we are um excited to have you um and and grateful for the ways that you will contribute so um just want to check in if there's anybody in need of language accommodation or interpreters in general we do ask that you give us a heads up in
advance but we do want at the beginning of each meeting to make sure that if there are language or interpretation needs that we do our best to address those and meet needs so if you do have any uh uh need around accommodations or
interpretation you'll see our illustrious project manager khed Mustafa his hands are raised in the back um and he will work with you if that is a need so the majority of our uh the bulk of our conversation tonight is really
about hearing from our researchers in the next piece um we're really excited um some of us have gotten a a sneak preview so we'd have some some context but um we think it will be a good uh opportunity for for the information that they'll share this is not the final report there's still a final report
coming um but this is an opportunity for us to hear about the direction that they're taking the methodology that they're that they're using um and some of their early findings uh and approach and I think it'll be uh really interesting and so the way it will move is that they will give their presentation um and then we'll have some
space for questions um and then following the research conversation and questions we will have some space for public comment um so with that um before we get moving we want to acknowledge that based on the conversation that
happened uh in December multiple people raised the question of whether or not um an economist had been engaged um to help take what we have from the research and turn it into something sort of more quantifiable how we could use economic
data uh to begin to to quantify the economic impact that we were seeing both the harm caused and um the money gained and by some uh around slavery um and the ongoing Legacy of racism and so as a
result the members of the task force based on that um felt that that was a good suggestion that we should engage an economist and so the goal would be to engage one who would have conversations with both research teams and start to um think about what the methodology might
be and the approach might be to come up with some sort of quantity um that we could work from and so I we will now take a vote here um and uh the language is based on the suggestions and feedback received at our 12 uh our December
meeting about securing an economist I would like to make a call for the reparations task force uh to vote uh affirmatively if you so choose in favor of hiring an economist and that will just so you all understand that will
allow us to take the funds that we have in the budget um to explore and actually call some folks and see and we've already gotten a couple of recommendations of potential economists who might be able to serve in that role um but unless the task force officially approves it we do not have the uh
ability to move forward that so um I will call for a vote uh asking uh for the approval to begin the work of securing an economist all in favor any
opposed okay um so we have a unanimous vote we will move that forward and begin that process um post haste with that um we're going to keep our the rest of our time um we'll have public comment we'll have space to talk but the main thing
that we want to do is to now hand it over to our researchers to share um some of their initial findings and their methodology I think there's a lot in here um that will be uh interesting they have some maps to share and some other pieces that I think um uh are are very
informative so I will hand you all the mic just want to remind you make sure that you speak definitively into the mic so that all of our folks online are able to hear the entirety of the presentation yeah and we'll be coming no you can leave them up there yeah we'll
be coming out in the audience so that we also can see and don't have a crick in our neck hello everybody how is everybody doing thank you thank you so much everybody for being here I know people have work and they have family and they
have kids and stuff and so I'm very happy to see everybody here um and so we're going to do our our presentation I'm going to start by just introducing us to the team and just say that we are so happy to be here we're so
happy to be presenting the research for you um I myself am uh a grandchild of a Bostonian who came here in the 1940s owned property in the South End um and so I'm just I'm very happy to be presenting this to the community so thank you so much for coming out here
and we're all very proud to be doing this um my name is uh my name is krie grenage here we go I got it here we are my name is Carrie grenage I am professor at tus University here in
Boston um and I'll introduce our team uh that's next to us Kiera Singleton and uh Dr Kendra field okay um it's great to uh be with you all today and we just wanted to we'll each give you just a quick tidbit on uh how we come to this work where we
come from on it and um and a bit about our partners some of whom are on zoom and some of whom um are not but who are working together on this and we're the team as as was said from T University we're working with Dr John
Hanigan who is on Zoom um and uh Wayne Tucker who's also on Zoom with us tonight and then a series of Scholars advisors includes Brandon Terry Jared Hardesty glor Whiting Joe Bagley um and then Teresa salvado who supports the
product for us at tus um and all of these are um have expertise especially on black New England and black Boston so while we while we we will be presenting some of our research we want to make sure that um we let you know where we're pulling our information from
um there are some repositories that we've been working with so we've been uh working with the Boston athum uh we've been working with uh Harvard archives we've been working at the city of Boston archives um Mass
historical um uh in terms of our partners as well we will have some map that we will show you we've been doing that in conjunction with the data Lab at tus the gis data lab um some of our Community Partners are the Royal house and slave quarters and then of course
Boston archaeology um so my work is primarily in African-American family history and genealogy I wrote my first book about my grandmother's grandparents and their experiences enslaved uh in the Deep South Mississippi and also in the black towns of Oklahoma after after
emancipation um they then went on to participate in a back to Africa movement in 1913 before Marcus garvey's movement and so I spent a lot of about 10 years researching um that set of migrations um they then returned which is why I'm here
uh and um and I I also work with students and teach them how to college students and teach them how to research and write about their own ancestors so there's a definitely a strong genealogical thread and descendant thread in the work that we're doing and so my work actually is particularly
on black Boston and black New England it's my passion it's what I teach it's what I've studied um my first book was called black radical The Life and Times of William Monroe Trotter if anybody knows the Trotter School after whom um um uh the troter school was named he's a
leading and radical black uh newspaper editor here in Boston a predecessor to the Bas State banner and then my most recent book is a biography of the Grim key family um who lived in Boston Washington DC and Philadelphia and so um I specialize and
teach uh black uh history um and African descended communities in Boston and in New England um and I am uh Cara Singleton I am the director of the royal house and slave quarters which is uh a museum that talks about the local National and Global Connections to the history of
slavery and Medford I am also a historian of slavery I work on black women and slavery in both Baltimore and Boston some of the projects that I've worked on uh since being here has been the uh exhibit on slavery that's up at
Fel Hall I've also uh written uh for the enslaved Potters exhibit um that was at the MFA uh last year and talked about enslaved Potters in Charlestown and then I also do just more research on enslaved
people um at the Royal Plantation many of whom ended up in Boston actually the three of us started working together prior to this engagement um through through something called the African-American Trail project which is a mapping project that Maps uh between
two and 300 sites related to African-American history within Boston and across the state of Massachusetts and one of our key early Partners actually the first partner on this was the royal house and slave quarters go to the next one um and it also includes uh Museum of AF American history and a
number of other partners in Boston our themes as we enter as we um approach um kind of the meat of our presentation here today um in our section which goes from 1620 to 1940 so those those first
um units prior to the northeastern period include the slave trade uh in in relationship to the founding of the city of Boston segregation discrimination and economic exploitation law enforcement and Criminal Iz ation and freedom and
black social political and legal activism in relationship to those forces we have three key methodologies that we're using uh one is really mapping people in places uh both enslaved ens slave owning families across the city of Boston um of course
the boundaries of the city of Boston have changed over time so we we look at how the map changes year to year decade to decade Century to Century we're looking at the impact of laws and policies on everyday lives and we are incorporating as I said both history and
genealogy including descendant communities so we mentioned mapping I think we go to the next one and now we're going to talk a bit about the impact of laws and policies so one of the things that we really wanted to uh highlight is
thinking about how slave y uh becomes legal in Massachusetts through the Massachusetts body of Liberties um which uh legalizes enslavement and that really does set the tone for a lot of the work that we're doing to really think through
um the impact of that law to Think Through how enslaved Africans are brought into Massachusetts H as well as to then think through kind of their experiences and then the legacies that follow so we have some um dates that we've just
mapped in the report there'll be a far longer uh timeline but I wanted to just uh highlight just a few things that really help us understand uh what we mean by slavery and you know the different uh key moments that really set
the stage for uh later parts of the report so um we start thinking through um the enslavement of indigenous people and the reason why that's really important is that by the time we get to 1638 when the desire slav ship brings
the first enslave Africans to Massachusetts what's important to note is that how did they actually afford um to buy enslaved people well they traded enslaved indigenous people from Massachusetts and then we you know go through um and talk about the
establishment of the body of Liberties but then also you see that as slavery grows in the colony you see the laws have to actually be adjusted to accommodate and to expand slavery so by the time we get to 1670 you have Massachusetts passing a law that then
allows enslaved children to be sold into slave slavery legalizing family separation and really codifying chatt slavery many of us know the story of uh Zapora uh Potter Atkins you know when we're thinking about how she was able to
uh own property it was because she actually uh was born before that 1670 law and so again when we're thinking through these key moments it helps us really understand the landscape but one of the things that we hope to show through different stories that we talk
