Boston’s Reparations Task Force and Mayor Michelle Wu are announcing funding for research on the history and legacy of slavery in Boston. Mayor Wu urges researchers to help us break new ground and fill the gaps in our knowledge as we pursue equitable solutions to deliver justice for our local Black communities. Learn more and find the RFP application: https://www.boston.gov/equity-and-inclusion/task-force-reparations

Mayor Wu's task force on reparations announced that two research teams will study Boston's role in the transatlantic slave trade.

The Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery Initiative's "Reparative Partnership Ideathon" event was held on Thursday, December 7th, 2023 at Roxbury Community College. The event was scheduled from 5:30 pm – 8:30 pm and its objective is to bring together local community organizations and Harvard community members to develop project ideas that address systemic inequities caused by slavery in the Cambridge and Boston communities. Thanks to all of those who participated in this discussion and shared their creative ideas. Special thanks to George (Chip) Greenidge, Greatest MINDS, and Naeemah Elias for helping to moderate the discussion and bringing people to RCC. Video filmed by the Greatest MINDS Boston. For more information about the Initiative: https://www.harvard.edu/vice-provost-for-special-projects/

Harvard Kennedy School's Ash Center Community Lunch Series: Cutting the Red Tape: How City Governments Can Foster Minority Business Owner's Success - George "Chip" Greenidge, Jr. and five local experts who are helping to build the entrepreneurial landscape. They shared their experiences of how government agencies are being innovative and "cutting the red tape" to help get minority business owners' ventures off the ground and up and running. The discussion highlighted the many barriers they continue to face as minority business owners. Panelists include: Ruthzee Louijeune, President, Boston City Council; Boston City Councilor-At-Large Ayesha M. Wilson, Councilor, City of Cambridge, MA Dennis Benzan, Owner, La Fabrica Restaurant and NightClub Sean Hope, Owner, Yamba Market Dispensary Marisa Nieves, Director of MA Programs, Innovation Studio George (Chip) Greenidge, Jr., Director and Founder, Greatest MINDS; Visiting Fellow, Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation

Boston’s Mayor and members of the reparations task force speak about the progress made so far, the challenges going forward, and what they think reparations could actually look like. In What Is Owed?, a new 7-part podcast, GBH News political reporter Saraya Wintersmith seeks to understand what reparations might look like in one of the oldest cities in America, uncovering the lessons for a successful reparations framework through the stories of its architects, past and present. GBH News is a premier source for in-depth local news and original story telling based in Boston, Massachusetts. Subscribe to the GBH YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/gbhnews?sub... Follow GBH News on Instagram: / gbhnews Like GBH News on Facebook: / gbhnews Follow GBH News on X: / gbhnews We can’t do it without you. Support our award-winning community journalism by donating today: https://bit.ly/SupportGBHNews

