State Legislature Creates a Maryland Reparations Commission, One of Few States with a Statewide Panel

 

The House of Delegates has given final approval on April 2nd to a bill that would create a Maryland Reparations Commission, sending the measure to the governor for his signature. The 101-36 party-line vote would make Maryland one of the few states in the nation with a statewide body to study the inequality endured by African descendants. California became the first state in 2020 to pass legislation; then Illinois in 2021 and New York in 2023. According to the American Association of Medical Colleges' Center for Health Justice (ACHJ), as of March 6, 2024, 22 localities (including Washington, D.C.) have approved a reparations commission or task force and 11 states have introduced legislation to create one.

If approved, the Maryland commission would assess specific federal, state and local policies from 1877 to 1965, the post-Reconstruction and Jim Crow eras. Those years “have led to economic disparities based on race, including housing segregation and discrimination, redlining, restrictive covenants, and tax policies,” according to the bill. The commission would also examine how public and private institutions may have benefited from those policies, and would recommend appropriate reparations, which could include statements of apology, monetary compensation, social service assistance, business incentives and child care costs. The all-volunteer commission would consist of 23 people, including two employees from the state’s four historically Black colleges and universities with expertise in the history of slavery; a representative from the Maryland Lynching Truth and Reconciliation Commission; and the state archivist or a designee from that office.

A hearing on the Maryland Senate version was first held on February 27th and then approved by the full chamber on March 14th. The bill would go into effect July 1st and remain in effect until June 30, 2028.

You can view a discussion with Dr. Jamal Bryant and the Reverend Dr. Robert Turner, NAARC Commissioner and Pastor of Empowerment Temple, Baltimore, on the “Let’s Be Clear” Podcast. They explore reparations, the intersection of faith and justice, and the significance of the Tulsa race massacre centennial. Dr. Turner recounts his 1,169-mile advocacy journey and highlights the ongoing fight for equity and reparative justice. Source: The Jamal Bryant Podcast “Let’s Be Clear,” YouTube. It was made available by the National African American Reparations Commission (NAARC).

Read the April 3, 2025 Maryland Matters article.

Read the April 2024 ACHJ article about reparations.

Historic Redlining in Syracuse Continues to Impact Public Schools

 

The recent executive order limiting DEIA within the U.S. has sparked conversations regarding the importance of diversity within public schools. This article considers Syracuse, New York, as an example. While Syracuse has a population one-fourth of Baltimore, it has many parallels. 

The city of Syracuse is one of the nation’s most racially segregated, most redlined, economically polarized, and poorest cities. Its Syracuse City School District (SCSD) remains highly segregated as a result of neighborhood borders drawn a century ago. The borders’ effects still surface in the school’s demographics. SCSD continues to feel the effects of segregation despite the formal outlawing of redlining in 1968 through the Fair Housing Act. New federal orders limiting diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility have local educators concerned for the future of these efforts.

SCSD (30 schools and 19,000 students) has seen low standardized test scores in recent years, according to U.S. News and World Report. From 2020-2022, 16% of students in SCSD elementary schools tested at or above a proficient level for English, while only 11% were found to be at that same level for math. Comparatively, the more suburban and predominantly white Fayetteville-Manlius Central School District (FMCSD) had 73% of students at or above the proficiency level for English, and 77% for math.

Christopher Cleveland, an assistant professor of education and education policy at Brown University, has said the current President’s policies are impacting the politicization of school segregation. While the president has not publicly spoken against integration efforts specifically, he said the cuts to federal funding likely will not help the cause. “(Integration) has not necessarily been considered a DEI issue. “So I think the question is how broadly framed DEI’s criticism is supposed to be relative to practices that have been in existence for the past 60-ish years.”

Syracuse remains one of thein the nation. When redlined maps are lined up with current maps showing the racial demographics of SCSD schools, the images reflect each other. The city still demonstrates a racial divide in schools, Searing said. The Century Foundation has reported that about 93% of Syracuse school segregation is a result of past segregation between districts. Neighborhoods that received a “D” rating from the Federal Housing Administration typically contain lower-performing schools and a majority Black student body. This contrasts neighborhoods that received an “A” rating, whose schools typically enrolled wealthier, white students and saw higher academic performance.

