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Date: 2/21/2023
NORTHAMPTON – In a historic vote on Feb. 16, the Northampton City Council approved a resolution to create a joint mayoral-City Council commission to investigate racialized harms perpetrated against Black residents and workers over the course of Northampton’s history.
Introduced by Councilors Garrick Perry, Jamila Gore and Marissa Elkins, the resolution also asks that the commission consider what initiatives should be funded and implemented by the city to support redress and fair treatment for Black people who live, work and learn in this community and examine ways to restore and grow and nourish Black community and culture in Northampton for future generations. The document asks that at least 50 percent of the commission feature Black participants.
Background
A Northampton Reparations Committee formed in 2021 after two of its founding members, Western New England University professor Sarah Weinberger and author/former teacher Tom Weiner, wanted to launch an effort that could bring people together around the question of how to address the systemic harms found throughout Northampton’s history and current reality.
Over the past year, the committee, which consists of seven members, researched and studied the history of Northampton, as well as the general history of systemic racism throughout the United States.
A petition was eventually developed by this committee calling on the mayor and City Council to establish a reparations commission that will eventually make recommendations for reparative actions in Northampton as a response to issues apparent in housing, employment, policing, schools, healthcare and transportation.
The committee also called upon the mayor and City Council to issue a formal apology to past and present Black residents of Northampton for “historic harm that has occurred and the current harm that continues to occur.”
Additionally, the committee would like the mayor and City Council to fund the commission’s research and publish its findings.
“I felt the need to do this, along with Sarah Weinberger because of total injustice in America over the last 400 years,” said Tom Weiner, a co-founder of the committee. “There are injustices that have happened historically and continue to happen in our communities that are not being apologized for or stopped.”
The resolution
Aside from detailing the troubled systemic racism and slavery from years past, the resolution also highlights the lack of diversity within major positions in Northampton, which is an issue still felt today.
According to the six-page document, Northampton Public Schools only have nine Black professional staff members out of a total of 424 and four Black support staff members out of 273. The city also only hired its first Black superintendent in 2022, when Jannell Pearson-Campbell was hired as the interim.
Meanwhile, the city has never elected a Black mayor and only three Black people have ever been elected to the City Council. Two out of those three — Councilors Garrick Perry and Jamila Gore — were recently elected in 2021.
The resolution also indicates that there has never been a Black person appointed as chief or head of municipal departments, while the most recent census data shows that only 6.5 percent of Northampton’s population is Black or multi-racial of Black descent.
“[The] Northampton City Council apologizes for its role in these past harms and commits itself to continuing to reform city ordinances and policies within its purview that perpetuate historic and present racial injustices and to consider all future legislation and policies through a lens of racial equity,” reads the resolution.
Additionally, 2021 census data indicates that a quarter of Black Northampton residents were below the poverty line last year, while 10 percent of white residents were blow this line.
With the acceptance of this bill, Northampton joins other local municipalities like Amherst, Evanston, IL, Asheville, NC and Providence, RI, in this effort to study reparations.
Additionally, there is currently a federal act that also asks to study reparations for African Americans across the U.S.
Among other requirements, the federal commission would identify the role of federal and state governments in supporting the institution of slavery, as well as the forms of discrimination in the public and private sectors against freed states and their descendants. The commission would also identify the lingering negative effects of slavery on living African Americans and society.
Former Michigan Congressman John Conyers introduced the bill in every congressional session from 1989 to 2017. Once he left, Texas Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee continued the push for this bill, amassing over 200 Congressional co-sponsors for the legislation.
So far, as many as 40 senators have supported the companion bill, which goes by the same name, and while it has not officially passed, President Joe Biden can move the reparations movement forward through an executive order.
The City Council
The City Council showed overwhelming support for this resolution during their meeting on Feb. 16, as did several public speakers during an hour of public comment.
Sarah Patterson, a member of the city’s Reparations Committee and assistant professor within the University of Massachusetts English Department, stated that the petition spearheaded by the committee made this movement more accessible.
“This effort recognizes the necessity of allyship to support African American residents,” said Patterson. “It acknowledges residents with direct ties to chattel slavery and to those whose well-being has been harmed by systemic racism and racial discrimination.”
Perry indicated that the sponsors of the resolution wanted to take a multi-pronged approach that places a focus solely on Northampton.
“This is an issue that there is no simple solution for,” he said. “But, this is a great first step, and so I’m looking forward to seeing what a commission will find.”
Perry said when he initially came to Western Massachusetts 25 years ago from the Washington D.C. area, he remembers his grandmother expressing fear because he was going to “the whitest place she can ever imagine.”
“Representation matters,” Perry said. “As one of only three Black people to have ever served on Northampton City Council, I feel honored to have the chance to bring this forward.”
Gore, meanwhile, emphasized that this work must start at the local level since that federal bill in 1989 has laid dormant for all this time. “I think we need to use this as an opportunity to further our city’s actions to address the harms of racism,” said Gore. “I think this resolution is a good start.”
Mayor Gina-Louise Sciarra, meanwhile, called the resolution “remarkable” and said she is very happy to work with the Council on this going forward.
The resolution states that the mayor and sponsoring city councilors “shall present to the full council, no later than March 30, 2023, a plan specifying the charge and composition of the commission, as well as an approximate timeline for its work.”