Evanston, Illinois, has been referred to as the new epicenter of the civil rights movement when, in 2019, it became the first city in America to guarantee funding for reparations to black residents. The program has been hailed by other cities looking to implement something similar, but it has brought unintended, unfortunate consequences. In part one of this series, Reparations Nation, the Washington Examiner profiles the architect of the controversial scheme.
EVANSTON, Illinois — When former Councilwoman Robin Rue Simmons was talking with fellow Evanstonians a few years ago, she was struck by how little people knew of the deep divisions that had existed in their small community just outside of Chicago on the north shore of Lake Michigan.
“Everyone in the circle was talking about their love for Evanston, what their Evanston was like, and at that moment, we were having extreme neighborhood … so we were dealing with that and the housing crisis and the exodus of the black community, and I was sitting at the table feeling a lot of pressure, burden, fear, and uncertainty,” she told the Washington Examiner from her FirstRepair office in Evanston. “But then my white colleague across the table had expressed her Evanston as being ‘every day a summer camp,’ and I thought, ‘Oh, damn, well, I don’t even know what summer camp is.'”
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At that moment, Simmons realized that while the affluent white woman was well-meaning and “an ally in every sense,” she and the woman could not relate to each other’s life experiences in Evanston.
The woman was from a privileged and segregated part of town and hadn’t had a clue about the disparities in public education between white children and black children, how black people got to Evanston, their history, and how zoning laws were created specifically to keep them out of certain neighborhoods. Neither was she aware of banks refusing to lend money to black families to buy homes, leaving them with the only option of turning to predatory lenders who often scammed them out of their money or seized their homes if they were a day late or missed one payment.
“I appreciated [the woman] sharing that Evanston felt like ‘every day a summer camp’ for her, but to me, Evanston was nothing like summer camp,” said Simmons, the architect of the first government reparations program in America.
It wasn’t the only time Simmons, now a young grandmother, realized that inequality existed in Evanston.
Her first brush with it was in the third grade.
She had taken a bus for a play date to the home of a friend who was white. As she crossed the North Shore Channel, went up McCormick Boulevard, and along Central Street, the view was hard to miss.
None of the people on the sidewalk looked like her. Her friend’s house had neatly trimmed trees, and there were shops and grocery stores nearby. The streets were wide and clean, and children were playing outside, laughing, and riding their bikes. The large houses were made of brick and limestone, with Spanish tiles for the roof that paired perfectly with the manicured lawns.
She might as well have been in Oz.
The inside was also a sight to behold. On that day, a housekeeper had let her in. The house had high ceilings with sunshine streaming in, art on the walls, and smooth marble surfaces.
It was a far cry from her neighborhood in the 5th Ward, where streets of aluminum-sided, two- and three-story homes were separated only by narrow alleys.
The inequality started to gnaw at her. It followed her through middle school and high school and college, and it even haunted her during her early years as a professional. She couldn’t unsee what she had seen on that day so many years ago. The feeling never fully went away, not even when she turned 41 and was elected as a councilwoman to represent the same ward she had grown up in as a child.
But Simmons, who was finally in a place of power, decided to do something about it and got to work.
Now, she is the leader of the country’s first government reparations program for black people who have been harmed by racist housing policies. Her work, by some, has been heralded as a courageous step toward righting decades of wrongs. Evanston has even been referred to as the new epicenter of the civil rights movement and Simmons a modern-day Rosa Parks. She frequently meets with other municipalities that want to implement similar programs.
In June, she’ll speak at the United Nations. She’ll also be in Kansas City, Missouri, and Tulsa, Oklahoma, give a keynote address in Miami, and attend events throughout metropolitan Chicago.
“Everybody wants to talk to Robin,” Ramona Burton, one of the first recipients of Evanston’s $25,000 reparation payments, told the Washington Examiner.
In 2019, Evanston became America’s first city to guarantee funding for reparations to black residents.
What followed was more than a year of public meetings, discussions, expert testimony, and dogged legal review to determine where the funds would come from and who would be eligible to receive them.
The decision to focus on housing, and not slavery, came after residents said housing policies of the Jim Crow era and redlining overwhelmingly hurt them and created a vicious cycle of poverty that held them down. Redlining is a discriminatory act in which services such as loans are withheld from customers because of their race.
On March 22, 2021, Evanston, with its population of 78,220 residents, became the first to approve a plan to make reparations available to black residents over the harm they suffered as the result of the city’s past discriminatory housing policies.
“We reflect the racial disparity across the nation,” Simmons said. “What makes us different is that we decided to take this first step — not perfect, not complete.”
Eligibility is broken down into three groups. The first is called “ancestors,” the people who lived in Evanston between 1919 and 1969. The second is known as “direct descendants,” meaning the person must be a direct descendant of a black resident who lived in Evanston between 1919 and 1969. The third group is for residents who have documented proof that they faced housing discrimination because of the city’s practices and policies after 1969.
So far, around 650 residents have applied to receive reparations. The city is also doing verification and due diligence for the “direct descendant” applicants, Tasheik Kerr, the assistant to the city manager, told the Washington Examiner.
Of the 650 applications, only 16 people from the “ancestors” group have received their payment. At least seven others have died while waiting for their turn, including Elanore Swopes, who died of a heart attack in her home on Nov. 1, 2022, her husband, Anthony Swopes, told the Washington Examiner.
In another twist, the reparations committee voted on March 2 to give cash payments to the final two “ancestors” selected among the first 16 recipients because they weren’t homeowners, didn’t plan on buying a home, and lacked direct descendants to whom they could pass on the money for home repair. It was exactly the move critics of the program had hoped would happen. With no guarantees that the large cash payouts would go toward housing, the money could be used or abused however the person saw fit, opening up a Pandora’s box of problems.
Simmons said that despite the growing pains, she expects more Evanstonians to sign up to receive their reparation payments.
“When we opened up our first round of applications, we had about 640 applications, which is great, but we probably heard from that many more after the first round say, ‘Wow, I’m so mad I didn’t apply. I would have applied. I didn’t think anybody would have ever gotten a benefit,”’ she said.
Since introducing the reparations program, Simmons’s days seem to have no end. She and her small five-person staff at FirstRepair, a small brick building with a black and green sign in the 5th Ward, appeared to be running on fumes the day the Washington Examiner met them. They were constantly juggling interviews, setting up speaking engagements, and working with other towns and countries to get similar programs off the ground. But they didn’t seem to mind.
Unfortunately, one consequence of being attached to such a polarizing program is that it attracts racists and other haters.
Simmons claimed she gets hate messages all the time.
“And it’s ignorance,” she said. “It’s ‘you monkey,’ it’s ‘you n*****,’ ‘you lazy bum, you just want a handout,’ and ‘it’s the ghetto lottery.'”
When reparations became a national story, the hate and the ugly notes and messages happened pretty regularly, she said, adding that no amount of hate would ever bring her down because she believes in reparations and is surrounded by like-minded people.
Her parents are proud of her, too.
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“The work I am looking to repair in part is Jim Crow era and redlining,” she said. “I am looking to repair what they lived through, so they’re just so proud.”
And though her parents may be proud, the implementation of funds has been slow, creating a backlash as well as unintended consequences that could leave Simmons with even more sleepless nights.
Catch part two of Reparations Nation focusing on unintended consequences tomorrow.