about is that you know enslaved people and free black people are constantly navigating and also you know forcing the laws to adjust to them as they are fighting for their own uh freedom and then uh we go through and we'll talk um through some of um the black Freedom
move ments that are starting in Boston at the turn of the 18th century to really push back against a narrative that it is the revolution that inspires black people to want their freedom that's not true um in 17 you know 03 we know that Adam sues an enslaver John
saffin for his freedom and wins and that really does set the precedent for a lot of the freedom suits that come and just to give one example of the role of genealogical sources and descending communities um in how we are approaching this um this is a story that
was done last summer in relationship to a different project that we um were all connected to but essentially one you know there's any number especially of black women that we've all written about our studied who filed petitions or who sued for their freedom um and whose
names are known right and should be better known uh there was very good recordkeeping in New England relative to other parts of the country and we have the advantage of being able to trace down to living descendants so we spent um uh the better part of a week um uh
over August of this last summer um with the present day descendant of Elizabeth Freeman whose petition was filed here in Boston and we were able to take her to the site where her ancestor um lived worked um owned a property was enslaved
and and in her final resting place as well okay so we have a few guiding questions that um we have a few guiding questions that really uh help us establish the historical context uh who were the
enslaved in Boston where did they come from how did slave labor and trading contribute to Boston Industries familial wealth and the economy how did Boston's economy then benefit from the transatlantic slave trade and slavery um how did City policies both official and
unofficial affect black Bostonian employment education and housing opportunities how were people of African descent excluded from the Boston economy and then how did City policies both official and um unofficial kind of carry on again to the later period and then
ultimately um how did enslaved and free black people shape the social political economic and legal culture in Boston and Define freedom on their own terms so one of the parts of our report um that we're really really excited about and um excited to talk to you all
is really thinking about uh the city itself and there are these amazing maps that um were done by a man named uh Samuel CL and in those Maps it draws the city of Boston as we know it in a lot of different uh time periods and what he
does he uses tax records to literally label uh who lives in each uh on each Street of the city so if we go to the next one this is just a kind of a a map zoomed out but we're going to actually
zoom in so this is what these Maps look like and then what you'll see is that it names all of the people who are living on specific streets so right here we have Sudbury Street um what's really important about this is that uh these
records are coming from tax records so you don't see black people really on these records except if you know an enslaver has uh black people living with them um but that is really not something that's uh really labeled in those earlier Maps it's it's comes later and
so one of the things that we're doing is actually going back to these earlier maps and then we're going to repopulate them with the black people who we are who we know are enslaved by certain enslavers so for example when I mentioned Adam and his lawsuit in uh at
the turn of the 20th century we know that he was enslaved to John saffin so instead of just having John saffin here it would be John saffin in a DOT which would Mark the place of a black person and so we're going to go through and we're doing this so that we can actually understand what black Boston looked like
in these periods and more importantly to understand where black people were living um in the city yeah so um just thinking through kind of documenting the uh transatlantic slave
trade and thinking about where people are coming from uh coming from the continent uh coming from the Caribbean um going uh to North America the West Indies South Africa thinking through not only uh people who are traded but also
thinking about the Commodities that are traded I think it's really important for us to not think about slavery as just just through um the people who are traded but also the goods because then we can have a larger conversation about the business of slavery so if there are people who are not necessarily enslavers
but they're Merchants most likely they are building their wealth from uh slavery as well and so really trying to do an accounting means really going um in depth about understanding those those Industries um so one of the stories that
um we're going to I'm going to just talk about very briefly to pull out is to think about okay so who are some of the enslavers that we are um that we're thinking about and so before I do that I just want to also highlight the fact
that we do know that based on the 1742 census that there were about, 1300 a little over 1300 enslave people living in Boston so the reason why those maps are important is that we can actually really mark them um but then going back
to uh this slide we know that there are at least 29 Boston ministers who enslaved black bostonians and really thinking about the place of the church which is so Central um to the expansion of Boston as a place and thinking about
you know these ministers who are preaching the gospel but also able to do so um because a lot of the labor that would be happening they're not doing but enslaved people are doing and so for
example we know um that out of the 63 um people who were enslaved and Boston ministerial households uh 63% of those were men um 31% of those were women and 33% of those were children we know that
people such as re Reverend Timothy Cutler um of Boston's uh Old North Church enslave people like Maul Primus and an um if we think about some uh famous black people at the time we we know that Phyllis weed Wheatley Peters
was a congregationalist um we we know that congregationalists also enslave people um and you know the reason why I'm going to you know say Phyllis wheatle is because she's a name that we recognize but as I mentioned there are all of these other people whose names we don't
know and so a part of our report is actually trying to delve into the people we do not know and so Church records are really important because we're able to uncover a lot of names that we just have never heard of before a second story um that we'll share a
piece of it's a story of a woman named Unice gunny um who was enslaved uh to um a man named Edmund Quincy I fourth and this she was born in 1747 and eventually um the family had
nine children all of them whom were enslaved by Edmond Quincy IV her and this is really about the interconnectedness of enslaved enslaving families because her mother and then her mother's parents were also slav by two previous generations of the same family um and and Men by the same name right
senior junior junior um or second third and fourth in this case and so we're looking you know in the long in the long term across multiple generations and at some point around 11 years old she's sold um we think around 1758 sold out of
this family and trafficked to Nova Scotia in Canada she makes her way back um about 9 years later around age 19 or 20 to Boston um really kind of showing the resilience to return to her own family uh birth family and um she's sent away
again and returns once more um in 177 uh 576 and um and she goes on to have five children and she passed away in 1790 at about 43 years of age so we're we're aiming to tell these kind of intergenerational
stories and then another story we're looking at if you look over here one of the things that our research and the report will challenge is this notion that one black people did not own property number two that black people were located um where we think black
people live in the city in 2025 and we know that's not true black people are all over the city of Boston and number three what did it mean in a slave system if black people own property what happened to that property um and and and uh how can we trace it and so one of the
people we look at is Peter um if you look over here this is the arbor redum so those of you who live in um uh this area JP if you ever walked by the Arboretum it's uh a site beautiful beautiful gardens and stuff but one of
the things our team is doing um is that we're looking at the fact that that actually um is a site of land that was owned by an enslaved man named Peter bridg um and that when he lived there he was enslaved by let me find um the name
he was um he was enslaved by Colonel William Dudley so another thing we are now in Nubian Square which has reclaimed itself right um that William Dudley was an enslaver he owned Peter bridg um they lived at an at an estate that stretched
all the way into um what is now rosindale and we know that he actually uh born in 17414 he marries a woman named Betty cruml a woman of uh of a black woman who we assume was actually free um they he purchases property um and um
he eventually leaves the property to his son in his will in 1801 so that would seem to prove to us and prove to have his thinking about the fact the long history of black homeownership and landownership in the city even if we don't think that that ex we don't we haven't been told those stories or we
think that we can't uncover it and this is a an image from the Census it is not of him but it's of his descendants it gives an idea of how many long his descendants remain in the city of Boston all the way up to the 1850s um oops
see the other thing we look at so our first section is on 1620 to roughly 1790 long period of History the period of enslavement and slavery developing overtime in um The Colony that then becomes the state of Massachusetts and
in 1783 as Kiera explained um there are court cases uh brought by enslaved African people against the colony that eventually lead to slavery being uh ending legally in the state of Massachusetts now we know though that what did that actually mean and how did
that manifest itself in people's lives that's why this this report goes from 17 from 1620 all the way up to 1940 because um by 1800 if we look up here we can see this is a census Massachusetts is the only state
if you look at that slave column that does not have any in slav people in it right and so that means that very early on by 1800 as the rest of the country has enslavement right Massachusetts and Boston in particular has a robust
bustling black community but they are not legally enslaved so as researchers we have to go in and look at but how is slavery and the slave trade and its legacies affecting that Community even if when you look on the on the records of the Census records there are no enslaved people in the city and so one
of the things that we're we're um doing with our mapping is really trying to look at how the black community migrates over time the significance of that is being able to say if we know where black people lived if we know their names if we know their families and their
genealogies we can start to do some of the work of figuring out um uh reparative work but also figure out um Community work in terms of the legacies of enslavement so this is a picture of um the uh area in Boston the North Slope
