As the city of Northampton moves forward on plans to form a commission to study reparations for African Americans in our community, I have found myself being asked to speak publicly about reparations — first on a well-attended local webinar, then on a local radio station.

Each time, I was asked the same three questions: Why reparations? Why Northampton? Why now? Just as in the webinar and on the radio show, I will use this column to answer these three fundamental questions.

Why reparations?

In answering the first, most central question, , I want to begin by quoting Ta-Nehisi Coates from his now-famous 2014 essay in the Atlantic magazine, “The Case for Reparations.”

Coates writes: “250 years of slavery, 90 years of Jim Crow, 60 years of separate but equal, 35 years of racist housing policy. Perhaps no statistic better illustrates the enduring legacy of our country’s shameful history of treating Black people as sub-citizens, sub-Americans, and sub-humans than the wealth gap. Reparations would close this chasm.”

Reparations is our recognition of some of the most painful aspects of our history, starting with the evils of slavery — but reparations does not stop there. Reparations is the collective recognition that slavery has had many afterlives, including racial terror and lynching, legalized segregation, redlining, destruction of Black neighborhoods, medical experimentation on Black bodies, and more — and these reverberate today.

We know that vast disparities exist today in the lived experience of Black and white citizens in this country — in education, health care, housing, policing, mass incarceration and wealth, to name a few. As William Faulkner put it, “The past is never dead. It is not even past.”

Reparations offer a much-needed way to make repair for stolen land, stolen labor, stolen lives, and stolen power.

In their comprehensive book, “From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the 21st Century,” William Darity and Kirsten Mullen write that a meaningful reparations program must involve three components: Acknowledgment: truth-telling; Redress: tangible, material repair; Closure: a commitment by offending parties to non-repetition of wrongdoings.

Furthermore, according to Darity and Mullen, reparations must include repair for three phases of injustice in our nation’s history: slavery, American apartheid (Jim Crow), and present-day discrimination.

As we continue with this discussion, it is also important to note what reparations is not: Reparations is not charity. Charity is giving of one’s excess, often with strings attached.

Reparations is not solely an apology. Although apology should be a significant part of the process, reparations must go much further.

Reparations is not about asking forgiveness. Seeking forgiveness centers white people in the discussion and is an inappropriate expectation.

Reparations is not about assigning individual guilt. Reparations are about collective responsibility and common citizenship in this country.

Only with an accurate reckoning of our nation’s history can we move forward as a people hoping to create an equitable, multi-racial democracy.

Why Northampton?

As we proceed to address this vital question, we are grateful for the leadership of the David Ruggles Center for History and Education and Historic Northampton. Their research reveals Northampton’s centuries-long involvement in the enslavement of African Americans.

We now know that prominent community leaders in Northampton were enslavers; the enslavers were families who controlled the wealth and politics in the city. Their names sound familiar because these names appear on a number of city streets and a local church: Parsons, Strong, Pomeroy, Lyman, Henshaw, Clapp, Clark, Dwight, Hawley, Stoddard and Wright, to name a few. The Rev. Jonathan Edwards was also an enslaver, as were members of his church.

Why Northampton? Because we are ready to do our part and join a national reparations movement that has power and purpose. Northampton would join communities nationwide working toward making reparations, including Evanston, Illinois; Amherst, Easthampton and Boston; Asheville, North Carolina; Providence, Rhode Island; St. Petersburgh, Florida; St. Louis, Missouri; and Wilmington, Delaware.

We would be joining with hundreds of national groups in supporting U.S. House Resolution 40, which would establish a federal commission to examine the impacts of the legacy of slavery and recommend proposals to provide reparations. Northampton needs to be on the right side of history and join this groundswell occurring from coast to coast.

Why Northampton? I believe that Northampton is a community with a good heart and soul. Not perfect, for sure, but good. We are a city filled with caring, engaged, connected folks committed to the values of inclusion, fairness, equity and justice.

So how do we live with this statistic: 13% of this country’s population is African American, yet holds just 4% of its wealth?

According to Nikole Hannah-Jones, author of “What Is Owed?” published in the New York Times Magazine in 2020: “The average Black family with children holds one cent of wealth for every dollar that the average white family with children holds.” How do we live with that?

Why now?

Why now is a good question, but maybe a better question is the one posed by the esteemed teacher Rabbi Hillel, “If not now, when?”

Reparations for African Americans is not a new idea in this country — it has cycled in and out of popular discourse since the mid-1860s. At the end of the Civil War, legislation was passed with the promise of providing the formerly enslaved with 40 acres and a mule. That promise was broken soon after the war ended.

As Darity and Mullen argue, “The process of creating the racial wealth chasm begins with the failure to provide the formerly enslaved with the 40 acres they were promised. So the restitution has never been given, and it’s 155 years overdue.”

Why now? Because HR 40, first introduced in 1989 by the late U.S. Rep. John Conyers, has stalled in every session of Congress since then. Our public witness and energetic support are needed to move this legislation forward.

We have much work to do to teach, educate, organize and act to make repair for stolen lives, stolen land, stolen labor and stolen power. We are called to be “repairers of the breach,” as it says in the Book of Isaiah.

Northampton, it is our turn and our time.

The Rev. Andrea Ayvazian, Ministerial Team, Alden Baptist Church, Springfield, is also founder and director of the Sojourner Truth School for Social Change Leadership.]]>