The Museum of African American History in Boston was filled with cheers and hope on Tuesday as Boston Mayor Michelle Wu announced the members of the newly formed Reparations Task Force, tasked with exploring how the city can provide reparations to Black Bostonians for its role in chattel slavery.
“For 400 years, the brutal practice of enslavement and recent policies like redlining, the busing crisis, and exclusion from city contracting have denied Black Americans pathways to build generational wealth, secure stable housing and live freely,” Wu said. “Our administration remains committed to tackling long-standing racial inequities and this task force is the next step in our commitment as a city to advance racial justice and build a Boston for everyone.”
On Dec. 14, 2022, Boston city councilors unanimously voted to form the task force as a way to combat the legacy of racial inequality in the city. The Reparations Task Force – which comprises representatives from five local Black organizations and 10 people recommended by those representatives – will study and collect data on the racial disparities experienced by Black Bostonians.
The task force will work in three phases. The first phase will be to research and document Boston’s role in the African slave trade. The second phase will assess Boston’s actions to address the legacy of chattel slavery. The third phase will make recommendations to the city regarding how it can atone for its role in the African slave trade.
An initial report on the task force’s findings is due by next year to the mayor and the city council. Wu expects the city will start taking the necessary “steps” laid out in the task force’s report by 2026.
The crowd at the Reparations Press Conference at the Museum of African American History on Feb. 7. (Mayor’s Office Photo by John Wilcox)City of Boston
Joseph D. Feaster Jr., a self-proclaimed “reparationist,” was announced chairperson of the task force.
“We were promised 40 acres and a mule. I’m a city kid, I can’t do anything with the mule,” Feaster Jr. said, as he began his speech. “So give me 41 acres.”
A few chuckles and claps burst from the crowd.
Feaster Jr., who was also the former president of the Boston branch of the NAACP, is a descendant of enslaved Africans and likens the concept of reparations to a mortgage loan.
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“I liken it to a mortgage loan because if, for instance, that original debtor passes away, I’ve never seen a lender say that the debt is no longer owed,” Feaster Jr. said. “They say that the estate is responsible for paying that debt and that’s what we’re talking about here with this committee.”
Feaster Jr. said the task force will specifically focus on the size of the debt owed to the Black Boston community.
In June of 2022, the city council unanimously voted to issue a formal apology for Boston’s role in the African slave trade.
Boston was likely a city used to import enslaved Africans who arrived on a ship returning from the Caribbean on Feb. 26, 1638, according to a resolution from the city. A few years later, in 1641, Massachusetts legalized slavery, a violent practice that traded Africans and Indigenous people for goods.
From 1704 to 1752, the number of enslaved Africans in Boston increased by 350%. Many of these enslaved Africans were exported from the Caribbean to Boston to perform arduous labor while being denied basic human rights.
“It’s always important to remind ourselves that in 1641, not in Georgia or Florida or North Carolina or Virginia, but in Massachusetts, the Massachusetts Bay Colony, it was John Winthrop who wrote the body of liberties, which codified slavery, when there were 13 colonies,” Segun Idowu, Boston’s chief of Economic Opportunity and Inclusion, said. “And so for almost 200 years, the spirit of Massachusetts truly was the spirit of America, a state in which lobbied for, which built the boats, which hired the crewmen, and allowed this institution to continue.”
Idowu, a descendant of enslaved people, who now helps lead the city’s economy, came to the African Meeting House with his grandmother, Francis Coleman Lawson. Idowu told the story of his family’s lineage, starting with his grandmother, who came to Boston more than 30 years ago from Oberlin, Ohio, all the way back to the early 1800s with his great-great-great-great-grandmother Mary Thomas. Thomas was an enslaved African woman born on a plantation owned by her captor, Henry Thomas, whom she was forced to bare the same name.
“There are folks who always say that slavery was so long ago and I only went back to names of people,” Idowu said.
A strong round of applause boomed from the crowd.
Carrie Mays, a youth leader with Teen Empowerment. (Mayor’s Office Photo by John Wilcox)City of Boston
Carrie Mays, a youth leader with Teen Empowerment, who is also a member of the task force, said she spent her childhood “searching for the beauty and value” within her Blackness. Although Mays didn’t find the solution to racial healing within a textbook, she did find it within her community, she said.
