A reparations task force appointed by Fulton County, Georgia, officials says the county was “complicit” in stealing land from Black residents in the decades after slavery.
The Fulton County Reparations Task Force is currently in its research phase and will soon present its findings and recommendations to Fulton County leaders, FOX 5 Atlanta reported. Chair Dr. Karcheik Sims-Alvarado said the panel has collected a mountain of evidence showing the county benefited from slavery and the disenfranchisement of Black people during Jim Crow.
“We believe that we are creating the blueprint to make a very strong argument for reparations,” Sims-Alvarado told FOX 5 Atlanta.
Fulton County commissioners approved the creation of the task force with a $250,000 budget to research the county’s ties to slavery, what properties the county may have confiscated illegally from Black owners and the use of illegal prison labor from the county’s confinement facilities.
ATLANTA REPARATIONS TASK FORCE HOLDS FIRST PUBLIC MEETING: ‘REPARATIONS ARE MEANT TO REPAIR’
Over the course of two years, the task force gathered documents like land leases, prison records and relied on private citizens coming forward with family documents to build their case for reparations to the Black community.
“What we found was that Fulton County was complicit in declaring eminent domain on its residents, particularly within the Buckhead area,” Sims-Alvarado told FOX 5 Atlanta. “Some individuals moved to — if they were fortunate — they were able to buy another home in Dixie Hill, but some individuals wind up becoming…
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