of Beacon Hill which is where the majority of African descended people lived from roughly 1790 all the way up until 1890s people don't know that it wasn't as if a light switch went on and black people moved out of out of Beacon Hill there were people there as late as 1890 as early as um as 1900 and so if
this was the center of the black community one of the things we can do with this research and by mapping is really look at well why and how did those people move off of Beacon Hill what was what were the property what were what were the where do they live what were the communities what were the churches that were located here and who
were the families who lived here whoops another thing we're very interested in is that even if slavery um technically ends in the state of Massachusetts and by 1800 we get that sensus that says there are no enslaved
people in the city of Boston what labor are people of African descent actually doing in the city right what is the value of that labor and so in order to get to that answer we really have to look at what are the jobs black people are doing and um when we are studying the era of slavery the pre previous era
as Kiera uh tells us we find that black people are are doing all of the LA majority of the labor that it's not just that they're doing the labor it's that their labor is actually being um um assimilated into the ways in which bostonians uh look at their economy and
so it's not just that they're doing a labor that somebody told them to do they're doing a labor that's inventing the labor that's done in the city of Boston and so when we look at who does the labor we really looking at um the um clothing stores that African descended people had we're looking at um the fact
that majority of black men in the city were seamen that means that they um spent a majority of their time outside the city um um involved in uh what made Boston very wealthy which was the uh transatlantic trade um by the early 18 19th century that trade wasn't
necessarily in human beings but it's in um terms of the trade that makes Boston very wealthy um and then we really want to look at how does this legal apparatus of slavery um even though Massachusetts has ended slavery right by 1800 how does
slavery continue to impact and shape the black community in Boston one of the things we look at is the ways in which um the fact that there's a federal law Fugitive Slave Law the material political and social effects that that has on the black community um it means
that they're we're looking at the ways in which because fugitive slaves come to the city of Boston and um they are then pursued by slave catchers and in some cases sold back into slavery what does that do to a family what does that do to a community that that person um is then
gone and so we have a lot of um stories that we're following um um of of family members who we can actually Trace what effect that has on the family what it has on the community if somebody is kidnapped and he's a and they're a father or a son or a husband or somebody
in the neighborhood who owns a business and they are suddenly gone what does that do to the community so these are images of some of those people we're we're looking at some of whom you may know Eliza Gardner I put up there because her house um she was actually uh uh very involved in the AM church here
in Boston a black woman Minister and um she and her family um their house uh in the nor Soo Beacon Hill helped fugitive slaves when they came to Boston and finally one of the things we we really want to concentrate on on our report is the fact that Massachusetts
end slavery black people um are legally not allowed to be enslaved in the state of Massachusetts um but Massachusetts and Boston are part of the United States right and so that means that as slavery expands across the rest of the United
States and across the rest of the hemisphere that has a material effect on people of African descent in the city of Boston I put this in here really to show the Dynamics of what slavery and slavery how it evolves over time and this is something we're very interested in the
report so you have free states and you have states that enslaved people and then you have states that when we get into the the Civil War era they end slavery either um by uh Federal uh provision or they end slavery in 1863 with the Emancipation Proclamation right
um and so this kind of gives us an idea of putting black Boston in a context right um in the fact that Boston is part of the United States which is part of a hemisphere which is part of kind of this um this uh this global history of enslavement and then we get into the
period after the Civil War 1865 to 1900 by that point um slavery legally ends in the United States with the 13th Amendment even though we know that um the provisions of the 13th Amendment um continued to allow um um slavery in
punishment for Crime so um but we do know that by 1870s are federal protections for formerly enslaved people including people of African descent in Boston and really what we're looking at is what are the um
effects of this slave system that had existed in the United States all the way up until 1865 on the lives of black people in Boston one of the things we're looking at is the the ways in which people of African descent were systematically excluded from jobs in the
city that actually provided for workingclass people in the City this is an image of the installation of the tea on Tremont Street and if you see you see a group of men who are working what people often don't know about the tea is that the tea um was uh when it was being
built part of the impetus for that or the the the um the cause for that was to try to get working people like working class people and people who were coming from farms to have meaningful labor and so this was actually a job that you could save up money you could purchase a house it it put a lot of people who
worked for the tea and in building it into kind of a working class but we know that 10% or that 10% of jobs like this were systematically closed to black people even though there were legal protections saying that there shouldn't be discrimination and so that meant that
that means that um in the case of something like the te people who worked on building the te in 1890s they get a certain leg up in terms of the what they were paid and then black people however are cut out of that and so we're really in looking at interested in looking at what are the long-term effects of that
the fact that 10% of jobs in the city of Boston are systematically cut out for for black people and even the jobs that are for workingclass people are cut and and black people are not allowed to participate and then we really want to look at as if we're looking at black
migration and we're looking at mapping one of the things is how do black people end up making their way from the North Slope of Beacon Hill to the south end this is a map of uh um the south end a few blocks from here and it shows kind of the location of black communities and black households
in the city the purposes of doing this is we can't really begin to have an argument about um home ownership about redlining in the 1950s about um disenfranchisement of black communities in terms of voting if we don't know where black people lived and we don't
know um what blocks and buildings looked like and so really this is one of the many maps that we'll be using um to sort of U get at the the um the sort of marrow of of black communities in Boston oopsie and then finally um really if
we're looking at Boston and its ties to slavery slavery SL the slave labor and its legacies one of the things we know about the city of Boston is that it it back in the turn of the 20th century much like today is a center of global and international trade this was not a
new thing and one of the thing biggest trades that occurred in Boston from 1865 really up until the mid you know 1950s is it's involvement in the sugar trade so um we have uh something called United Fruit Company which is the largest fruit
producing company that's founded in Boston is Boston fruit that has an exploitative role in in um Jamaica uh Guatemala um um Barbados and the Caribbean in terms of the way that it exploited and took from the people in those islands and many of those people
end up being then brought and moving to the city of Boston and so one of the questions in our report is how do those Industries um benefit from black labor but also exploit black labor right and how does that labor end up supporting
the growth of Boston from you know 1860s roughly to the middle of the of the 20th century this is a picture of Fort Point Channel and it shows the sugar boats coming in and out of that of the harbor and we know that some of those jobs unloading and loading in these ships that are brilling millions of dollars
into Boston again those were jobs that were not necessarily open for workingclass black people even though they were open for workingclass white people and then finally we really one of the things we're really concerned about in this report is providing um about um
this history and so one of the things we're constantly doing so if you know we do a lot of primary sources that means we go into the archive we look at it's it's very possible as Dr kerfield was saying to find these records these are not hidden records They are in you know the ma Massachusetts archives they are
in the Boston Public Library they are at Harvard University if you are a Boston Citizen you can use your library card and go and look at and find these things in the library they are not hidden and so that means that we not only do we have primary sources but we have a lot of historians who have done this work
who are talking about this and that we can read and we can look at and we can put that into our report and say um once we get this report 50 40 30 years from now right when somebody tries to say
this isn't how it happened right we had the record of the records we have the the primary sources and the secondary sources um so I think we will leave it at that um and leave it open for questions again this is not the report we will hand in a copy of the report but
this gives an idea of the methods that we are using the themes that we are using to do the research the type of research we're looking at the type of people we're looking at the fact that they're really focused on communities people and mapping um and so that the
city will have a document that will document uh black life from 1620 to 1940w so I hope that that um you know and that's it's just really the beginning um and so I think I as I I think I had said I thought it would be
informative gives us a lot to work with so as was said it's not the final report right um and so we're not we're not asking them to go all the way deep into everything but um we found that it was really helpful to give spa space last
time for folks to ask some questions and particularly one of the things we want to think about is that the report's not done so we are already starting to think about um how we bridge this report the North Eastern report and how those two things together that's part of the
reason why the vote for The Economist happened we're really trying to figure out how do we bring someone in now before all of it is done that begins the process of figuring out how we um come to those quantifiable uh you know economic data that that can help to drive where we go
next so we want to ask give folks an opportunity to ask some questions um our goal is definitely to uh we have 20 about 20 minutes for questions cuz we started a little late um and want to
