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Ever since the United States government's unfulfilled promise of giving every newly freed Black American "40 acres and a mule" after the Civil War, descendants of the enslaved have repeatedly proposed the idea of redistributing land to redress the nation's legacies of slavery.

Land-based reparations are also a form of .

Around the world, politicians tend to dismiss calls for such initiatives as wishful thinking at best and discrimination at worst. Or else, they are swatted away as to implement, legally and practically.

Yet our research shows a growing number of municipalities and communities across the U.S. are quietly taking up the charge.

who since 2021 have been documenting and analyzing over 225 examples of reparative programs underway in U.S. cities, states and regions. Notably, over half of them center land return.

These efforts show how working locally to grapple with the complexity of land-based reparations is a necessary and feasible part of the nation's healing process.

The Evanston effect

Evanston, Illinois, launched the country's first publicly funded housing reparations program in 2019.

In its current form, Evanston's has provided disbursements to more than . All are Black residents of Evanston or direct descendants of residents who experienced housing discrimination between 1919 and 1969. Benefits include down payment assistance and mortgage assistance as well as funds to make home repairs and improvements.

The goal is to redress the harm Evanston caused during these 50-plus years of racial discrimination in public schools, hospitals, buses and . During that same period, banks in Evanston, as in other U.S. cities, also for homes in white neighborhoods.

"I always said you can keep the mule," . "Give me the 40 acres in Evanston."

Reparations that focus on land, housing and property are about more than making amends for centuries of racial discrimination. They help to restore people's self-determination, autonomy and freedom.

Following Evanston's lead, in 2021 a group of 11 U.S. mayors created , a coalition committed to developing pilot reparations programs. Members include Los Angeles, Austin and Asheville.

The cities act as sites to generate ideas about how reparation initiatives could be scaled up nationally. Each mayor is advised by committees made up of representatives from local Black-led organizations.

Colonial reparations

In recent years the city of Eureka, in Northern California, has been returning some territory to its Native inhabitants.

; it's part of a broader effort to restore sovereignty and sacred relationships to their ancestral lands.

In 2019, after years of petitioning by members of the Wiyot people, the Eureka City Council , a 280-acre island in Humboldt Bay where European settlers in 1860 massacred about 200 Wiyot women and children.

"It's a sovereignty issue, a self-governance issue," said in a November 2023 radio interview.

for $1 in 2023 is another example of how city governments can make amends for past Indigenous displacement and removal. Plans to develop the low-cost lots include a cultural center for Red Lake people, an opioid treatment center and potentially housing.

The Red Lake Reservation once included . The forced the Red Lake Band to cede all but . The federal government later returned some land, but today the reservation is still .

Reparations are critical to racial equity

These initiatives may sound like a drop in the bucket considering the vast harms committed over centuries of slavery and colonization. Yet they prove that governments can craft targeted, achievable and meaningful policies to address colonialism and enslavement.

They also tackle a frequent critique of reparations, which is that . Yet their effects continue to harm Black and Native communities generations later. Today, white households in the U.S. have roughly .

One explanation for this racial disparity is that . But a more meaningful driver is what scholars call the ""—that is, the role that gifts and inheritance play in wealth generation.

That's why reparations—with both land and money—are so critical to creating racial equity.

Still, reparations programs do raise a host of complex, practical questions. Which kinds of historic racial injustice take priority, and what form should repair take? Who qualifies for the benefits?

Community-based land reparations

Reparations don't have to come from the government.

In recent years, more than a hundred community-based organizations across the U.S. have introduced their own initiatives to to make amends for past injustices.

, in the Minnesota River Valley, is a community reparations program led by Dakota peoples. Since 2009, the group has been collecting funds to buy back portions of the Dakota homeland. One revenue source is voluntary contributions from descendants of Europeans who colonized that land. This fundraising strategy is sometimes called "real rent" or "back rent."

The group , where it is building traditional earth lodges, with plans for several self-sustaining Dakota villages.

"We consider our donation…'back rent,'" reads the testimony of , on the group's webpage. He calls the reclamation of Dakota land a "vital" step "towards creating a just world."

Fair compensation for eminent domain

Many communities are also working together to repair the legacies of anti-Black racism.

In the 1960s, the city of Athens, Georgia, used eminent domain to build dormitories for the University of Georgia. Paying below market value, it demolished .

In early 2021, following who'd lost their homes, the City Council recognizing their neighborhood's destruction as "an act of institutionalized white racism and terrorism resulting in intergenerational Black poverty."

Because Georgia law , a community group .

The result is , a coalition of churches and community organizations. Formed in 2021, it had raised who are Linnentown survivors and descendants.

Backlash

Our research also tracks legal challenges to the reparations initiatives we are studying.

Conservative groups such as have filed dozens of against several of them, including Evanston's . A 2024 alleges that the program discriminates based on race, violating the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution.

These legal challenges are part of the broader front of conservative-led assaults on voting rights, affirmative action and . Like reparations, all are efforts to grapple with the U.S."s historical mistreatment of Black, Indigenous and other people of color.

Attacking those initiatives is an attempt to preserve what scholar Laura Pulido calls "." We expect more of them under a second Trump term already defined by .

So far, none of Trump's decrees has targeted reparations specifically. For now, reparations are still .

This article is republished from under a Creative Commons license. Read the .