Reparations Efforts Expand as DOJ Challenges Landmark Evanston Program

EVANSTON, Ill. — A national push to address the lasting damage of slavery and discriminatory housing is expanding even as the Justice Department joins a legal effort to dismantle the country’s first municipal reparations program.

N’nanba “Robin Rue” Simmons, the former Evanston alderperson who helped establish the Illinois city’s program, is working with advocates in more than 100 communities, according to an Associated Press report published Oct. 24. The local initiatives vary, but many focus on housing, education, family history and closing racial wealth gaps created by public and private discrimination.

Evanston approved its reparations plan in 2019 and began implementing it in 2021. The program offers eligible Black residents or their direct descendants benefits valued at $25,000. According to the city’s official program page, recipients may choose assistance for a home purchase, mortgage payments, home improvements or a cash benefit.

The city designed the program to address housing discrimination experienced by Black residents between 1919 and 1969. That history includes government-backed practices and private restrictions that limited where Black families could live, obtain mortgages and build property wealth that could be passed to later generations.

The program now faces a major federal challenge. A judge recently allowed the U.S. Justice Department to intervene in a class-action lawsuit filed in 2024 against Evanston. The department argues that providing benefits on the basis of race violates the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause and federal fair-housing law. In a June statement announcing its intervention request, the department said the city had not tied each payment to a specific unlawful act experienced by an individual recipient.

Evanston officials and supporters reject that argument. They say the program is a targeted remedy for a documented period when Black residents were broadly excluded from housing opportunities and denied an equal chance to accumulate wealth. The court has not issued a final ruling on the legality of the program.

The dispute is unfolding as other institutions take different approaches to reparative justice. The AP reported that Georgetown University continues to support descendants of people enslaved and sold by Jesuit priests connected to the school. Virginia Theological Seminary makes annual unrestricted payments to descendants of people who labored on its campus during slavery and segregation.

Other work has slowed. The AP reported that some universities and organizations have reconsidered research and descendant-identification projects amid the Trump administration’s campaign against diversity, equity and inclusion programs and its opposition to race-based benefits.

Advocates say reparations extend beyond direct payments. Their proposals can include scholarships, housing assistance, historical research, public acknowledgment and investment in communities harmed by discrimination. Opponents maintain that government programs must not distribute benefits based on race and should instead require proof of specific individual harm.

The Evanston case could influence whether other cities move forward, redesign their plans or pause them. For Black communities across the country, the legal fight also raises a larger question: whether documented collective harm can be repaired through public policy, and what evidence the Constitution requires before government may act.

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