“Segregation has been illegal since 1964, but segregation still exists because the processes that created these realities have been in action for much longer,” Robert Searing, curator of history at the Onondaga Historical Association commented. Segregation within school districts can also be traced to districts’ current catchment borders that outline school districts, frequently shaped to protect white neighborhoods and separate them from communities with more Black and Brown residents. 

Christine Ashby, director of the Center on Disability and Inclusion at Syracuse University said “In the redlined neighborhoods, students with disabilities, particularly students of color, were less likely to be included, less likely to be in general education, and more likely to have particular disability labels than kids in other neighborhoods.”

To be certain, in addition to redlining, white flight - more affluent and white people moving to suburban areas for improved education options - also has played and plays a large role in the segregation of SCSD.

“Restrictive racial covenants were outlawed by the Supreme Court in 1948, but they continued to be enforced, because, as with any law, the law is only as good as the enforcement mechanism,” Searing said. “Is redlining technically illegal? Sure it is, but the practices still continue.”

Read the March 21, 2025 Syracuse University The Daily Orange article.

 Book Review:

Just Action: How to Challenge Segregation Enacted Under the Color of Law

by Leah Rothstein and Richard Rothstein

352 pages. W.W. Norton, 2023. Hardcover, $25.00

In his best-selling book The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America (W.W. Norton, 2017), Richard Rothstein provided “the most forceful argument ever published on how federal, state, and local governments gave rise to the reinforced neighborhood segregation” (William Julius Wilson). This book discusses specific instances, strategies, and organizations that are successfully working to reduce housing segregation. According to Lisa Rice, president of the National Fair Housing Alliance: Just Action "contains plain, concrete actions we can take to be agents of change in the neighborhoods where we live, moving our nation closer to the ideals upon which it was founded. Just Action is the book America needs for this moment." 

Sources:

https://www.justactionbook.org/

https://wwnorton.com/books/9781324093244.

https://www.amazon.com/Just-Action-Challenge-Segregation-Enacted/dp/1324093242

 Housing Segregation

Columbia, Maryland is Becoming More Racially Segregated

A new study by the National Community Reinvestment Coalition (NCRC) has found that Columbia, Maryland has changed from being a case study of housing desegregation in the 1970s to being racially segregated in 2023.

The planned communities of Columbia and Reston, Virginia, were case studies in a new era of housing desegregation in the 1960s. The planned community of Columbia was built by James Rouse, who stated that “Like any real city of 100,000, Columbia will be economically diverse, poly-cultural, multi-faith, and inter-racial.”  Columbia had no racial covenants and there was no racial steering of buyers. The city developed affordable housing for a mix of incomes. 

The Black population of Howard County increased rapidly from 1970 to 1980, with much of this in Columbia. In 1980, Columbia had low levels of segregation and an evenly distributed Black/White population on a neighborhood level. These measures gradually worsened. Three common measures of segregation at the community level all showed  that the evenness of distribution of the Black population and the exposure of Black and White groups to one another both declined, while Black isolation from Whites increased.

By 2020, Howard County was 21.4% Black and Columbia 28.1% Black. While there has been an increase in diversity in the County and Columbia, there has also been increasing segregation. White population has declined in Columbia similar to Maryland. In all, there has been a decline of nearly 15,000 White residents in Columbia over two decades. Currently, 76.5% of White residents own a home compared with 52% of Blacks. Blacks therefore are more likely to live in multi-family rental buildings, which cluster their population in areas with higher proportions of apartments.

The newer villages in Columbia have not been developed in the original spirit of economic and racial integration. The older Columbia villages of Harper’s Choice, Owen Brown, Wilde Lake, Oakland Mills, and Long Reach were developed with greater concentrations of affordable housing. Dorsey Search and River Hill were not developed until the 1990s and have few multifamily units, almost no affordable housing, and its schools are less than 10% Black.

The newish Dorsey Search and River Hill have only 22% and 9% renter households respectively, have much higher household incomes, and are relatively poor in Black/White integration and economic equity.  Dorseys Search and River Hill have Black populations below 10% compared to the 20% to 35% African American population in most other villages. The older Town Center and Wilde Lake have 76% and 57% renter households.

