St. Louis Mayor to Appoint Reparations Commission

Mayor Tishaura O. Jones announced plans this week to appoint a committee charged with surveying the damage caused by racism in the city and putting together a plan to address it.

Jones, the city’s first Black female mayor, wrote in an executive order establishing the panel that a “growing tapestry of equity-based analyses” have shed light on a long history of segregation, exploitation and violence in the city that have left it one of the most divided in the country.

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Jones’ order, signed Wednesday, continues efforts to make addressing racial inequities a cornerstone of her mayoralty. She has highlighted disparities in policing and pledged to work to end them. She has rolled out a new framework for development subsidies that encourages building in north St. Louis. She has promised to spend millions of dollars in federal pandemic aid to transform long-suffering Black neighborhoods and the lives of their residents.

She did not make any specific recommendations for how to follow that in her Wednesday order. But she highlighted several examples of reparations in the U.S. over the years.

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