New panel to study reparations for Black New Yorkers includes Westchester nonprofit leader

Linda Tarrant-Reid saw firsthand what racial injustice looked like as a young girl in 1950s New Rochelle, which had a separate school for Black children until a federal judge ordered the city to integrate its schools in 1961. Today, Tarrant-Reid, an author and nonprofit leader who still lives in the Westchester County city where she was raised, holds a new role that will put to use her own experiences and Black history scholarship. She’s one of nine people appointed last month to a New York commission that will examine the lasting harms caused by slavery and racial discrimination and how to make reparations to Black New Yorkers. The panel was formed under a law signed in December by Gov. Kathy Hochul, the culmination of a six-year push in Albany that finally led to the bill’s passage last June. Its charge is to do a broad study and issue a report within a year that recommends “appropriate remedies and reparations.” New York was the second state, after California in 2020, to order a reparations study. Several cities have done so as well, and at least one has started making amends: Evanston, Illinois, approved paying up to $25,000 per person — initially...