Boston Reparations Group Calls on ‘White Churches’ and the City to Pay Billions to Black Residents

Activists in Boston are asking for $15 billion in reparations for slavery from the city and “white churches.” Clergy leaders and the Boston People’s Reparations Commission made the announcement about their proposal to combat institutional racism in a news conference on Saturday.

“Today we call upon this city, its financiers, and its white churches to stop the shirking, stop the lying, tell the truth, and pay what is owed,” the Rev. John Gibbons of Arlington Street Church in Boston said at the press conference.

“We call on the white church in Boston to join us in supporting a black reparations movement,” Rev. Kevin Peterson, founder of New Democracy Coalition, said.

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The group demanded that Boston Mayor Michelle Wu support their proposal for $15 billion in reparations for the descendants of enslaved people. They proposed that the fund would be split three ways: $5 billion in direct cash payments to black Boston residents, a $5 billion investment in new financial institutions, and $5 billion to address the racial educational achievement gap between black people and white people, along with supporting anti-violence measures.

Peterson reportedly said, “Many of the well-known white churches in downtown Boston are connected to the slave trade and the proliferation of what was a ‘slavetocracy’ in our city.”

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