“This is the first county-led (reparations) task force in the entire United States, and in the former Confederacy,” Alvarado said.

Fulton County Commissioner Marvin Arrington Jr., who sponsored the resolution to create the task force, also said it’s too early to tell what form reparations might take, or even if they’ll be recommended at all. That will take debate and research, he said. One idea mentioned is creation of a museum or reparations research center, Arrington said.

The county doesn’t have the money to pay for the full effects of slavery, but in situations where identifiable individuals were wronged, Fulton officials may need to compensate them for that loss, he said.

One such may be Bagley Park, subject of the task force’s early research. Macedonia Park was an African American community in Buckhead, home to 300 or 400 people, surrounded by White suburbs. The county condemned the land in the mid-20th century, displacing the residents — and likely paying them far below market value.

Today the land is Bagley Park, named for one of those former residents.

“One of the true main veins is that we are methodically going through the land that Fulton County owns,” said Marcus Coleman, vice chair of the task force. “It is our mission to return stolen property.”

Reparations for racial discrimination and oppression is not a new idea, but only recently have governments given it serious study. California formed a task force in 2020, which in 2022 issued an interim report detailing “harms” in housing, incarceration, property seizure, devaluation of Black-owned businesses and unequal healthcare.

Most of its recommendations focus on ways to address systemic racism, particularly in the justice system, instead of cash payouts, according to the Center for Public Integrity.

Several other cities and states have created reparations commissions since California’s began.

In 2021 the city of Evanston, Ill., became the first U.S. city to offer reparations to African American residents — in the form of housing grants.

Arrington said he saw a report on the Evanston project.

“And I said ‘Wow, we need to do the same thing here in Fulton County,’” he said.

Now maybe other communities will learn from Fulton County, Arrington said.

“I think it’s going to take a movement at all different levels of government to have this conversation,” he said.

Hard start

Fulton’s task force was established in April 2021 but didn’t begin meeting until October of that year.

Creation of the task force passed with four votes, while two commissioners voted no and one abstained. Only the effort’s supporters nominated members for the task force, meaning just four people created the task force’s bylaws and planned the research, Alvarado said. That small number also caused problems in guaranteeing a quorum.

“We can operate where we are now, but it’s quite exhausting,” Alvarado said. In August, the county expanded the task force by allowing each county commissioner to appoint two task force members, but not all have done so.

A compilation from the Feb. 15 commission meeting reported only five current members, but at that meeting Commissioner Khadijah Abdur-Rahman nominated two more: Michael Simanga and Rodney Littles.

Commissioners Arrington, Dana Barrett, Hall and Bridget Thorne can each appoint one more member, while Commissioner Bob Ellis still has two slots open, according to the agenda item.

Arrington said failing to appoint members to the task force is self-defeating, only giving more voice to those who are appointed.

“I live by the philosophy that if you’re not at the table, then you’re on the menu,” he said.

On Jan. 18 commissioners approved $250,000 in funding for the task force; its members are still unpaid, but the money will go largely to cover the cost of research by faculty and students at Atlanta University Center, Emory University and Georgia State University.

“What we hope to do is, as we are creating this research, is to share it with the public,” Alvarado said. “The pushback that we’ve had so far has just been: ‘Why fund it?’”

A related complaint has been that the county has other pressing needs to focus on, Alvarado said. She responds that addressing historic injustice helps get to the root of many problems that stem from wealth inequality.

“Fulton County can make this work, and we can lead the way,” serving as an example for other counties and the nation, Alvarado said. “I think this will help the nation to heal. I am not saying it’s going to create some type of utopia, but we are at a crossroads in this nation.”

It’s historic that Fulton County is essentially funding an investigation into itself, Coleman said. He sees the task force’s work as part of an “inevitable” nationwide movement.

“This country has a debt to pay,” he said. “We’re living in an era when wrongs are being rectified.”

Early research

Initially the task force had no funding, so members asked the county for staff help. Only the library system responded, providing John Wright as a researcher, Alvarado said.

Olivia Reneau from Duke University contacted the task force while doing research of her own on reparations, and wound up coming on board too.

“Zero dollars from Fulton County, but the research support came from Duke University,” Alvarado said.

In that first round of research the task force looked at the functions Fulton County specifically oversees, such as courts, voting, property taxes, healthcare and libraries. It covered not just slavery but subsequent decades of discrimination and oppression, up through 20th Century urban renewal that targeted African American communities. In that time Fulton County benefited from exploiting slave and convict labor, while African American residents paid for public services they could not use, task force members said in an end-of-year report given to the county.

But making recommendations for any reparations was premature, Alvarado said. While the report included case studies on slavery, the expropriation of a community for Bagley Park, and more than a dozen convict labor camps in Fulton County, more research is needed to establish a factual foundation for any recommendation, she said.

The group plans to hold two town-hall meetings to explain the project and get feedback, Alvarado said. A report on the feasibility of reparations will grow from all of that.

“I think that the numbers are going to be so enormous, and that is why the feasibility study is so important,” she said.

Alvarado urges people to get involved, attending the task force’s meetings via Zoom on the first Thursday of each month. Links to those meetings can be found at https://fultoncountyga.gov/commissioners/clerk-to-the-commission/boards-and-authorities/reparations-task-force.