The first city in the U.S. to approve reparations has given 200 people checks or in-kind financial assistance. We asked three residents how that money has affected their lives.
Dec. 23, 2024, 5:00 AM EST
By Michela Moscufo
EVANSTON, Ill. — Kenneth Wideman has lived in Evanston his entire life, in a neighborhood bordered by a canal and elevated railroad tracks called the 5th Ward.
His parents moved there from South Carolina, part of an exodus of 6 million Black people fleeing the Jim Crow South over a 60-year period known as the Great Migration. By the time Wideman was born in the 1940s, Evanston was the state’s largest Black suburb, and 95% of the city’s Black population lived in the 5th Ward.
The concentration of Black residents in that neighborhood, however, was no accident.
The city began pushing Black residents out of neighborhoods outside the 5th Ward through targeted zoning in 1919. Later, federal agencies facilitated racially restrictive housing rules and banking discrimination, discouraging lenders from making “risky” loans in predominantly Black neighborhoods such as the 5th Ward.
In 1969, after the federal Fair Housing Act prohibited housing discrimination based on race, Evanston city officials passed local fair housing ordinances. But decades later, the 5th Ward had the lowest property values in the city, median income below the city’s average, and is Evanston’s “only neighborhood with areas classified as food deserts,” according to a 2019 report by the city clerk.
That year, the city set out to create the country’s first reparations program to atone for its history of racial discrimination. Since the program began in 2022, Evanston has awarded $25,000 checks and in-kind financial assistance to more than 200 people.
www.nbcnews.com
Dec. 23, 2024, 5:00 AM EST
By Michela Moscufo
EVANSTON, Ill. — Kenneth Wideman has lived in Evanston his entire life, in a neighborhood bordered by a canal and elevated railroad tracks called the 5th Ward.
His parents moved there from South Carolina, part of an exodus of 6 million Black people fleeing the Jim Crow South over a 60-year period known as the Great Migration. By the time Wideman was born in the 1940s, Evanston was the state’s largest Black suburb, and 95% of the city’s Black population lived in the 5th Ward.
The concentration of Black residents in that neighborhood, however, was no accident.
The city began pushing Black residents out of neighborhoods outside the 5th Ward through targeted zoning in 1919. Later, federal agencies facilitated racially restrictive housing rules and banking discrimination, discouraging lenders from making “risky” loans in predominantly Black neighborhoods such as the 5th Ward.
In 1969, after the federal Fair Housing Act prohibited housing discrimination based on race, Evanston city officials passed local fair housing ordinances. But decades later, the 5th Ward had the lowest property values in the city, median income below the city’s average, and is Evanston’s “only neighborhood with areas classified as food deserts,” according to a 2019 report by the city clerk.
That year, the city set out to create the country’s first reparations program to atone for its history of racial discrimination. Since the program began in 2022, Evanston has awarded $25,000 checks and in-kind financial assistance to more than 200 people.
House repairs, a car, grandkids: Where Evanston's reparations payments are going
The first city in the U.S. to approve reparations has given 200 people checks or in-kind financial assistance. We asked three residents how that money has affected their lives.
www.nbcnews.com
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