ST. LOUIS (KMOX) - A group of 11 mayors announced Friday they are pledging to pay reparations to a small number of Black residents in each of their cities to show the federal government how such a program could work. St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones is among those joining the effort.
“Black Americans don’t need another study that sits on a shelf," she told the Associated Press. "We need decisive action to address the racial wealth gap holding communities back across our country.”
Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas is also among those in the group.
The group, calling themselves Mayors Organized for Reparations and Equity (MORE), did not provide details on where the money would come from or how much the effort will cost. MORE member Eric Garcetti, Mayor of Los Angeles, admitted cities would never have the funds to pay reparations for from their own budgets.
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"When we have the laboratories of cities show that there is much more to embrace than to fear, we know that we can inspire national action as well," Garcetti said.
Also absent in details is when the program will begin, how much each recipient would get and how they would be selected. Legal questions have long surrounded the concept of reparations, since there are no survivors or immediate children of slaves still around. Native American groups often claimed they are the ones most able to satisfy the legal standards of harm, loss and liability, if reparations are to be paid to any group.
Since 1989, lawmakers in Congress introduced a bill that would form a commission to study and develop reparations proposals in the United States. But it has never passed. Last year, California became the first state to set up its own reparations commission. That group held its first meeting earlier this month.
Friday's announcement in Sacramento coincided with the first official observance of Juneteenth as a national holiday. Mayors of Sacramento, Denver, Austin, Providence, St. Paul, Minn. and Durham and Asheville, N.C. are included. As is Mayor Keisha Currin of Tullahassee, Oklahoma. It has only 200 residents, but it is the last survivor of the all-Black communities founded after the abolition of slavery.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
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