ÁńÁ«ÊÓÆ”

ST. LOUIS — The chair of the city’s first Reparations Commission vows not only to listen to the public, but to hold elected officials accountable for acting on its recommendations.

“This commission is very committed to this project,” Kayla Reed, commission chair, said Saturday after the panel’s third public meeting. “We are going to advocate for the recommendations.”

After gathering feedback, and doing their own research, Reed said the commission will write a full report with recommendations on how to best make up for generations of racial segregation in St. Louis. In March 2024, the report will be submitted to the mayor and the Board of Aldermen.

No monies have been designated for reparations, nor an outline of how any would be handled or who would qualify.

But there is political will to address the controversial topic in some fashion: Tishaura Jones, the city’s first Black female mayor, created the commission in December by executive order. In March, nine commissioners were appointed, eight of them Black.

“It’s not about revenge, it’s about repair,” Vernon Mitchell Jr., the mayor’s chief equity and inclusion officer, said in an interview Saturday.

About 30 people attended the meeting, held at New Northside Conference Center, 5939 Goodfellow Boulevard. One of them was white. Others watched online.

The meeting featured a presentation by Commissioner Gwen Moore, a historian. She explored how a variety of public policy decisions reinforced segregation and wealth gaps between Blacks and whites.

“The roots of inequality, of course, go back to slavery,” she told the crowd. “This was an active center of the slave trade. Wealth was built on the trafficking of Black bodies in this city.”

Other than a few exceptions, she said, former slaves weren’t given anything after the Civil War. They didn’t have the means to take full advantage of the Homestead Act of 1862, already underway, which provided 160 acres of federal land to anyone who agreed to farm it and pay filing fees.

Instead of going West, many southern Blacks fled to industrial cities like St. Louis, where restrictive covenants and redlining limited where they could rent or buy property.

“Until 1968, it was perfectly legal to tell a Black person you cannot buy a house,” she said.

And, she said, Blacks didn’t have the same access to credit as whites, even from the GI Bill that helped pull many families out of poverty following World War II with assistance for college, housing and unemployment.

She said the Housing Act of 1949 was supposed to help renew the urban core, yet destroyed some Black neighborhoods and led people to segregated public housing projects. The Highway Act of 1956 also erased some communities of color, Moore said, “because they were considered slums.”

Her presentation ended in 2023, where the fruits of unfair housing and land practices are seen in the disparities in home ownership and generational family wealth.

“We have to make up for these historic wrongs that were done to us,” she said.

Nine people from the audience also came to the podium to make recommendations.

One man from the Hamilton Heights neighborhood said “the time has come” to make immediate cash payments to people who trace their lineage to the time of slavery.

A man from Holly Hills suggested a “sustainable” trust fund to help people secure good housing, education and jobs.

Another, noting health disparities in Black communities, called for free medical operations.

Safiyah Chauvin, who said her great-great-grandparents were enslaved by St. Louis University and the Jesuits, asked that a fuller history be taught in schools.

“All the children should be learning their history so they won’t think that their people are ‘less-than’ because we don’t have as much ‘material things,’” she said. “They should know the reasons why.”

The next public Reparations Commission meeting is scheduled for 6 p.m. July 26 at New Northside Conference Center.