“Today, for us a moment in time where the city of Boston can be considered to be a national model, where we turn our resilience into resolution, our pain into power, and our past into a pathway to heal the future,” Mays said. “We all know this compensation, acknowledgment and reconciliation is long overdue. And we can’t afford to waste any more time when it comes to addressing institutional inequities, systemic racism and oppression we’ve experienced.”
Mays thanked Wu and the city councilors, specifically Julia Mejia and Tania Fernandes Anderson, for voting to form the task force.
“I look forward to working with the community as they are the ones who need to be centered in this struggle because the people closest to the power, the people closest to the pain, should be the closest to the power,” Mays said.
Boston District 7 City Councilor Tania Fernandes Anderson. (Mayor’s Office Photo by John Wilcox)City of Boston
As someone who emigrated from Cape Verde at the age of 10, Fernandes wanted to “step aside” to give space to the African American community, who is often left behind in the city’s progressive initiatives.
“Still the African Americans holding everybody in their hands and their bosom, nurturing us, paving the way, allowing us to make space, giving us the opportunity, their love, their culture, their homes, their food and their bread,” Fernandes said. “The issue is that the bread, the law, is not big enough. We, immigrants, come in and take advantage of this opportunity that the African American people put forth. [We] come in and, yes, dilute the conversation, because the bread is not big enough. The loaf is too small.”
Although slavery was eventually outlawed in Massachusetts in 1783, Black Bostonians are still suffering from the deep racial inequities caused by slavery. In 2015, the median net worth of a Black Bostonian family was $8; meanwhile, the median white Bostonian family earned $250,000, according to a Federal Reserve study. Experts have suggested the huge wealth gap between African Americans and white American households in Boston can be attributed to increasing housing prices.
Despite some efforts to make the city more equitable, Fernandes said the city hasn’t done anything transformational to create enough “bread” for everyone, leaving immigrants and African Americans to fight amongst one another for opportunities. Fernandes closed her speech by asking the audience to make room for African American women to lead the fight for reparations.
“I’m asking you, I’m thanking you, to make space for me, your African immigrant sister who’s come here to love you, to fight with you, and hopefully, to help create this process that’s authentic so we can have true change for African American people in Boston,” Fernandes said.
Ricardo Arroyo, District 5 Boston city councilor. (Mayor’s Office Photo by John Wilcox)City of Boston
Ricardo Arroyo, Boston city councilor for district five, closed the event by paying tribute to Phillis Wheatley. Wheatley was an enslaved African woman who was forced to come to Boston at the age of 7 or 8 during the mid-1700s.
While in Boston, Wheatley developed a talent for writing and later became the first Black woman to write a book of poetry. However, her collection of poetry wasn’t published in the city. Instead, it was published in England because of the “racial attitudes” of the 18th century.
Phillis was named after the slave ship that kidnapped her. Wheatley was the name of the young poet’s captors.
“When we talk about the historical harms, the Wheatleys, the people who purchased individuals who enslaved them, who generated wealth and income of that,” Arroyo said. “It’s only right that our government plays a role in reversing the harm that our government enabled, that our government profited from.”
The members appointed to the Reparations Task Force are:
- Chairperson Joseph D. Feaster Jr., attorney, former president of the Boston branch of the NAACP, current member of City’s Black Men & Boys Commission
- Denilson Fanfan, 11th grader at Jeremiah E. Burke High School
- L’Merchie Frazier, public historian, visual activist, and executive director of creative and strategic partnerships for SPOKE Arts
- George “Chip” Greenidge Jr., founder and director of Greatest MINDS
- Dr. Kerri Greenidge, assistant professor of studies in race, colonialism, and diaspora at Tufts University
- Dr. David Harris, former managing director of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice
- Dorothea Jones, longtime civic organizer and member of the Roxbury Strategic Master Plan Oversight Committee
- Carrie Mays, UMass Boston student and youth leader with Teen Empowerment
- Na’tisha Mills, program manager for Embrace Boston
- Damani Williams, 11th grader at Jeremiah E. Burke High School