How does a documented harm report actually translate into a reparations policy? That question drove the latest Reparations Information Thought Series, co-hosted by the Reparation Education Project and the National Black Cultural Information Trust, examining harm reports and reparations across three very different jurisdictions: New York, New Jersey, and Lakeland, Maryland.
New York Traces Zoning Codes Back to Slavery
LaNessa Owens-Chaplin of the NYCLU and David Wheaton of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund co-authored “The Other New York: The Legacy of Slavery and Case for Reparations.” Their report connects modern industrial zoning in Black neighborhoods directly to an 1920s census classification that denied Black residents full civil status, and ties housing redlining and racial covenants across Buffalo, Albany, and New York City back to colonial-era property law.
The report also names specific historical figures, judges, police chiefs, and legislators, who simultaneously enslaved people and shaped the laws still on the books today. Owens-Chaplin and Wheaton say the report is designed to directly support New York’s state reparations commission, created by law in 2023, which plans to release its own findings in 2027.
New Jersey Confronts Being “the Slave State of the North”
Jean-Pierre Brutus of the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice detailed findings from “For Such a Time as This: The Nowness of Reparations for Black People in New Jersey,” released on Juneteenth 2025 after a two-year study backed by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The report documents a $600,000 wealth gap between median white and Black households in the state, tracing it back to colonial-era land grants: settlers received 150 acres on arrival, plus additional acreage for every enslaved person they brought with them.
New Jersey was also the last Northern state to abolish slavery, and by 1830 held two-thirds of all enslaved people remaining in the North. Brutus noted that 56 percent of New Jersey residents don’t even know slavery existed in their state, which is why the Institute’s current legislative push includes a bill giving the state’s 2008 slavery apology actual legal force and folding the report’s findings directly into New Jersey’s Amistad Commission curriculum.
Lakeland, Maryland: Reckoning with Urban Renewal, Not Just Slavery
Maxine Gross, founding chair of the Lakeland Community Heritage Project, and Rev. Dr. JoAnne Braxton of the Braxton Institute presented “Restorative Justice for Lakeland,” commissioned by the College Park Restorative Justice Commission. Unlike the New York and New Jersey reports, this one focuses specifically on urban renewal’s displacement of a historic Black community adjacent to the University of Maryland, built around what the team calls “five pillars of beloved community.”
Gross reported that settlement records for displaced Lakeland families, long thought lost, were located just the night before the panel, confirming families were paid appraised value for their homes, though questions remain about whether those appraisals reflected fair value. Recommendations include direct compensation, restored access to Lake Artemesia, and a tuition program at the University of Maryland, which benefited from housing built on land cleared from the community.
Turning Findings Into Actual Policy
All three teams emphasized that documentation alone changes nothing without a deliberate push into legislation. New Jersey has already introduced apology legislation modeled on California’s, with backing from the legislature’s Black Caucus chair, while also passing a related Voting Rights Act tied to the report’s recommendations. New York’s team is running town halls across the state to build public understanding before its commission’s 2027 report lands, noting that just over half of New Yorkers currently support reparations, a number they believe reflects more confusion than real opposition.
Lakeland’s approach centers physical, permanent infrastructure: a forthcoming Lakeland Legacy Center will house physical and digital copies of harm reports nationwide, developed in partnership with First Repair, the organization behind Evanston’s pioneering reparations program.
5 Key Takeaways
- Each report ties present-day harm to a specific historical mechanism. New York traces zoning law to 1920s census classifications; New Jersey traces the wealth gap to colonial land grants; Lakeland traces displacement to 1960s-era urban renewal.
- New Jersey’s wealth gap is staggering and well-documented. The median white-Black household wealth difference reaches $600,000 statewide.
- Reports only matter if they convert into legislation. New Jersey has already introduced binding apology legislation; New York is building public support ahead of a 2027 commission report.
- Community-sourced archives filled gaps official records couldn’t. Lakeland’s decades of recorded oral histories let researchers find displaced families’ settlement terms that didn’t exist elsewhere.
- DNA-based lineage verification remains an unresolved, actively debated question. Panelists cited serious privacy and law enforcement misuse concerns, distinct from how Japanese American and Holocaust reparations never required genetic proof.
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