make sure perfect great um and we want to um so for this section the goal is truly questions if you have public comment we have the public comment section afterwards but we have told our researches that we would release them originally I did say 7:15 so I'm I'm
borrowing a few extra minutes just because we started a little bit later than we would want to but um feel free if you have a question but the key is please definitely do it from the microphone um because if you don't do it from the microphone they can't hear it on the live stream um and it doesn't go
into the to the record as well so if you got a question please go ahead and um go to the microphone we'll ask have an opportunity um we have our researchers for the next uh uh we're going to try 15 to 20 uh just because we started a little bit later than we at um depending
on the number of questions we have and then after that we'll have time for public comment all right so I think we have our first question yes hello everyone and if y'all don't mind I would like a business card because I do radio and I would love for y'all to come have
conversation with us but my question is when did they abolish the racial discrimination civil suits because I heard that they put in um the 14th Amendment the Immunity Clause to stop us
from winning the racial discrimination suits um so I think so I think it's a good question so what we we're talking about in um the late 1860s so after the Civil War the federal government um creates an
amendment to the con Constitution called the 14th Amendment and that Amendment establishes multiple things the first thing it does is it overturned um the um Dread Scott decision in 1857 in that decision in 1857 so this is
when SL was happening before the Civil War in 1857 um the Supreme Court ruled that black people were not citizens that they could never be citizens that was the reading of Roger bani and so when the Civil War ends and slavery legally ends
the question becomes legally what rights do formerly enslaved people had so this is a national law it doesn't just affect Boston and Massachusetts it affects the entire country and black people who are in the United States and so that 14th Amendment when it was passed created um
the idea that if you are born in the United States you are a citizen but not only that it said that you had some a right to something called due process before the law and so basically that means that you have a right to sue and and all those things um long long story short not to get into
too much of a of a history lesson but there is a period called reconstruction when reconstruction ended uh there were concerted efforts to um by uh reactionaries and um and others to overturn or to um weaken a lot of the gains that were made during
Reconstruction and so one of the things that happened was that the 14th Amendment still existed but there were a series of Supreme Court cases that weakened it one of them was going to be plusy versus Ferguson that's probably the most famous one but that's not the only one there were a bunch of cases that happened and so it took until the
uh early 20th century with work by activists like choder and like web Deo to argue that the 14th Amendment had to be strengthened and so through years and years and Decades of that struggle by the 1940s and 1950s the NAACP led by
James Welden Johnson files all of these lawsuits and that's what gives us Brown V Board of Education finally and gives us the legal stuff that happens during the 1950s and 1960s now before I I end one thing to to think about is that the 14th Amendment is an amendment but
amendments and Constitutions are only as good as as the enforcement and the legal apparatus that enforces what those amendments say and so um after the Civil Rights movement once again there was a reaction against many of the gains that were made in the 50s 60s and early 70s and there was an attempt to roll back
support for for the 14th Amendment so the 14th Amendment still exists the 14th Amendment is a powerful thing what mean what what happens though is that that amendment can only be as good as the Supreme Court the courts if they recognize what that actually means so I don't know if that answers your question
but but it kind of gives an idea of why it might be that rights particularly in in throughout the United States but in a place like Boston they go up they go down right some years you know why is it that black people vote very very freely and are not Jerry manard in voting until
about 1920 in the city of Boston stuff happen something happens in 1920 that then makes um the split in that vote and so it's one of the things we'll discuss in the in the report thank you I do think it's worth noting that just last month day there was also another assault on the 14th Amendment
and an attempt to take away the uh fact that if you are born in this country you are American citizen um as long as you were born here and uh recently under President Trump's executive order he is seeking to take away that right so that would be another weakening of the 14th
amendment that is happening currently next question um I just want to thank you for your report however I would like to um know if you're going to include include financial institutions in your report um especially Banks
insurance companies um because I think those are very important in terms of um the relationship that black Americans have to the city and the policies of the city yeah thank you so much for that
question uh so the the answer is uh yes and also uh that we are you know this report can just be the first of many there could be a report that is just literally on Banking and insurance uh
companies and so I also want to say that while we're going to include some of that um which is really important in terms of thinking about the insurance companies in Boston that are actually insuring slav ships um and we know that there's a rich history there uh we're
going to include a snapshot of it but you know we're going to try our best but when we're trying to cover so many Industries I just don't want people to think that you know they're going to be a 100 Pages um on that but we're going to do our best to be as comprehensive as
we can across each of the the periods and about those about that what Kier is saying you know Boston at the moment um and really not very few cities in the United States have a record that shows the actual history of the black people in that City
from the beginnings until the present and so really what Boston is doing which is great and this is why you know we like doing this work what Boston is doing is something that hasn't been done before and for a long time as we all know having definitive historical data
that says this is where black people live this is who they were these are the family names this is what happened that does not exist right and so part of what this report is doing is creating that so that it exists and so to Kiera's point that means that once this is done this is a report with all of the stuff stuff
that we'll have in there all the sources all the citations all the things going back to 1620 all the way up this means that you as a citizen this means that the city of Boston can say okay these are the facts that we know and from the facts that we know then we can start to kind of have a deeper conversation so
that's what we're doing um and you know it might mean that 10 years from now somebody says you know what I really want to just concentrate on all the banks in Boston and look at exactly the thing and then they'll have this report they won't have to do that research they're going to have this report that's going to do the basic of that and then
they can do um a more thorough account hi good evening my name's anonia Edwards I think this is an absolute awesome report and it was kind of what I was looking for more of the details of the historical part of Massachusetts sanctioning slavery a lot of people didn't know that and it's clergy who
actually sanctioned it um the first thing I want to say there's a group of white clergy who who wants to pay for operations I think you guys should team up with them I've sat in their meetings secondly what i' like to ask is um things that it's in the report it seemed that you overlooked or maybe it's coming
The Great Migration is it Bridges the gap between the original enslaved and then the American freemen who we are descendants of and a lot of people don't understand that terminology because they're looking at African slaves which is fine they did come from Africa however we have a whole Legacy of people
like my family and other people's family who who escaped racial Terror from down south and migrated here and we are American freemen we are the formerly emancipated slaves and The Descendant and I'd really like to see this in this report so we can get this verbage kind of correct so were you going to include
that in your report since the Great Migration started in 1940 yes thank you so much um really important question um we think really expansively about um in the in terms of the scope of this work there are people coming in and going out coming back in
like the story I told to Canada and back and then of course the Great migration after emancipation in the south is the biggest Force going forward so there's just multiple populations who are affected um and we are covering all of those I'll let Professor Gren speak
because she's this is her area of expertise yeah I mean this is when when we're talking about these communities this is why the scope of it we those are those communities that's who we're talking about that's what we get into the communities that's why we're not talking abstract we're not saying kind of this whole big story we're saying what did it look like in 1920 on
Northampton Street or on Columbus Avenue like who were the people who were actually there and that's what you can do with genealogy and with personal stories that you can't do if you're kind of just flowing out and pontificating all kind of these huge broad themes obviously these broad themes are going to be in here but when you start to
really focus on names that's why it's so important that we're looking at names and families and saying this is what the block looked like in 1930 in 1930 on one block you had people who were coming from South Carolina how do we know it's in the Census records for 1930 once that's in this report then that's that's
actually sort of giving that that's documenting that black community so yes and yes that's that's what that's what we're doing and that's why we focus on people and why we focus on communities and when we F Focus so much on mapping because when you get down to that level you know you have the names of people
you have where they came from you have um do they have people who are still in their family who live here today or do they have people who Moved say to I don't know Brockton or um Milton right and so what does that actually mean so when you start to talk about people and
communities and genealogy that's when you can start to answer those questions okay thank you so much hello my name is maros B um I just have two questions uh the question number one what is the end goal of this
uh commission committee and um are there any black men on the committee so I think we can definitely talk about that that's not a question for that's not a question for the researchers so what I'm going to do is I want to check and see if there's any more questions for them uh so that I can
release them to talk about the report and then if you want to talk about the commission and the larger effort we can talk about that because that we're on the the committee but does anybody have any other questions so that first question though um what's the end goal of this committee right but you're talking about the reparations task force