Only a small percentage of Columbia's housing stock is affordable when compared to the overall Baltimore metro. While the first villages built in Columbia broke barriers, those in recent decades have failed to sustain the mix of rentals, townhomes, and single-family homes that made Columbia a pocket of remarkable integration in a society still deeply struggling with racial inequality.

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Read the February 1, 2023 NCRC article.

 Housing segregation increases.

Draft of the New Metro Washington Regional Fair Housing Plan Finds Housing Segregation has Increased

An Executive Summary of the Regional Fair Housing Plan, the result of a partnership between the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments and eight local jurisdictions, stated that: “Segregation is on the rise in our region,” reads an executive summary of the plan. “The ‘Dissimilarity Index’ measures segregation in housing. In other words, it shows how unevenly distributed two different groups are within a city or metropolitan area. The higher the index, the more separate the two groups are. We have high levels of segregation between Black and White residents. … But, for all groups, the Dissimilarity Index has risen since 2010.’”

The study also measured the Isolation Index - which measures the extent to which people live near others who are similar to them - and the Exposure Index - which measures whether people live near others who are from different racial and ethnic groups. All indicators revealed increasing levels of segregation. A representative commented “This divide has been long-standing,” she said. “That is not new. But it has intensified over time, rather than plateaued or stayed stable or decreased as it has in other places in the country.”

The 2023 Regional Fair Housing Plan is the first time in over 25 years that D.C. and surrounding communities have together made a shared housing strategy toward the same goals. In addition to the District, the other governments involved are Arlington, Fairfax, Prince William, Loudoun and Montgomery counties, and the cities of Alexandria and Gaithersburg. 

The plan examines housing needs across economic, racial and ethnic breakdowns, as well as the housing needs of area residents with disabilities. It proposes seven regional goals, with local goals for each jurisdiction, as well as guidance on how the region can reach them.

The Plan is available for the public's review and comment until March 31st.  View the Metropolitan Washington  Council of Governments' Fair Housing page here. Outreach flyers are available in the following languages:

• English.

• Spanish - Español.

• French - Français.

• Korean - 한국의.

• Amharic - አማርኛ.

• Chinese - 中文.

Social media graphics promoting the public comment period of the plan are available via this file download.  

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Source: Read the February 23, 2023 Washington Post article.

Read the January 31, 2023 Metropolitan Washington Council of Government's press release.

 Did You Read This?

SEGREGATED, GENTRIFIED HOUSING REMAINS A PROBLEM IN 2022

Baltimore among top 20 "Extreme" Segregated Cities

ABC News has reported that "Despite 50 years of federal oversight under the Fair Housing Act of 1968, housing segregation continues in America’s largest cities and urban areas. A recent ABC News analysis of mortgage-lending data highlights a pattern of racial isolation that remains in place even after decades of failed initiatives."

ABC News’ top 20 “extreme” segregation list includes America’s largest metro areas, such as: Cleveland, Ohio; Buffalo, New York, Detroit, Michigan; St. Louis, Missouri; Memphis, Tennessee; Birmingham, Alabama; Jackson, Mississippi; Springfield, Massachusetts; New Orleans, Louisiana; Miami, Florida; Bridgeport, Connecticut; Baltimore, Maryland; Cincinnati, Ohio; Baton Rouge, Louisiana; and Providence, Rhode Island.

In addition to these cities, ABC News states, "unfair housing practices are ubiquitous across the States." In 2019, some 64.8% of the 347,000 white homebuyers who applied for mortgages in mostly non-white neighborhoods in the nation’s largest metro areas were approved for a loan. In contrast, only roughly 56% of the 715,000 non-white applicants got a loan in 2019 in those same majority non-white neighborhoods. 

In many cities, gentrification affects not only housing but the very communal spaces we associate with our home. Gentrification is forcing more non-white residents out of urban neighborhoods, along with the Black-owned businesses, churches, and cultural touchpoints that we’ve known and loved for years.

According to U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), chairperson of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs "We have never, as a nation, gone ‘all in’ on fair housing,” Brown told ABC News. “We’ve never, as a nation, tried to close that gap … that gap between black and white ownership.”

Read the February 9, 2022 Black Wall Street Times article.