Amherst Seeks Residents For Committee To Make Reparations For Racism

The town of Amherst, Massachusetts, is creating a committee to make reparations for those harmed by anti-Black racism. 

In December, 2020, Amherst's town council passed a resolution to end structural racism and achieve racial equity.

The town is now recruiting residents for a committee called the African Heritage Reparation Assembly to decide how to fund a reparations account, with public and private money, and who gets paid.

Six of the seven committee members must be Black, and two must be current or past elected officials, "because... they have standing in the community," said Town Manager Paul Bockelman.

"Even though it's been a long time coming, it's new, and there can be a lot of questions that we need to answer along the way," Bockelman said. "We want to have a group of people who are engaged with the community and represent the people most impacted by structural racism to be in the room making those decisions."

The Amherst effort is based in part on another community: Evanston, Illinois, which is believed to be the first to create a munipal reparations fund.

Amilcar Shabazz is a UMass professor in African American Studies who plans to apply for the Amherst committee. He said he's been frustrated in the past when citizen committees came up with recommendations — including over police reform — and the Amherst government overlooked them.

"You can engage in a lot of good faith discussions, but you still don't know, down the line — after you've done a whole lot of work — how these 13 individuals, under the guidance of the town manager, are going to actually decide and implement," Shabazz said. "So it's sort of a leap of faith."

Bockelman said the one non-Black member of the committee is likely to be Michele Miller, who is white and co-founded the group Reparations for Amherst.

Shabazz said he considers the support of white people in the reparations effort, nationally and at the municipal level, to be critical.

"We haven't gotten reparations because there wasn't white support," he said. "We didn't get it in 1865 when we should have gotten it, because there wasn't white support. The only way you're going to get this groundswell is as more people are brought into it."

Bockelman said he plans to select the committee members within four to six weeks. The committee's reparations plan is due to the town council at the end of October. 

Shabazz said he expects hammering out the exact details of the reparations fund will be challenging, but he's hopeful the committee will work well together. 

"It's a long march," he said. "But hopefully we're moving in a direction of of repair and of making things more just and equitable for all."