Boston reparations group urges white churches and the city to pay billions to black residents

Activists in Boston are asking for $15 billion in reparations for slavery from the city and “white churches.” Clergy leaders and the Boston People’s Reparations Commission made the announcement about their proposal to combat institutional racism in a news conference on Saturday.

“Today we call upon this city, its financiers, and its white churches to stop the shirking, stop the lying, tell the truth, and pay what is owed,” the Rev. John Gibbons of Arlington Street Church in Boston said at the press conference.

“We call on the white church in Boston to join us in supporting a black reparations movement,” Rev. Kevin Peterson, founder of New Democracy Coalition, said.

He added, “We demand from Mayor Wu full monetary compensation for wages and lost lives through slavery and anti-black institutional oppression. Today, we call on a full and robust reparations process.”

The group demanded that Boston Mayor Michelle Wu support their proposal for $15 billion in reparations for the descendants of enslaved people. They proposed that the fund would be split three ways: $5 billion in direct cash payments to black Boston residents, a $5 billion investment in new financial institutions, and $5 billion to address the racial educational achievement gap between black people and white people, along with supporting anti-violence measures.

Peterson reportedly said, “Many of the well-known white churches in downtown Boston are connected to the slave trade and the proliferation of what was a ‘slavetocracy’ in our city.”

“We point to them in Christian love to publicly atone for the sins of slavery, and we ask them to publicly commit to a process of reparations where they will extend their great wealth, tens of millions of dollars among some of those churches, into the black community,” Peterson added.

Numerous religious leaders reportedly signed a letter to several Boston churches seeking support for reparations. The letter was sent to Arlington Street Church, Trinity Church, Old South Church in Back Bay, and King’s Chapel demanding reparations.

Researchers found that King’s Chapel, a 17th-century church, had been connected to slavery in its history, with 32% of the institution’s funding coming from known slave owners.

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Peterson said the payments would “make right the wrongs perpetuated on Boston’s black.”

In 2022, the Boston City Council and Wu offered an apology for the city’s trans-Atlantic slave trade. They also established a Reparations Task Force in 2022 through a city ordinance to provide the mayor reparative justice recommendations. In January this year, Boston named their Reparations Task Force’s research teams, comprised of historians and researchers examining the city’s role in slavery back to 1620 and its impact on descendants.