Black Kansas City was economically shut out for decades. Reparations’ time has come | Opinion
“If America can afford to underwrite its allies and ex-enemies, it can certainly afford — and has a much greater obligation, as I see it — to do at least as well by its own no less needy countrymen. … Few people reflect that for two centuries the Negro was enslaved and robbed of any wages — potential accrued wealth which would have been a legacy of his descendants.”
- Martin Luther King Jr., 1965
Sometimes it is true that our generation need not say or listen to something new, but only hear the ancient truths that ring so clear from morally endowed, clear-eyed luminaries positively burdened and disturbed by our collective failures as a nation — and most assuredly as a city, in living out our collective moral obligation to create a just society and culture. This nation’s founders called for us to achieve their aim — which they were willing to die for — to form “a more perfect union.”
As we approach the celebration of the life of a person who so profoundly shaped that effort, we see together with collective vision that we are much further from perfection than we should be. The quote above is Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1965 call for reparations. Though that term is not mentioned in his vernacular, it is the core and heart of the outcome he hoped for and envisioned for America — including its urban areas now burgeoning with severe racial inequities and imploding from within as a result.
The theme of our 2023 Southern Christian Leadership Conference of Greater Kansas City gathering was “Reparations for Black Kansas Citians.” The grassroots movement being forged through the KC Reparations Coalition is dedicated to educating and mobilizing Kansas Citians toward truly making the repair of Black life here in our supposedly livable town a political and policy reality. Ordinance 220966, introduced to the City Council, is designed to “make amends for (Kansas City’s) participation in the sanctioning of the enslavement of Black people and any historical enforcement of segregation and accompanying discriminatory practices against Black (residents) of Kansas City, encouraging others to join the city in this effort, and establishing a commission within 90 days to be known as the Mayor’s Commission on Reparations to advise the city regarding reparation issues.”
And on Thursday, the council voted to form that commission.
Too many Black people are living in conditions of misery and pain, lacking the benefit of safety from violence, mired in unhealthy living conditions, void of quality and equitable health care, sojourning to schools without high performance standards, facing poverty’s daily desperation for the basic necessities of life, suffering from the trauma and grief of lives taken and destroyed, separated and denied from even the most minimal and basic of human rights — souls broken to a dreamless state. At the same time, we watch the wealth and wellness of the Kansas City elite sup and saturate upon and in the good things of life.
The year of 1619 saw the first Africans brought to these shores under chattel slavery. And we, their descendants, live the social realities of that legacy of oppression. As a nation and city, we’re far from perfect — still so far after all this time.
We rise to take responsibility for our condition. However, we do so resisting the myth that we can or should raise ourselves by our own bootstraps alone. We did not arrive at this crisis on our own. Our research concludes that our condition involved decades of intentionally uneven economic development perpetrated by white banks, lending institutions and real estate companies. Our condition involved the decadeslong denial of equal access to quality jobs and equitable, living wages. America’s hands are bloodied from more than two centuries of unpaid labor, impeding our ability to create, grow and transfer wealth to our heirs. Our condition involved the massive infiltration and trading of illegal weapons and drugs into urban communities, leading to incomparable criminal activity and incarceration rates, and resulting in social and emotional trauma that no one knows like we do.
The individuals and institutions of the ruling class who hold the reins of economic and social power so tightly and mercilessly have equal share in the responsibility to create that more perfect union. All of Kansas City must join this movement for reparations — and be part of the solution toward healing and justice for Black people, who suffer from the historic ravages of slavery and discrimination.
The Rev. Vernon Percy Howard Jr. is president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference of Greater Kansas City, senior pastor of St. Mark’s Church and adjunct instructor at William Jewell College.
