Fulton County Georgia Reparations Task Force Produced A “Harm Report”.

Fulton County, Georgia has taken a landmark step in confronting its racial past. The county’s Reparations Task Force — established by the Board of Commissioners in 2021 — has produced a sweeping 615-page “Harm Report” documenting the generational damage inflicted upon Black residents from the county’s founding in 1853 through the Jim Crow era. Drawing on tax records, court documents, jail data, and historical archives, the report lays bare a brutal legacy of slavery, convict leasing, chain gangs, land dispossession, and discriminatory taxation. Among its most striking findings: an estimated $1.78 billion in today’s dollars in lost wages stolen from Black prison laborers, and evidence that Black landowners historically faced a tax burden more than double that imposed on their white counterparts. One powerful example embedded in the research involves families like that of Elon Butts Osby, whose grandfather was forced off his 60-acre property during the 1912 racial cleansing of Forsyth County — without a single dollar in compensation. With the Harm Report now complete, the Board of Commissioners has approved extending the Task Force another 12 to 24 months to develop a “Repair Report,” which will outline concrete recommendations and a feasibility analysis for actual reparations. This is history being made in real time — and Fulton County is showing the rest of the country what accountability can actually look like. See the Harm Report here.