D.C. Council approves money to study reparations for Black residents

A commission to study reparations for Black Washingtonians descended from enslaved people or affected by Jim Crow-era institutional racism is about to move forward after securing funding in the D.C. Council’s 2025 budget, meaning the District is likely to join localities nationwide in searching for concrete ways to reckon with slavery’s generational harm. The funding for the reparations commission was in the city’s $21 billion budget, which lawmakers finalized Tuesday, including with a provision directing the Office of the Chief Financial Officer to handle allocating money to create a task force to study how reparations could work. Council member Kenyan R. McDuffie (I-At Large), who introduced the legislation to create the task force, said the $1.5 million in “pre-funding” ensures that the nine-member reparations task force could hit the ground running if and when the council advances his bill. He said he is expecting to mark up his legislation, the Reparations Foundation Fund and Task Force Establishment Act, in the fall; nine council members co-sponsored the legislation, making passage likely if it gets a vote. “It is definitely gratifying to get to this point. But it’s not over yet,” McDuffie said. “There’s still some steps that we have to get...