Detroit Reparations Task Force hears public proposals during first meeting

METRO DETROIT NEWS NEWS Detroit Reparations Task Force hears public proposals during first meeting Eighty percent of Detroit voters approved a 2021 measure to study and address reparations By Ken Coleman, Michigan Advance on Mon, Apr 17, 2023 at 8:28 am SEND A NEWS TIP

Ken Coleman A voter urges a yes vote on the reparations ballot proposal, Nov. 2, 2021. The Detroit City Council Reparations Task Force heard ideas from the public during its first meeting on Thursday in downtown Detroit. They included remedies designed to address home mortgage foreclosure, various tax credits, repaying city retirees who took pension losses during the city’s 2013 bankruptcy process, as well as direct cash payments to African American city residents. “Black folks in Detroit need to be compensated,” Cecily McClellan, a retired city of Detroit employee told the task force. Eighty percent of Detroit voters approved a 2021 measure that called for the creation of a task force to study and address the issue of reparations. Detroit is 77% African American. The 13-member task force was appointed by the Detroit City Council. The task force has been allotted $350,000 for administrative operations for the upcoming fiscal year that begins July 1.

Keith Williams, who serves as both Michigan Democratic Party Black Caucus chair and Reparations Task Force co-chair, said he wants to see a reparations effort that addresses Black people who lost residential and commercial property in the Motor City’s Black Bottom community several decades ago.

In the early 1950s, an all-white Detroit city government seized private property in a lower east side neighborhood in the name of urban renewal.

“I feel that we must acquire the land in these backward sections that we must remove the buildings there from and sell the property back to private individuals for development,” then-Detroit Mayor Albert Cobo said in January 1950.

The effort displaced Black city residents, many of whom were poor. Black Bottom was replaced with Lafayette Park, a middle-class and largely white residential district, according to 1970 U.S. Census data.

Williams, a former Black Bottom resident, believes that Black descendants should receive government economic reciprocity.

“That should be part of the repair,” said Williams.

Detroit isn’t the only city to consider reparations. In Evanston, Ill., a Chicago suburb, elected officials approved a 2019 resolution to create a reparations funding stream. Last year, 16 Evanston residents were selected to receive $25,000 each in reparations to address harms from slavery to discriminatory housing policies.

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