Richmond Reparations Movement
(RRM)
Overview of Historical and Present Harms in Richmond
While not widely known, Richmond was the center of the domestic slave trade, trafficking up to two million enslaved Africans to other parts of the country. Between 1879 – 1960, Black community members in Richmond were subjected to social coercion and enforcement of a variety of Jim Crow laws that inhibited every aspect of life.
Race-based segregation remains a hallmark of Richmond. From racist zoning enforcement to the construction of the Richmond-Peterburg Turnpike through the historically Black Jackson Ward neighborhood, racialized land and housing segregation determines health, education, employment, and other important outcomes. In 2021, Richmond declared racism as a public health crisis citing increased health risks and lower life expectancy rates for Richmond’s Black population. Education attainment gaps persist. Black voters continue to be disenfranchised and stripped of their political power. Black households in Richmond have the highest unemployment rate and are most likely to live in extreme poverty.
Like many other cities across the country, Richmond’s Black community is overpoliced, including within schools. The war on drugs continues to render life-altering consequences. Richmond has the highest rate of opioid deaths in Virginia, and Black Richmonders suffer greatly from opioid-related deaths with death rates tripling over the course of the Covid-19 pandemic. Additionally, environmental racism plagues Black communities in Richmond as they are most likely to be impacted by air pollution and excessive heat, which also correlates with poorer health outcomes and upticks in community violence.
Moreover, the ongoing impacts of enslavement have resulted in deep psychological harms, including by way of post-traumatic stress disorder and collective trauma. None of these current realities can be disconnected from Richmond’s origins.
Centuries of targeted, government-sanctioned violence through enslavement, post-Emancipation/Jim Crow laws, and other oppressive practices sought to destroy Black families, Black culture, and the creation of sustained Black wealth in Richmond, Virginia. The effects of these well-documented anti-Black institutions, policies, and practices, both past and present, have generated astronomical, intergeneration harm that requires enormous levels of repair.
The price tag of injustice is high.
Defining Reparations
Reparations is a victim-centered process and should be led by those who have survived state-sponsored harms, and their descendants. It is an act of collective healing and a form of economic justice. Ideally, reparations should be proportional to and match the scale of the harm(s) committed.
As outlined by the United Nations, a recipe for a wholistic reparations program should consider:
Restitution: restoring an individual or community back to a place they were prior to violations of their rights; return of land, property, Ancestral artifacts, employment, etc.
Compensation: monetary redress for material, spiritual and moral losses.
Rehabilitation: free trauma-informed care, medical services, and other social services.
Satisfaction: public disclosures; memorialization efforts, official apologies, school curriculum that reflects an accurate history, and other truth-telling measures.
Guarantees of non-repetition: putting an end to anti-Black violence; institutional and legal reforms ceasing discriminatory practices; cultural transformation.
Why Reparations?
Reparations are owed and exponentially overdue to generations of Black families in Richmond.
Richmond’s historical harms have never been fully acknowledged or redressed. The failure to account for slavery and its evolutions has compounded the harm and fueled the persistence of racial inequality today. It will be impossible to achieve racial equity for future outcomes if we don’t deal with what we’ve endured in our past and are currently enduring in the present-day. Public policy measures targeting disparities in the Black community have not proven to be enough to change the material conditions of Black families in Richmond.
In addition to the federal government, local governments have a legal responsibility and moral opportunity to adequately answer valid reparations claims. As the capital of Virginia, the city of Richmond can lead the commonwealth of Virginia in municipal redress. Richmond’s efforts must examine localized harms and will be complementary to efforts by the Commonwealth and other culpable institutions (i.e., churches, academic institutions, private corporations, etc.).
While the city has taken steps to enact symbolic reparations including memorializing slave-trading centers like Shockoe Bottom and removing Confederate statues, white supremacist markers still dictate Richmond’s way of life. Beyond these satisfaction measures, Richmond has an obligation to provide material reparations as well.
Comparative Case Studies for Reparations
Providing reparations is routine practice in the United States, and Richmond does not need to look far for inspiration. Though there is no one-size-fits-all reparations program and many initiatives have fallen short of redressing the entirety of the crimes perpetrated. A few useful case studies include:
Through the Navajo-Hopi Rehabilitation Act of 1950, over $88.5 million was allocated over 10 years to fund environment preservation, employment assistance, education initiatives, business development and other economic rehabilitation measures for Navajo and Hopi individuals.
Two decades after an official apology, the state of Virginia approved financial compensation, up to $25,000, for survivors of forced sterilization, under the Virginia Eugenical Sterilization Act. North Carolina passed its own compensation measure, in 2014, two years prior.
In 2015, when Chicago, Illinois approved a comprehensive reparations package for survivors of a police torture ring. The package included financial compensation, trauma-informed services, free tuition at Chicago’s city colleges, 8th and 10th grade educational curriculum on police torture and reparations, plans for a memorial, and other social programming.
In the international context, reparations programs for Holocaust survivors are providing cash payouts, education benefits, and end of life care, to this day. Colombia’s government also began to pay what it owed for neglecting its people, earmarking $23 billion for Colombians who experienced sexual violence and forced displacement from their homes during a five-decade war.
Join the Reparations Fight!
It will take coordinated people power and intersectional coalition building to advance comprehensive reparations for the legacy of enslavement in Richmond, Virginia. Whether you are directly impacted by racialized harms and/or a Richmond resident that cares about the healthiness of your community, we need you in the fight for reparations to help us recover from anti-Black violence and institutional racism.
If not now, then when?