home and fix it up.

• Paul Solman:

  Walker's next-door neighbor, fellow hairdresser Gigi Giles, is on the waiting list for funds that will come in future years.

  So you figure you will get it eventually?

• Gigi Giles, Owner, Ebony Barbershop:

  Eventually. If not, my grandchildren or my daughters will get it.

• Paul Solman:

  What will you do with the money?

• Gigi Giles:

  I would fix up my home. I would do my kitchen and my two bathrooms.

• Paul Solman:

  Can you do that for 25,000 grand?

• Gigi Giles:

  I'd make it work.

  (LAUGHTER)

• Paul Solman:

  Initially, reparations money only counted toward housing-related projects, mortgage payments, home improvements, or a down payment.

  In March, Evanston's City Council added the option of direct cash payments, because some had felt a restricted grant was demeaning. Recipients should be able to do what they want with the $25,000.

• Donna Walker:

  Most of us here can't even afford to live here.

• Paul Solman:

  Like Donna Walker.

• Donna Walker:

  If you give me something, you can't tell me how to spend it. So its like, you have people like, well, what are they going to spend it on? Man, I'm going to buy a new Porsche and a Cadillac. Come on, really?

  (LAUGHTER)

• Paul Solman:

  Newport cigarettes, that is.

  Lou Weathers, though, prefers housing investment.

• Lou Weathers:

  Anytime you have grants and stuff like that, two sides have to get something out of it. The city making people improve their property helps me, because I own property. That's going to increase my value of my property.

• Paul Solman:

  Now, not everyone in Evanston is pro-reparations, of course.

• Man:

  I don't think it's a good idea. There are people who need help, and help should not be predicated on someone's race, creed, color, orientation.

• Paul Solman:

  A local businessman, who called us later trying to take back the interview, a bit late, but, as a courtesy, no name or face.

• Man:

  We had laws that were against the Chinese, and those were enforced around 1883 to 1943. So, if we go by that standard, well, then we owe the Chinese recompense, we owe the Japanese even more recompense. And there comes a point where we're a flawed society. I think the thing we need to do is move forward.

• Paul Solman:

  Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss wasn't surprised to hear of the reluctance to say this on camera.

  Daniel Biss, Mayor of Evanston, Illinois: I do think people feel like, if I come out and say reparations is a dumb idea, we should not do that, I'm just not going to make a lot of friends. I'm not going to gain a lot of support.

• Paul Solman:

  But reparations champion Simmons says taking a stand means ignoring the blowback, no matter how unpleasant it's been to see what she herself has received online.

• Robin Rue Simmons:

  Its the ghetto lottery, or, you know, you monkey, you slave, and go back to Africa, that type of stuff.

• Paul Solman:

  But the overall reaction, at least in this liberal city, according to the liberal mayor:

• Daniel Biss:

  It's something that we're enormously proud of. I think it's an important step, one might argue a partial step or an inadequate step, but still a really important step, toward both, on a factual level, reckoning with our past, but also creating the concrete equity that our community has been talking about for probably four or five generations but has never really fully realized.

• Paul Solman:

  Is the pride pervasive, I asked our camera-shy businessman?

  So, if roughly half the population are white, what proportion of those people do you think don't think this is a good idea, think as you do?

• Man:

  You don't even bring it up, because people are afraid to really express their thoughts. And so I wouldn't be able to give you an honest answer.

• Paul Solman:

  At nearby Northwestern University, Professor Al Tillery is studying the response to the reparations initiative.

• Alvin Tillery, Northwestern University:

  We so far have gotten close to 4,000 respondents, people writing in.

• Paul Solman:

  So he doesn't have results yet. But, although, in nationwide polling, few whites are in favor:

• Alvin Tillery:

  I don't think were going to be at the 15 percent for where white people are nationally. I think we're going to be much higher than that. Will we be over 50 percent with our white population? I don't know.

• Paul Solman:

  Fifty percent approve.

  (CROSSTALK)

• Alvin Tillery:

  In support, who approve, yes.

  I mean, so, if we found between 30 percent and 50 percent approve, I think that would be like finding the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. I mean, that — nowhere else will it have been so high.

• Paul Solman:

  And where does the program go from here?

• Daniel Biss:

  So, over the course of time, more revenue is going to come in, both through the cannabis and also through the real estate transfer tax, that will allow more grants to be allocated.

  There's a long waiting list of ancestors behind them. There is a long waiting list of descendants. And behind them are a lot of other people in this community who were mistreated or whose ancestors were mistreated by the city government through policies the city government deliberately enacted. And we have a lot of work to do.

• Paul Solman:

  Just to deal with the 600 or so applicants thus far, especially, says the mayor, in a city now so pricey, many Blacks can't afford to stay, like Dwayne Logan at Gigi Giles' salon.

  Dwayne Logan, Former Resident of Evanston, Illinois: I'm from Evanston, but I don't currently live in Evanston, because the taxes were so high, I had to buy a house in Skokie.

• Paul Solman:

  Right, says Simmons, because Blacks were never able to build generational wealth, which is why she was inspired to push for reparations.

• Robin Rue Simmons:

  I was looking at the race gaps and every area. I was looking at the loss of Black community, residents leaving almost every day because of lack of affordability, not feeling a sense of place, going to other communities where they felt more hopeful and opportunity.

  The Black experience in this city and in this nation has been in a state of emergency since we were kidnapped from West Africa and brought here. And so it is time to do something radically different than we have done in the past. And reparations is that answer.

• Paul Solman:

  About time, says Gigi Giles.

• Gigi Giles:

  People want to see money. Money talks. And then they probably will be happy, but, you know, it is what it is. It's a start.

• Paul Solman:

  And she's still living here and running the business her father started 60 years ago.

  For the "PBS NewsHour," Paul Solman in Evanston, Illinois.