Evanston Reparations Program

Chicago suburb moves ahead with pioneering reparations program

Four years after Evanston, Illinois, passed the nation’s first reparations law for Black residents harmed by discrimination,the law has support across all ethnic and demographic groups and all in nine wards, a recent survey found.

As of last August the program haddisbursed $1,092,924 in reparations fundsthrough the Local Reparations RestorativeHousing Program. Another $439,397 ispending for mortgage assistance andconstruction or remodeling projects.

Funded by a local tax on cannabis,the program is focused specificallyon redressing housing discrimination.Qualifying applicants can put down$25,000 toward a down payment on a newproperty, mortgage assistance or housingrenovations.

The pioneering programs have led toothers across the country, with severalgaining momentum in recent years. In 2022in St. Louis, the mayor signed a bill allowingresidents to make voluntary donations toa reparations program, a first step. OtherMidwestern cities with new reparationsprograms, at various stages, include St.Paul, Minnesota, Kansas City, Missouri andDetroit, Michigan.

Evanston’s reparations programspecifically addresses housingdiscrimination and segregation between1919 and 1969, which have beendocumented in the “Evanston Policies andPractices Directly Affecting the African-American Community” report. The reportled to the City Council to pass Resolution126-R-19 and Resolution 37-R-21. The CityCouncil members said the program is anattempt to rectify the past harm caused toBlack residents.

Black codes

The discrimination Evanston seeks toaddress dates back to slavery. Before theCivil War, the state of Illinois established“Black codes” restricting residences,settlements and job opportunities.Segregation occurred in restaurants,theaters, street cars and housing in 1918,when an Evanston branch of the NAACPwas founded.

“Practically every restaurant in Evanstonrefuses to serve Negroes who, when theygo to even the less respectable ones, aresimply ignored,” the Daily Northwestern, theuniversity’s student newspaper, reportedin 1936. Evanston’s Cooley’s Cupboardrestaurant, a popular place for college students,regularly refused service to Blackpeople. Early sit-in protests were held atthe restaurant.Black attendees of the New Theaterof Evanston had a separate stairway andsat only in a reserved block of seats in thebalcony. Evanston’s Alderman Edwin B.Jourdain led the fight against the practice.When the issue of whether or not to allowtheaters to open on Sundays was beforethe City Council, Jourdain spoke out againstallowing Sunday openings, arguing thatit would only add another day that Blackresidents would experience segregation in theaters.

For years, Evanston’s two hospitals, Evanston Hospital and St. Francis Hospitalrestricted access to Black residents andemployed no Black doctors on their staff.As a result, in 1914, two Black doctors,Arthur Butler and Isabella Garnett, opened ahospital for Black patients at 1918 AsburyAve., known as the Evanston Sanitarium.

Over the next 15 years, the sanitariumserved Evanston’s Black populationfrom a converted residential home. Theoperating room was next to the furnaceroom, separated by a door. After Butler’sdeath, the sanitarium was renamed ButlerMemorial.

National discrimination

The history of discrimination in Evanston is not unique. Frederick Douglass,the Black Civil War-era abolitionist, said“the history of civilization shows that nopeople can well rise to a high degree ofmental or even moral excellence withoutwealth. A people uniformly poor andcompelled to struggle for barely a physicalexistence will be dependent and despisedby their neighbors and will finally despisethemselves.”

Thinking like this prefigured thedevelopment of the Freedman’s Savingsand Trust Co., which Congress establishedon March 3, 1865. Deposits were investedin safe government securities. Congresscreated a board of trustees with prominentcitizens who lent their reputations to thebank. Within 10 years, it handled $75 millionof deposits made by more than 75,000depositors.

In 1917, the Department of Labor underPresident Woodrow Wilson promoted an“Own Your Own Home” campaign andconvinced people to buy single-family unitsrather than rent. The Wilson program wastargeted to white veteran homeowners, andclosed to Black people.

James Taylor, the head of theDepartment of Commerce’s HousingDivision, advised residents to “buypartnership in the community. Restrictedresidential districts may serve as protectionagainst persons with whom your familywon’t care to associate, provided therestrictions are enforced and not merelytemporary.”

Property owners and builders includedlanguage in home deeds and neighborspacts that prohibited future resale toAfrican Americans. The Federal HousingAdministration (FHA) recommended thatdeeds to property for which it issuedmortgage insurance should prohibit resaleto African Americans. When neighborhoodsintegrated, property values initially increasedbecause of Blacks’ need to pay higherprices. But then white homeowners soldat big discounts and property values fell.Because of this phenomenon, it was seenas a problem when Black families moved to white neighborhoods.