#BasicBlackGBH #Reparations #blackhistorymonth GBH News is out with a new podcast that asks a big question: What Is Owed? On this week’s episode of Basic Black, Host Phillip Martin talks about the podcast, which dives into what reparations might look like in Boston, with GBH News Politics Reporter and Podcast Host Saraya Wintersmith, GBH News Senior Podcast Producer Jerome Campbell, Historian Dr. Kellie Carter Jackson of Wellesley College, and Boston Task Force on Reparations member George “Chip” Greenidge. The podcast dives into Boston’s history of slavery and discrimination and examines what could come of the city’s Task Force on Reparations. “The ‘why?’ is looking at the work that the city council put forth in 2022, calling for the task force. It came out of this question of, if reparations is going to happen in Boston, what would it look like?” says Campbell. The push for reparations is picking up steam across the country, with Illinois, California, and New York launching task forces to study reparations. But it is unpopular among white Americans: a 2022 Pew Research Center study found that 18% of white Americans support reparations for descendants of enslaved people in the U.S., compared to 77% of Black Americans. Carter Jackson, associate professor and chair of Africana Studies at Wellesley College, attributes that gap to a lack of education. “Most Americans are grossly uninformed,” she says. “Most Americans are not aware of the history of slavery, the deep, violent history of slavery. They’re not aware of the deep, violent history of segregation, of redlining, of how Black people have been stripped from their wealth, stripped from opportunities to build wealth, blocked from entering schools for decades or centuries on end." But reparations aren’t only for harms done in the past. “We have to talk about not just the past, but the present. Ongoing structural racism, what does that look like? And how are Black people marginalized or left out?” says Carter Jackson on Basic Black. Massachusetts was the first colony to legalize slavery, and then one of the first to abolish it. Slavery was common in Boston during the Colonial period. The Royall family enslaved at least sixty people on their plantation in nearby Medford. In the course of reporting What Is Owed?, Wintersmith learned about enslaved people who sued for their freedom–or, once freed, for reparations. “Black people, even as early as colonial Massachusetts, were utilizing the court system to sue for freedom. Even in Belinda [Sutton]’s case, as she was suing for a pension from her enslaver’s estate, you can read her petition and see that she’s also condemning the entire system,” says Wintersmith. As someone whose family has lived in the Boston area for four generations, Greenidge hopes that Boston’s work on reparations will bring its local history to the forefront. “Let’s talk about my great-great aunt, who had a house near Berklee where the Christian Science Monitor was, and how that was knocked down in the guise of urban renewal, was actually taken from her at very little cost. Let’s talk about those local stories. Let’s talk about Charles Stuart and the way that he killed his wife and blamed it on a Black man,” says Greenidge. Greenidge was a teenager in Mission Hill during the hunt for Stuart’s killer, and he later received a scholarship from the Carol DiMaiti Stuart Foundation, named after Charles Stuart’s wife and victim. That was a form of reparations, noted Phillip Martin, who hosted this week’s episode. The idea of reparations might sound foreign, but victims have received reparations in the past. Carter Jackson brings up Japanese Americans and Holocaust survivors as examples. “We have models that we can build upon. We have the way. I think the problem is we don’t always have the will,” she says. Listen to What Is Owed? wherever you get your podcasts or on gbh.org. Podcast Ep. 1 When a city tries to heal itself: https://studio.youtube.com/video/Gi_1S_lgwgw/edit GBH News is a premier source for in-depth local news and original story telling based in Boston, Massachusetts. Subscribe to the GBH YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCx_SjDi4CS5ALkWCS9ffldQ Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BasicBlackGBH/ Follow us on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/basicblackgbh/ Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/basicblackgbh/ Sign up for the Basic Black newsletter: https://www.wgbh.org/newsletters/basic-black Help us keep bringing you the local news that matters to YOU, right here on YouTube. Donate today: https://bit.ly/3MJ09Fm

Boston’s Mayor and members of the reparations task force speak about the progress made so far, the challenges going forward, and what they think reparations could actually look like. In What Is Owed?, a new 7-part podcast, GBH News political reporter Saraya Wintersmith seeks to understand what reparations might look like in one of the oldest cities in America, uncovering the lessons for a successful reparations framework through the stories of its architects, past and present. GBH News is a premier source for in-depth local news and original story telling based in Boston, Massachusetts. Subscribe to the GBH YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/gbhnews?sub... Follow GBH News on Instagram: / gbhnews Like GBH News on Facebook: / gbhnews Follow GBH News on X: / gbhnews We can’t do it without you. Support our award-winning community journalism by donating today: https://bit.ly/SupportGBHNews

Jamil Smith, editor-in-chief of The Emancipator — a digital magazine that reimagines the nation’s first abolitionist newspapers for a new day — and GBH News examine how Boston might change after reparations are enacted. GBH News' Callie Crossley, Harvard professor and former president and CEO of NAACP Cornell William Brooks and Co-Director of Cambridge HEART Dara Bayer joined the discussion. GBH News is a premier source for in-depth local news and original story telling based in Boston, Massachusetts. Subscribe to the GBH News YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/gbhnews?sub_confirmation=1 Follow GBH News on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gbhnews/ Like GBH News on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/gbhnews/ Follow GBH News on X: https://twitter.com/GBHNews We can’t do it without you. Support our award-winning community journalism by donating today: https://bit.ly/SupportGBHNews

We Are Black Boston - Honoring the Legacy, Contributions, and Presence of Black Bostonians. City of Boston,