Reparations Fund

By Dr. Wornie Reed

According to recent reports, the City of Roanoke may be moving toward atoning for its 20th-century sins perpetrated under the guise of urban renewal. This included the destruction of Gainsboro and other sections of the city during the urban renewal debacle in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s.

First, there was the redlining. In the 1930s, the federal government created color-coded maps that assessed the creditworthiness of neighborhoods in 250 cities across the country, including Norfolk, Richmond, and Roanoke in Virginia.

Based on racist assumptions, these maps ‘redlined” (designated) many Black neighborhoods as poor risks for loans and housing assistance. Consequently, with limited residential options, Black communities became more concentrated in less desirable neighborhoods.

After WW II, the Federal Housing Administration subsidized the construction of American postwar suburbs but used racially restrictive covenants to ensure that these suburban homes could be sold or resold only to Whites.

By the time the 1949 Housing Act became law, a half-century of deliberate racist policies had created some of the blighted conditions that were then used as the justification for slum clearance and urban renewal.

A summary of what happened in Roanoke notes that “In 1955, Roanoke City Council declared the Northeast neighborhood a ‘slum and blighted area,’ a designation that initiated the urban renewal process. The development projects that followed leveled 1,600 homes, shuttered 200 businesses, demolished two dozen churches, and dug up nearly 1,000 graves to make way for the construction of Interstate 581, the civic center and post office.”

After months of little progress, the Roanoke Equity and Empowerment Advisory Board has drafted an “apology” that includes recommendations for a reparations fund for families and individuals who suffered financially as a result of what many in the black community called this “Negro removal.” The draft includes recommendations for raising these reparation funds, which would be used for housing-related projects.

Of course, an apology without material (mostly financial) redress is hollow. One Roanoke City Councilman expressed the concerns of many. “One of the concerns that I have is that we’ll approve an apology and that’s it — and then nothing will be done,” Hagen said. “So I’m really hoping, hoping, to build that trust, to build that trust to actually do things and that we’re going to actually address these harms.”

As I have said before, apologizing for the destruction of viable African American communities is like apologizing for slavery and keeping the slaves.

The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) argues that the prospects for national reparations are currently weak, but there is movement at the local level. They list some 40 localities that had reparations initiatives as of December 2024.

EPI offers a reasonable set of criteria for what constitutes reparations at the state and local levels.

They acknowledge and apologize for harm done and provide material redress for that harm, and they meet the following additional criteria:

– They specify correctly what harms are being addressed and who should benefit.

– They stay within their capacity to provide redress for the identified harm while avoiding absolving the federal government from its own responsibility.

– They make a commitment to structural change designed to prevent future racial injustice.

Let’s hope Roanoke effort meets that standard.