this is just a research team okay so the research team is producing the report that then we as the task force will take to work on our recommendations for how reparation should go so their only job is to surface all of the history put it into a report and that report becomes
the piece that we work from so I definitely want to have that conversation that we can do that I just know that I promis them that they would be done at 7:15 so if anybody has a question that is directed to them I want to give it to them and then when they leave then we can start on that next
conversation okay one more one more question is there do we have more than one question for the researchers okay so what I'm going to do is I'm going to let you ask your question then I'll bring you the mic you can ask your question and then we'll allow you all to wrap those two together and then we'll move on to public comment and the larger
conversation about the task force is yours also a question for them yes okay no no I'm saying uh also who's behind you okay so why don't we do this let's get the three questions I will allow them to go ahead and finish that and then we'll move on to our public comment in the next piece around sort of where
we're going from here does that work for folks all right yes um one it it seems like your report is focusing a lot on wages and work um will you be focusing on the
terror the murder of our people and also uh the resilient coders did a project a professor out of University of
California did research on the insurance uh how the insurance industry came into existence by ensuring uh our ancestors and many of
our ancestors of course we came from Africa we came here with skills crafts so your report should um we were not just seen but you know we also had
blacksmiths we Builders we built the pyramids and will your report also you touched on a little bit uh with auor about the property that was stolen um by
our ancestors here and I also want to mention that this building was also taken from the guscott family by imminent domain so the the question of what we do with the information is on us not them
okay so the so the questions for them are just what's going to be in the report and I do want to note that there is a tension between getting the report and all of what we want for right so they could they've already spent the
good check of their life studying this if we want everything in it they will never get us the report so I do want to know that that and even when they you know gave us the in we were like what about this and what about that so I just want to be real that if we want it to
come in the next few months we do have to make some decisions about what's going to be in and what's not going to be in because if we keep giving more things to add to the report we will be adding more and more and more time them get that report and we didn't actually
pay them to do a 10 year report we paid them for for C so I just want to name that cuz that even came up when we were me like what about this what about that and there's there's so much that could be
done we are going to have to make some decisions about how much do we need to begin our conversation about what we do next while allowing people to keep buing on it into the future so I pass pass to and we'll come here we'll give you all the space to close out we'll let you go
and we'll go into the next part um with what you in line with what you said there is a certain in the ordinance there is a a certain task there is a certain group that you know is called for so in the research I I this is
wonderful research I see that it's going all over the place already and not focusing on what's in the actual ordinance um so my question is is this research going to focus on what was written in in the
work can you expand more what you feel like not um there was a focus on American freemen um that is not being focused on um and a lot of times okay okay the work of focusing on American
freemen or American descendants of slave and they enslaved gets washed into everything else and we get the short end of the stick so like I said my question is is there going to be a focus understanding the space we're in the the
tensions between us all but there was a concerted effort by m multiple people in community over two years to write that Oran so I will throw back to you I think though the question I'll say from my
perspective I think the question is what does that for for you and for others what does that look like in terms of what they have done and what you would do differently and I think what I'll say is we can allow you all to close out and we can have a more robust conversation
because I go back to the Sens you I know that they did read the ordinance that we had a conversation that there was a way um they proposed and I'm just I think we should have a detailed conversation about like where do you see it is not
does that make sense I can where it's so let's let close out and and it also worting that they actually only had a certain time period um and so you all end at 1940 correct so part of the Great Migration does
start before that and the quite a bit of the bulk of it happens after the time period that they are studing so I just think that's also worth noting great yeah uh thank you all so much for these really really great questions and I think um they very very
helpful in terms of not only how we're thinking about the work but also how we communicate how we're doing the work and so I want to go back to that 1742 uh census uh point that I mentioned in which um we know that that's about
10% of bostonians are enslaved now the thing about that is moving from uh you know a census uh that gives us a number all the way till 194 is that populations do not s uh stay the same so while they
can be you know segregated in some you know periods they then integrate and they inary with a lot of different black people that are coming from all over the place and so we respect that ordinance and that ordinance is really important but in order to actually give the full
scope of we can't actually give the full scope but to give a you know as complete of a scope as possible we have to be a little bit more Broad um and how we're doing the work because that's actually what the research is telling us so the
black PE black people are moving and changing as uh years change and it would be um it would be really hard to try to distinguish who is you know who was a descendant from that original census all
the way until now so I think that that's the important part and that's why we do genealogy and family history um the other part about teror and um and skills you know I think that there is a huge misconception about slavery and why
black people are enslave you know people think that somehow um we were out here doing um you know internships and learning uh different crafts but that's actually not what was happening um we were being targeted for our skill sets
and that skill set is what goes into building what becomes such an important uh Port City that is Boston and so we are definitely not going to overlook that and I really appreciate that question because we know that black people have their hands in every single
industry that makes up this city um I think in the for the purpose of the report one of the reasons why we highlighted um the seamen because it also gives us an opportunity to think about black Mobility um what jobs were possible that actually forced black
people to leave Boston so seamen were actually um a pretty crafty industry where black people could actually make money and they would go and then that money would come back to their families what we do know about that is that it's also dangerous work and some black
people never come back so what happens to their family well we know that they end up in the workhouse and the AL house that are in Boston and because of that um sometimes we're told that we can't find working class and poor black people but that's actually um not true where
are we looking for them if we look for them and places such as the arm house and the workhouse all of a sudden we have names of people that we never actually thought we could ever find and so that was one of the reasons why we use that example but again you know uh
we know that there are black Potters we know that there are uh black seamstresses we know that they are Weavers we know that black people are building the roads that they are building ships they're doing every single part of the work the other thing
about uh the insurance industry again I want to just highlight that we do know a very important figure uh Peter Brooks um he uh establishes the New England Marine insurance company we know that it becomes one of the largest insurance companies that are enslaving um that is
ensuring enslave people as well as the ships uh that are carrying people and goods and so I just wanted to give that specific example to let everyone know that uh we are looking into that and he is a very prominent uh Bostonian
Merchant but I also want to use this moment to talk about the fact that he doesn't always stay in Boston he moves over to Medford so if you've ever heard of the Brooks estate the Brooks estate was his family's summer estate so again I think the work that we're trying to
show is that people are moving all over the place black bostonians are in Boston they end up in Medford they end up in Brookline they come all over the place and in order to do the work and understand that um uh we just have to be a little bit more
comprehensive because if we only looked at his time in Boston well what do we do about this luscious estate that they're able to pay for with the labor that they um with the money that they're actually getting from enslave labor
yeah okay and we have another um so for example uh there is a uh black artist uh from Roxberry Stephen Hamilton who is an amazing he is an amazing Weaver one of the projects that we've done at the Royal house and slave quarters is that
he worked with uh black Bostonian uh children last summer about 10 of them and he taught them how out to weave um it was a completely free um uh summer program as as a way to also teach the history of slavery and craftsmanship and
to start to create a new uh Cadre of young black artists who are skilled in um uh craftsmanship that are coming directly from the continent and so again you know that's not necessarily a part of our report but it's a part of the work that we all do in terms of thinking
about Community repair so I want to just say thank you thank you um and relieve them and then we we do have a little bit of time left um so I'm going to invite the task force members to come back up here thank you um one
question that was asked is sort of what is the timeline uh so we've had both of these reports S no no you're good you're good um two uh well I'll say two two or three things that came out of our previous meeting that have touched that touch on
some of the things we heard from folks so the first piece is um the question we heard last time and we're hearing a a bit about today is like how are we going to meld these two reports together um so there has been some conversation between
the two sets of researchers it's one of the reasons for instance like policing and criminal justice was included as an attempt to sort of have some alignment between the two um the other thing that they are trying to bring some alignment between the two
is around housing and making sure that there's some sort of thread um because as you saw from this team they do a lot of mapping of where people were living and what property that they own and the other team also did some look at um
