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More than 100 people gathered in Co-op City on April 10 for a passionate four-hour discussion on reparations and how New York might begin to address the lasting legacy of slavery.The nine scholars and religious and community leaders who make up the New York State Community Commission on Reparations Remedies (CCRR), established in 2023, heard from 32 residents from across New York City as they testified to their lived experiences and ideas for helping repair the loss of wealth and property and psychological trauma that still impacts Black communities today. Bronx Borough President Vanessa Gibson, Council Member Kevin Riley, Assembly Member Michael Benedetto, and Senator Jamaal Bailey gave brief remarks to kick off the hearing.
Bailey praised the committee for taking on the “heavy task” and called on residents to make their voices heard. The question wasn’t whether reparations are warranted but “in what manner they should be meted out,” he said. Also in the crowd were representatives for Congress Member George Latimer and Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, as well as former City Council Members Andy King and Larry Seabrook, both of whom represented Co-op City and other Bronx neighborhoods before being removed from office amid separate scandals.
[caption id="attachment_124745" align="alignnone" width="700"] About 100 people attended the four-hour hearing.Photo Emily Swanson[/caption]New York’s CCRR is tasked with examining the legacy of slavery and discrimination and how these forces impact Black people today. It will produce a report compiling its research and testimony from the public.
At the hearing, scholars and residents explained how the harms of slavery continued long after it was officially abolished in New York in 1827.Speakers cited local impacts, including housing policies in Parkchester that excluded Black and Latino families until the 1960s, and Rikers Island jail, where Black people make up a disproportionate number of detainees, as proof that New York owes a debt to today’s people. Twentieth-century housing discrimination “crippled Black wealth acquisition,” and Black people were long kept out of even union construction work, let alone medical, legal and banking jobs, said Mark Naison, professor of African-American Studies at Fordham University.
That loss of wealth and “traumatic personal consequences” are still felt today, he said. Reparations elsewhere Several states and cities are examining the possibility of reparations, following in the footsteps of Evanston, Illinois, which began providing $25,000 grants in 2022 to those affected by past discriminatory housing policies, and California, where a statewide reparations committee launched in 2022.The California group produced a 1,000-page report that addressed many of the same questions the New York CCRR is currently working on.
The report said that those whose ancestors were enslaved in the U.S. or were free Black people living in the U.
S. before 1900 should be eligible for reparations, making a distinction between “race-based” and “lineage-based” benefits, a major topic of discussion in Co-op City. The California committee worked with experts to determine that at least $1 million would be owed to each eligible person.
However, a bill that would have created means of disbursing such payments did not pass through the state legislature. In Sept. 2024, Governor Gavin Newsome issued a formal apology for slavery, which was one of the group’s recommendations.
It ended with, “The state of California commits to restore and repair affected peoples with actions beyond this apology.” Sharing perspectives Nearly everyone at the Co-op City hearing agreed that some form of compensation for the long-lasting impacts of slavery is deserved. However, just who should receive such benefits — and what form they should take — came under heavy debate.
Attendee Leslie Peterson said it would likely take trillions of dollars to repay people today for the broken promise of “forty acres and a mule” that was made to freed slaves. Peterson and some others said that reparations could take the form of health care benefits, for example — “not necessarily a check going to accounts.” Attendee Brenda Brown offered other solutions, including zero-interest home loans, free tuition at CUNY and SUNY schools, lower tax rates in certain neighborhoods and the creation of a reparations fund, akin to the Sept.
11 victim compensation fund. “We want our fair share and our retro-share,” she said. However, others in the audience argued that direct cash payments are the only meaningful form of reparations.
“Wealth was stolen. It must be paid in full,” said attendee Paris Green, who accused the CCRR of being “complicit” in harms. “We don’t need a study bill.
We need an action bill, with direct cash payments on the top,” she said to applause. Green also said that as agreed to in California, reparations should go only to a narrow group who can prove that their ancestry connects to the slave trade. “Immigrants and their descendants” have not suffered the same harms caused by slavery, therefore, “lineage-based reparations are the only way forward,” she said.
African descent alone should not determine eligibility, according to Green. Although some scholars argue that reparation efforts should cast a much wider net, several in the crowd disagreed and advocated for the lineage-based approach. Former Council Member Andy King, who was expelled from office in 2020, agreed that reparations must go only to “foundational Black” people, “not someone who showed up two days ago, three years ago.
”Another attendee, Ayesha Smith, told the crowd she was descended from Nat Turner, the enslaved preacher who led a Virginia slave rebellion in 1831. Smith expressed frustration at the CCRR’s “chaotic and unfocused approach,” which she said was not producing results quickly enough. Reparations “must begin, like, within 24 hours in my bank account,” she said.
“Give us the bag, and don’t tell us how we should spend the money.” [caption id="attachment_124747" align="alignnone" width="700"] Attendee Joan Harris said, “I tell my kids today, my summer camp was in the cotton fields,” earning $2.50 per 100 pounds picked.
Photo Emily Swanson[/caption]Leaving an inheritance After the hearing, the Bronx Times spoke with Mashon Baines from Soundview, who said she has long advocated for lineage-based reparations. Baines said she distrusts the CCRR because it often excludes the perspectives of those who believe in lineage-based reparations, and she doesn’t believe there are many descendants of slaves on the task force. The Bronx Times contacted the committee for comment and has not yet received a response.
“We want to see representation,” Baines said. If or when it comes time to disburse reparations, the committee must “identify who is the lineage of an atrocity that has happened on this land,” Baines said. Although it may be difficult for those removed from their biological families or missing records proving their ancestry, “there’s a way to find out.
” Baines said she hopes the CCRR takes residents’ testimony seriously and produces tangible results quickly. “I want to make sure this is implemented for my children, my grandchildren, my great-grandchildren, and so on, and so on,” Baines said. “They need an inheritance.
Their inheritance was stolen over and over.”Reach Emily Swanson at [email protected] or (646) 717-0015.
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