Illinois Reparations Commission Report – Read by Raphael H. Plunkett P. 1

“The name Illinois is the French representation of a word that means “he/she speaks in the ordinary way.” That powerful sentence might be updated to the colloquial phrase “real talk.” This volume is a first step towards living up to the state’s name.

Illinois, it’s time for real talk on the history of racial harms in the state. Illinois, it’s time to face the facts that, despite the founding claims of “free soil,” slavery existed for decades in our state. Illinois, it’s time to come to grips with the reality that lynchings, de jure segregation, exclusion from neighborhoods, schools, and hospitals, and the targeted destruction of Black property all happened with frightening regularity within our state. Illinois, it’s time to confront the social and financial costs that Black people have borne for just trying to live and thrive in our state. Illinois, it’s time to realize that the entire state cannot prosper if the roughly 1.8 million Black people don’t prosper.

Illinois, real talk requires real accounting, real deliberation, real reconciliation, real answers, and real action. Real talk combats one of the most common strategies of denial: ignorance.

The Talking Account: A History of Racial Harm and Injustice Against Black Illinoisans report compiles detailed information from across the state — from the 18th century to the present — and across the most important domains of social, political, and economic life. It reports the precise dollar amounts for which specific Black people were bought and sold in Illinois. It documents the laws that deprived Black people of political voice by curtailing voting, jury service, and service in elected office. It narrates the benefits that one white family earned from living in a “sundown town,” where Black people certainly could not live, but neither could they visit, work, or pass through after dark. This report does not uncover new histories, but rather requires us to look plainly at the past that has always been there.”