housing and so we're going to try to sort of see if we can make that themed let me um better move between the two reports then the other question is how does the the finances work between the two so that's one of the reasons
we're trying to move the economist question why we asked for the vote today so that we can start to engage someone that also might help to create some of the line between the two um because we heard from you and we are concerned that they're both
great and we don't want to feel like oh gosh we have up to 1940 and then it's like a leap and there's no relationship between the two so we are already trying to be proactive and thinking through how to mold these two together so to the to
the brother's question about sort of what is the long-term goal so the long-term goal is to take these two reports that give us oh brother oh do I'm I'm trying to answer your question so I was trying to re-engage yeah so you ask the question
of sort of where's the long-term so the goal long-term goal is to take the reports we are trying our best now to really think now that we have like some conversations for both of them how do they Bridge um so that they don't end up being like two separate pieces uh and so
we've also asked the researchers to have another conversation they did have a conversation prior but have another set of conversations now that they're both further along to to just ask where there's some possibility of bridges um some of the things we suggested for instance is like do we look at the South
End right where we have some Geographic Bridges so that um it doesn't sort of finish in the South End and then hop over to rockbury and there's like no way to bring those two things together what are the geographic Bridges what are the industry Bridges um and what are the
sort of theme bridges that we can hold together so as I mentioned um housing is one they had already in their pre-c conversation looked at policing and criminal justice as one that would would go over um and so that's already there
um and then the hiring of The Economist is about this question of can that also provide us a bridge one of the things that folks said and I I think I've already mentioned that there's there is a tension between
um expanding the scope and getting the report done um and so I think even when we met with them we were like what about this what about that um and so I think where we're trying to land is we need
this to be done by the spring um which means we have to after this month we're trying to not expand scope anymore so that they can then just write um and so this was one
of the reasons that we had this meeting is to see what the theme of questions you all would raise are we looked at it previously and then we've asked the research teams to meet together to just have that conversation about Bridge um and see if we can try to get to
something the truth is and I think they said this and our their meeting with us and I think you you heard it from them tonight they're setting trying to set a table from which much more work can be done there's work that's been done before you've heard them mention some of
it it's going to be referenced um but there is research that's going to need to be done Beyond this there are threads that they're going to start but they're just not going to have enough time to follow every single thread that they find all the way through um to the end
so I do want to name that I found it exciting I think from y'all's reaction you found it exciting and good research leaves you with more questions and you want to kind of go down enough
roads we can't have them go down every road or else I will be the reparations task force in my 70s and we're still waiting for the report so there's enough that they could do and so I think as an example with the seamen we asked you know sort of that was something I didn't
know and one of the things that they mentioned was they are trying to look at Industries where there were enough of us we were in all sorts of places the upside to that is to see the breath of what we did the downside is that of that is that you could go really deeply into
three people so they are trying to choose places where there's an opportunity to go deeply on 50 or 70 people as opposed to like four people here and two people here um just because that allows both to get some depth and
to finish when we've asked them to finish so that we can move on to the next part of our process and the next part of our process is taking that research and then putting together a a recommendation to the city for a reparative framework based on the re research that we have and we cannot
start that process if the research process stays open eternally so can I make a statement yeah I just wanted to add to what Mar Al was saying about the um the themes that have been approached by both
teams this is this is one team that has deal with the history and people particularly the other team that has presented and we have a doctor in the room from that from that team um focused
on on the themes of housing education and um employment so the teams will combine that information from the historical context of how we arrive to
today how we arriv to the 1940s and what that meant with the next team's um evaluation of what happened with policy there's also politics there's um the the harm that was done with respect to how we are disenfranchised in lawmaking and
policym so there's um a number of themes that can be uh underscored as you are bringing up um that we need to have some kind of value uh assigned to it so the economist
then can then take that to help us make recommendations about what this means and how it uh um how it then is analog to what is today's money and what was then the currency when these different
periods were happening so that is to come and I'm sorry to interrupt one second um good evening everyone can we just remember if you guys do have questions to come up to this microphone because we are live streaming this and they can only hear through the audio
output thank you so um I was a part of assisting Aiza and getting the ordinance done and it was very important that um we had lineage boundaries and that's why the ordinance says descent black descended the slaves
of in the US and I just find that in talking and listening to the on both Sid to the reports it is all over the place and it's all other acronym um adjectives describing other people that really pertain nothing to the legacy of slavery and the badges of incidents to created
the stain of slavery for us to descend from slavery um there's just some significant um historical context that haven't even been talked about and the biggest thing for me is a great migration that's how we got here that that and and since we've been here it's
been racial chor and so whether it's that in 1940 with the toughs group or whether it's in the northeastern group somebody has to speak to that and so when aiz is speaking about the fact that you know it's not adhering to the ordinance it really isn't I'm I'm and
I'm going to tell you that it's not because Anthony was a part of making the amendments to the ordinance I petition what AA and a group of people to have specificity with regards to who is the eligible party of who we're talking about and if you read the ordinance it says black descendant the slaves in the
US now all of that 400 plus years of Badges and incidents that created the stain of slavery has affected all other people but we cannot get through reparations without going to the root CA and starting from the beginning and addressing the issues and and also exposing them Massachusetts s slavery
they're complicit in fugitive state laws putting people back into slavery once they were free and then we have historically been I hate the word discriminated but discriminated racial profiled we've been shut out of employment we've been shut out of everything that has to be an accounting
for that if we're going to tell the mayor or we're going to tell the state government because we're working on state as well too that you're complicit in the 400 years of the badger inent slavy let's talk about all of it all the significant stuff we don't need to hide stuff because this is a One-Shot deal
and so when you talk about the harms that we want to be paid for you're missing a whole lot and so you're not going to be able to go back and say oh we forgot about the Great Migration or we forgot about this we need to hit it and hit it
hard this is like a lawsuit if you got hit by a car exactly your job is to prove that you've been injured yeah and I know it sounds sad we shouldn't have to do that but they're making us prove that they did these things to us so why aren't we telling the truth why don't we exposing it and to be perfectly honest
with me I don't see why time is difficult I mean it it's known it's history so it was not going to take any more time to add these pieces of significant history that created the stain of slavery that we now deal with and there's been so many badges of incidents that have occurred so I'd
rather see the report be complete concise and the truth then to skate over it and do people mapping and and knowing where people were okay they were there what's going on with them mhm we're here now and I grew up in Roxberry and I can tell you what
happened to us in Roxbury where's all the black businesses gone where where is all the black housing where's the affordable housing what happened to us G there has to be a part of these reports to prove to the mayor that we've been systematically displaced and put out
this is not made up and since we have all these wonderful historical documents that are so available unlike any other state let's use them yeah and that's what I have to say I'm just saying we have got to stick to the ordinance and if we're not sticking to the ordinance this is for failure in the sense of um
the money make sure you keep okay can I say something can I ask my question now uh yes yeah that that was exactly what I wanted to ask because there's different groups I mean I attended a reparations meeting and during the summer time and I
met this lovely sister here that just spoke that was my main question there's like three different groups working on reparations and you know like this sister was just saying the Freeman and the freemen with daughters and sons that group and then there was the group
and then now was this group it's like why can't we just all come together all these different groups working on reparations and and you know there seems to be some confusion around the language of lineage versus race one group wants to take out the word race another group wants to talk about the lineage then
this group's talking about the ordinates it's like all so confusing so I mean if we can all gather together all these different groups is working on the same cause why can't we do that so like the sister said it's a one shot deal I mean this is almost like a lawsuit so you know um however this may happen you know
turn out we all all the different groups need to come together and get the language right together so that this bill because I was just reading on one of my um podcast is a reparations bill out right now by three other group three other people that's working on the reparations bill so like we all we need
to get this together together and get the language together whether it's around lineage or whether whatever it may be but we like the sister just said I mean whether it's the Freemans daughters and sons versus you know working with Michelle woo or whatever we we need to um you know whether it's the
