Fulton County is moving ahead with studying reparations for descendants of people who were enslaved or lived under Jim Crow laws in the county.
Fulton officially created its Reparations Task Force in 2021. The Fulton Board of Commissioners allocated $250,000 for the project. The county is hiring researchers from the Atlanta University Center Consortium to conduct two studies on historical racial injustice in Fulton, and the task force will provide possible recommendations from the studies to the board of commissioners by this fall.
The City of Atlanta established a study commission last November. And, Georgia House Democrats have planned a “Reparations Day” at the state Capitol on Thursday to discuss further redress in the state.
Conversations around the reparations movement for African Americans saw a rise following George Floyd’s murder in 2020. The growing Black Lives Matter movement helped recenter the spotlight on repair.
California recently introduced a slate of reparations bills, and in Illinois, the state’s reparations commission is exploring several policy areas for legislation and looking to the public for input. The efforts have been at the local level in other places, including Georgia.
(Created by Jasmine Robinson/WABE)
Linda Mann, co-founder of the African American Redress Network, which tracks reparations initiatives in the U.S., said despite the surge in interest, funding these efforts is a constant issue.
“Bills are being passed, or these task forces are being passed,” Mann said. “But a lot of them are being passed without any money, and that’s a huge issue. Because they’re being tasked to do actual research — significant research, actually.”
In Fulton, the task force’s budget funds multiple meetings and town halls in addition to hiring the researchers for the studies.
Morehouse assistant professor and chair of Fulton’s task force, Karcheik…
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