Racist Property Deeds Weigh Heavy on Reparations Commission

When Mary Olberding stepped in front of the Northampton Reparations Study Commission earlier this year, the information she presented was explosive. Olberding, the elected registrar of deeds in Hampshire County, explained that in her research, she found that to this day, there still exist property deeds in Northampton that include covenants forbidding the sales or rentals of properties to “colored persons” and other ethnic groups. What’s more, there are organizations still operating locally today that were complicit in those racially restrictive covenants, as they’re known. She said her research revealed there may be as many as 80 or more past and existing racist covenants. Since that June meeting, however, tensions have run high between reparations commission members, whose work is to propose city initiatives to “support redress and fair treatment for Black people.” At issue is the question of whether to publicly name the present-day organizations that were complicit in those racist property deeds or to reach out to those institutions first. Those disagreements have divided members of the commission, raising larger questions of transparency and scope of the commission’s research and recommendations as they prepare for producing a public report. In their September and October meetings, the Northampton Reparations...