studies on you know the different studies that the lovely um women just presented to us about you know the or the northeastern study versus the tough study and all that but we got to get it together and I just hope that as all these different groups need to come together to one table to figure out the
the language for this reparations bill so I guess the question I have is are people saying we should not be studying the original beginning of slavery in Massachusetts and the folks who were enslaved here and we should just wait until the Great Migration cuz that's
what I kind of no that's not what I think what we're doing is fine like I get it they want the American Freeman in there that but but I I do believe that y'all are going about this the right way now Northeastern I didn't really you
know understand what they was doing but I like that they researched they you know bought up the police and everything but I get it I think what the American freemen want to hear is more of the American Freeman acknowledging that the name even exist you know so I think
that's what that is okay so so I'm hearing two things one is about the language used to describe people and I want to know nobody brought this up here but I actually asked them how do they call people and they said that when when they are speaking on a specific time
period they use the language that they are finding in the documents that people called themselves right so I'm just I just I asked about that because this was a question raised last session but then nobody asked it this session maybe we should have asked it while they were
here but I don't think it was opposed specifically to them so I think what I'm hearing is people want that language used right and so I well so that what I asked them is how did they decide because if you look
africaner and they don't use the term African-American either they use africanamerican and the sad part is that I didn't did you saw them use African I did it you Gloria you Grace Grace right so so what I'm I'm just wanting to
clarify I did ask them when I preaw the report what language were they using to describe people and they said if you look at the period the language that they were using in their slides and what will be in the report will be based on
the language they've read in the primary source documents from which they take it so I'm asking if that is a point of a contention does that do people understand what I'm saying yes yes so and can I explain why and the reason
why I'm explaining this is there has been a series of historical things that happened to a group of people and yes they may have come from Africa there may be some African DNA in them but we're a Melting Pot we aren't like any other
people in the diaspora my grandfather is is is half Jewish his mother was raped by the slave owner so I don't want to necessarily be called African descent I have a right to be called whomever I may be so to keep labeling everything African descent is really disrespecting
people who have a Heritage here in America who have been harmed and who have been raped and pivoted and castrated and and and forc ancestrial breeding none of that is being brought up as to you know I'm saying what happened to us here and I understand that people have a panafrican ideology
and want to connect to the African despa but what happened to the people here from slavery to emancipation they were named American Freedman they were C Contraband they then you I'm saying direct reconstruction the failed 40 acres in a mule they faced racial Terror
they then did the Great Migration and came to other states they are still descendants of American freemen say their say their name so I'm saying say their name I'm hearing what I'm hearing though is there are there are options which is We could decide we're going to call
people what we choose or and what they're saying that how they're approaching it is they're looking at the documents and seeing what people called themselves and then replicating that language in what they write so I just want to be direct cuz I did ask that question and I hear I hear where people
I think what I'm saying is yes you have a right to name yourself and call yourself for sure the question is do we have the right to go back and change what we are calling other people if in their documents they use S certain
terminology and I'm going to I'm just going to say like the historians are going to say from their methodological approach they're going to call people they called themselves American call ourselves anything it's it's a legal status that was given to us
by the federal government no no I hear you but what I'm saying is the majority of their presentation were about people who were here in the city of Boston many of whom were not under the freedman's bureau if you were enslaved here you
were freed before that even existed no no no hold on I'm just saying so I'm I'm just naming that from their approach the people that were here in the 16 17 and
1800s would not likely have called themselves fredman because they wouldn't have come out of the fredman's bureau in that time and that's fine but when emancipation happened and they had the Freeman's commission and the aid society that was St in Massachusetts who was been a no no and I hear you what I'm
saying is that is far more the case for instance I have family from South Carolina they would fall under that they would have been freed men Carolina no no I'm just saying but people but if they they were here they might not have so I'm just saying we're going to we're going to continue to wrestle with this we're going to continue to wrestle with
it but I just need people to hear that there is a tension around what we call ourselves now what we identify with and what who they are documenting and what they call themselves right all right and and I have I wrote down my questions
right um but just to answer that I did a show on my radio pop radio and there was a guy on there and he said out of all the races we are the only race that still cannot identify who we are like we
have a hundred names for ourselves um black Negro American freemen um um what's that um no the um well anyway that's that's one of the things that we did bring up so I'm I'm going to stick
to the names I like you know what I mean and like you said if that's what they want to be called okay so let me get to my question one more yeah that's fine and I I I didn't even ask the question so okay it says can we bring awareness that there are still black people out
here that wants to be enslaved and do slavery take care of us to the point that we want to stay enslaved cuz I hear there people in the South that wants to still be enslaved yes yes in the South I was told
that ohow some was taking care of so good like you get a slave that was really good to you yes all right I I promise to put the mic back down when I'm
finished um my name is uh Reggie Stewart uh a Dorchester resident I'm also the state coordinator for the advocacy Foundation um I just wanted to uh commend what I saw uh from the
researchers uh thus far um you know the the detail and the work um I'm very excited and pleased that uh the task force unanimously uh decided to engage an economist and I'm very curious to see
what cost is attached uh to the harms that the researchers have enumerated and just uh I wanted to offer something because I I understand the time pressures that you're under and if there
are Frameworks out there uh that have been that are respected and accepted that you know we don't need to reinvent the wheel if we don't have to so uh once you engage and select your economists um
uh I would ask you to consider uh the framework put forth by Dr David H Swinton in the 9s a retired Economist who calculated a formula for estimating the cost of slavery you know which includes of course the uh value of
stolen Labor uh the value of lost opportunities to acquire Capital the value of lost Freedom along with pain and suffering uh uh James Kramer who who uh some of you may know expounded on the
uh uh the value of lost of stolen labor on that metric uh what Dr Swinton also did uh was create a formula to calculate the cost of Jim Crow segregation the vestiges of slavery so I think that
those Frameworks may be useful for uh units 1 through five and the uh and then again the Swinton uh framework for cost of discrimination and segregation would be useful for unit 6 and just in closing
my question to the task force um I'm glad to see the new faces I appreciate all of you but I do have a question I was a little shocked when I went to the website last week and I saw that uh I believe chip grenwich and Carrie Mays is
is no longer with us um I understand that the mayor does the appointing so I guess my question is uh why why did they leave whose decision was it to leave um and can we get them back
um you know you I say that because you know I I considered you all Advocates and I appreciate you all but uh Carrie and and chip in particular were very vocal and adamant and did not let go of
the need for the community to be involved and to inform the recommendations so that's where my question stems from I don't know if you have any knowledge of that or or the chair or should we ask the mayor you know who according to the ordinance has
the power to appoint and move staff around so if someone could get back to us on that I would appreciate it but thank you I I can say that none of the folks here were involved in the decision- making but I do I did ask and I think it
will be addressed by the folks who were involved in that decision making um I for my understanding at the next meeting yes thank you black man we appreciate you and we're going to get you at that table because you need to be
there uh stop the exclusion of our black men at this decision making table this is for the and stop the exclusion of our black youth cuz they need to be at the table the black family needs to be at
this table so let me just get that out of the way um we have a rich history in Boston we also have black historians right here in
Boston we also have the Harlem Renaissance the year when our people was writing researching all this stuff our people have already researched this stuff I don't know if they're on that
list but don't come in here and like we're illiterate we're the most literate people on the planet and I can honestly say we have many bookstores in this area when I was growing up all the way to Grove Hall so
to coming here here and say that oh we got to do this um we already I want to know are we able I'm piggyback off what the black man said are we able to bring these literary
Works to you of of information that has already been done especially on when you're looking at the economics because we do have Dr Claude Anderson we do have the black tax book
we have a number of things already and are we able to even set up little groups of people who want to help work with this economics on bringing this stuff together and help
bring in this information since you said that your time is short and I also want to reiterate what the sister said about um thank you very
much I also want to say that we're being rushed and we need to make sure that it's included and we need to make sure that this is uh okay we need to reference the 13th and 14th
Amendment we that's the definition of who is this eligible for the definition is in there it's not what we called ourselves because we didn't call ourselves those names they called us they're calling and we do have
the in guu SAA seven principles a Quanza koi chalia that we speak for ourselves name ourselves and not be spoken to by other people let's get it correct you know I stand on the backs of our ancestors the ones who died and sweat
and tears that brought us here to build these buildings yes and I just can't let our ancestors be disrespected so we must go from the definition of when Abraham Lincoln in Congress Abraham Lincoln in
1963 he said the descendants of cadow slavery Congress in 1945 that's the definition that we should be about right there we uh this
should be what they say in legal terms this should be we have the constitution in the 13th Amendment who can Define when they um uh made SL slavery
illegally thank you first I just want to say this you know uh to our most high God and our ancestors kumay my Lord Kumbaya kumay My Lord Kumbaya kumay My Lord
kumay Oh Lord kumaya that's what our ancestors were saying when they were being whipped in their backs okay uh during the time of slavery now listen this right here this sounds like all this hr40 stuff that was on the
books for like 50 years all right that's what this sound like it like going a treadmill going nowhere yes we have all these different names from carer color to Indian to negro to colored to molat
to afroamerican to Black American africanamerican American desend slaves and foundational black Americans I've heard it all but guess what they all have in common we're the same people we
are the same people all those names but it's only one people and reparations is lineage based reparations now when you all say genealogy right could someone explain on
on your commission what you mean by that genealogy so we didn't use that phrase P per se but that is what the researchers use and genealogy is a tradition where you start by tracing people's Bloodlines so Gene you know is at the foundation of
it and you're saying how do you form genealogy is the practice of creating family trees so that's that is what she that the um researcher that is what she specializes in helping people to use primary source documents to go back and
find as much as you of you as you can of your family's um you know tree sourcing it yeah so for instance my family came from South Carolina Abbyville South Carolina to Boston in like the 40s okay
and so and yes we had to immigrate this way because of what was going on in South Carolina at the time I ain't going to get into it someone died we had to bounce and and this is where we came so
I just want to make sure that we don't get this thing so far out of hand I have nothing against the diaspora whether it's uh the Caribbeans right because I know they got CARICOM going on and I know they got 15 Islands
right that they agreed with carakan and 27 other uh Associates right nothing about Black Americans and it's the same with Africans okay so not all of us came over here on the sh on some slave ship okay in
1619 my my grandmother is a black foot Indian okay she was already here but because but she was reclassified because a lot of this stuff on the Dodge R all right C uh reclassify her as a
negro okay so we are a amalgamation of a whole lot of people here in Black America okay for of a better word and so shoot we have English in us we got Native American in us we got a little bit of everything in us okay but what we
are is a ethnogenesis we're our own people now okay and we want what belongs to us and they saying we ain't asking these people this is a de reparations is a demand this is not us begging people
uh asking anyone for anything it's something that's old you talk about these Japanese internment camps 120,000 people but what about the internment camps that black Americans had to Door after emancipation proclamation and they
had to come this way what about all hundreds of thousands of people that was in uh uh the devil's punch bowl in Mississippi so brother I want to hear you I I do also recognize that 758 and there are four people behind you so I so I'll finish up by saying
this it's lineage BAS period That's What reparations is thank you okay I'm just going to be short and simple um is we have the lineage it ain't that hard to figure it out we don't need
no uh names and chapters you know where you come from people migrated from 1910 all the way to 1970 the information is there we don't even have to go out and get Scholars from um colleges we got people in our community that do the work
itself I have all this information that was given to me by my great grandmother by my uncles these guys worked in police departments they work as City officials all the information is here let's just figure this out we don't need other groups coming in here trying to
see what we doing sitting by the door figure it out we're here come on man simple it's simple let's figure it out I think I could yeah it's good it's okay anyway my name is Cassie quinland so I drove a school bus and busing and
that's part of what uh I don't know it ties into what I'm thinking about this stuff here which is that the kids that I drove um I moved to Boston in 1967 and the population the black population in Boston was pretty low at that stage something like T or something like that
then it began to increase and when I drove a school bus and busing from 1970 6 to 1986 um those kids they were all from the south or not all but most that was when people said black that's who they
meant they were all up from the south whether it's called you know many could be lineage and race at that time they kind of synchronized later on a greater influx of of immigrants have come I'm an immigrant myself I study ultural studies so I love immigrants it say that they're
not exactly the same so I guess one of my questions is when you're doing the research period it me it seems are you're tying into some other pieces and sorry you're not the researchers but uh are you tying into some other pieces about the northern migration like where did these people go as opposed to where
did all the people on this street go or what did all that you know the populations so I I'm trying to finish but so you're asking a question I'm not going to forget your question I'm gonna let the sister speak I'll try to answer it quickly and then we got to goow I don't
want to ignore it but yeah I want to also make sure everybody gets to speak hi good evening my name is Xandra and I live here in Roxbury however my family is from Alabama and from Georgia um who migrated a long time that's not while I'm up here I just came to say
thank you um for everything that everyone's doing for the Committees and everything doing but I also wanted to put this piece out here we are always so separated okay so we need to take time and give each other some Grace MH and
remember we're all working towards the same goal so if we can put a little bit of Grace a little bit of kindness when we speak to each other when we speak to the committee and people who are doing their work and they do diligence I think we are saying all the same thing a
little we're passionate about it because it's been 450 years that people been stepping on our neck and on our head exactly um so we're tired to say the least Ben tired so I just want to thank you guys for everything you're doing um
remembering that we were here when they came to Plymouth we were already here we've been here it took Mexico to just say that black people were here before we were even here they had to acknowledge it and it's coming from other countries you know they have been
oppressing us for so long but we are Gods ourselves let's remember who we are let's stand in Grace and don't do what they don't want us to do we have to stand in solidarity always in solidarity for the better of our people as we go
forward thank you no thank you thank you um so we are at 8:03 um the I do do we have the date for the next meeting of the February meeting khed do we have the date for the
February meeting can we can we announce that tonight no we don't have it okay um we will make sure that by the next meeting we have the meeting the meeting after because I do think it is good practice to announce the next meeting at the end of this meeting I knew it I was like I don't think it's on my calendar
so we will make sure that we adjust so that people can start putting on their calendar um but we'll yes if you haven't signed in thank you thank you if you haven't signed in um please do so because that will make sure especially if you can share your
email we make sure that we can send you the blast of announcements um and we'll make sure that when we get that next date scheduled um that we will get that out to you um I did write a couple questions that people raised but I also want to try to finish on time um I'm willing to stay after a few extra
minutes if people want to engage but I also feel like we're starting to lose people so I don't want to um keep keep going on too long uh I think that folks raised another number of of key questions and I think the one challenge that I'm sort hearing is that there is a
deep interest in the period of like 1910 to to 1950 60 and the majority of their report 300 years of it are before that period and so I think there's a one of the questions I'm asking is do
people feel like that previous history is not important because it feels like I'm establish because I I think I think if people present on 340 years there's no way that they're going to spend half of their presentation on
the last you know sort of 20 20 years of their presentation so I'm just I just want to note that they have a a wide range of years to C to cover the very small percentage of which are part of that that uh migration so
what I'm hearing is there is a desire to have more on that um but I'm also saying if we're going to cover that wide of a period of time which is what's in the in the ordinance there's going to be a lot of history to get covered and it's not
going to be half you know of of the presentation is going to be the migration it's going to be in there but it's not it's a it is a important but about you know 20% of the total time period that has to be covered so I just
want to note that as something that we want to pay attention to as as we try to find a balance for the for the assignment that we gave the researchers of what period of time they're supposed to cover but what I'm going to do is I'm going to close us out but we we we will remain have some space
for conversation but also release people especially people who are staff here all right so thank you one quick quick announcement today was the release of written on the Waters of good friend of mine's book about her journey as a scuba diver chronicling sunken slave ships
around the world um I hope you will check it out and I'm going to try to make sure that they have it at both at just bookish and and um oh my gosh right up the street cor around the corner um Frugal yes Frugal and just bookish I'm going to make sure I contact them both this week to make sure they're carrying
the book it's a black sister Tara Roberts and I told her I'd give her a shout out so pick up the book written on the waters um yeah oh yes if you um if you had for instance brother uh Reggie and and another of host if you have concrete
suggestions of researcher or Economist or Frameworks that you think we should be paying attention to it would be super helpful yes we have the tape but if you want to email them can you also get brother khaled's email because it would be helpful we're going to actually initiate that process pretty soon and so
having that background information would help us get there faster officially the meeting yes and with that we officially adjourn this meeting um but we'll be available here for those who want to remain thank you to all of our folks who are online to you are here
and part of this and we will do a better job of making sure that they can also ask questions or make comments uh in the future all right thank you oh and thank you to our audiovisual team we have a new team um and so we're we're thankful
to have them and thank you for your contribution and with that have a beautiful night everybody y [Music]