Last month, Alvin B. Tillery Jr., apolitical science professor at NorthwesternUniversity said in an interview, “Citygovernments and banks would conspire toredline Black areas so they would not loanfor mortgages in those areas.” This practiceof not lending for mortgages would driveup rental prices for Black communities andfamilies, when the federal government washelping white people buy their homes andget low-cost loans because of their veteranstatus. Northwestern University’s researchdid support the reparations program, but itsnewspaper took a neutral stance in decidinghow to cover it.

“White men were getting sweetheartdeals,” Tillery said. “Prior to the 1940s,when Freddie Mac was created, you had toput down 15% of the principal and pay it offwithin 15 years.” The federal governmentcreated lending instruments that madehomeownership easier and within the reachof most Americans. “The problem for BlackAmericans, if you track the history, is that themilitary was segregated prior to 1948 so thecity through racially restrictive covenantsconspired to keep the new housing stockbuilt for the white veterans and so theyredlined neighborhoods,” Tillery added.

In the unanimous Shelley v. Kraemerdecision in 1948, the court ruled in a St.Louis case that deeds that barred sales toBlack people could not be enforced in statecourts because of the 14th Amendment.

How the reparations work

Evanston is awarding $25,000 cashpayments for mortgage payments, downpayments or furniture. The program isrun on an honor system, AlderwomanRobin Rue Simmons told the EvanstonRoundtable. Rue Simmons is the founderand executive director of FirstRepair, anonprofit that informs local reparationson the national level. She is also a residential real estate broker seeking tohelp young adults build wealth throughhomeownership.

“It is my understanding to keep withyour legal framework that has allowed usthe success to disburse and it’d be a cashbenefit, unrestricted related to housing, andnot for us to sort of manage or dictate inwhat way that it’s used,” Simmons said.

The city’s Reparations Committeedecided on an electronic process randomlyselects city direct descendants for the cashpayments, akin to a lottery system for Blackresidents who lived in Evanston during1919-1969.

“They have to prove that they lived inthe time period between 1919-1969 beforethe city passed its housing discriminationordinance,” said Tasheik Kerr, assistant tothe city manager.

Broad support for program

A recent survey conducted byNorthwestern University’s Center for the Studyof Diversity and Democracy found that everyethnic and racial demographic group withinthe city, across all nine of its political wards,supports this historical reparations program.

Northwestern surveyed about 3,500 Evanstonresidents between February and June2023. About 70% of Caucasian respondentsviewed the reparations program as “goodpublic policy” for the city of Evanston. ThisNorthwestern survey differs from nationwidesurveys, which have historically recordedabout 20% support among white respondents.

The Evanston survey shows that othergroups also support this program, including64% of Black respondents, 61% of Latinorespondents, and 62% of Asian respondents.

City Manager Clayton Black told the DailyNorthwestern that committee memberssuggested using Liberty Bank and OneUnitedBank, two Black-owned banks with which thecity is considering depositing money, as longas the bank can promise to hold collateralworth 105% of the city’s original deposit.Student journalist Joyce Li covered thestory.

“I would have imagined that opposition toreparations would be more likely to come fromconservatives, but the debate that’s going onis within the Evanston Black community abouthow it can be done or whether reparations aresufficient,” Li said. “Our coverage has beenable to include perspectives that are critical ofthe reparations program.”

Evanston’s program has faced someopposition. There were local communitygroups who advocated for cash payments tobe an option.“We didn’t have that in the beginning,but the reparations committee added thatoption,” Kerr said. “All their meetings arepublic – members of that group showed upto meetings and voiced their opinion andmade public comments. There wasn’t a lot ofinteraction with city staff.”

–An ABC7 Chicago report featured EvanstonRejects Racist Reparations, whose memberRose Cannon argued that no reparations canever be enough to repair the damages. KevinBrown, a member of the group, described theEvanston program as “managed by a white-runfinance company, and a meager $25,000is not given to the injured but to white-runperpetrator banks who redlined Blackpeople out of beautiful areas and causedgenerational harm.”

The groups prone to criticizing theprogram, such as Evanston Rejects RacistReparations, want to give people cash ratherthan giving money to the banking industry.The Evanston Reparations Program isevolving in response to their demands.

Published in the winter 2023 issue of the Gateway Journalism Review