Illinois city hands out $25K cash payments to 44 Black residents through reparations program
Evanston, Illinois. will issue $25,000 to 44 residents in reparations payments, the City’s Reparations Committee has announced.
Established in 2019 and approved by the City Council in 2021, the program issues $25,000 direct cash payments to Black residents and descendants of Black residents who lived in Evanston between 1919 and 1969.
Evanston was the first city in the nation to pass a reparations plan, pledging $10 million over a decade to Black residents.
The payments are intended to cover housing expenses, Evanston official Cynthia Vargas told the Chicago Tribune.
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Tasheik Kerr, assistant to the city manager, said during a meeting last week the residents will be contacted to inform them their payments are on the way over the next few weeks.
According to a city memo, the fund had received $276,588 from Evanston’s real estate transfer tax. The committee discussed taxing Delta-8 THC products to sustain funding in the future.
Ald. Krissie Harris recognized that the tax would not significantly increase revenue, though it would "help keep moving that number forward" in the reparations process.
"It’s really important for people to understand we pay as we have the money, and it’s not that we’re withholding from paying everyone," Harris said, according to The Daily Northwestern. "It’s just we have to accumulate the funds to make sure we can pay."
The reparations fund did not receive any philanthropic donations this year as of Jan. 31, so the fund is primarily supported by a cannabis sales tax and real estate tax money.
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Judicial Watch filed a lawsuit against Evanston's reparations program last year due to its use of race as an eligibility requirement for the program. The watchdog group alleges that the program violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.
"To date, Evanston has awarded over $6,350,000 to 254 individuals based on their race. The city must be stopped before it spends even more money on this clearly discriminatory and unconstitutional reparations program," Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said at the time.
Similar calls for reparations have been gaining traction in the United States, as measures are being introduced in state legislatures and being pushed by grassroots activists. Municipalities and states recently launched exploratory efforts on the matter, forming committees to examine the effect of slavery to calculate how compensation would be dispensed.
The committee did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment.