“This is a long process. It is a complicated process. Is it perfect? No. Is it monumental? Yes. I can’t think of a better way of moving forward. This will take a whole city to make this right.
“I hope the residents look beyond the $10 million and see this grow to $100 million. So we can make some transformative changes in the future.
“History was extremely important. In order to make the basis for a reparations program, you had to have documentation. It is important not to go just on emotion but actually explain the facts as it happened. They were all in existence: Newspaper articles existed, correspondences existed. The record of discrimination in Evanston has been documented. It was a matter of putting all that together to make the case so we could move forward.
“Without the report that we worked on, this would be delayed another five years at least. We were ready for it. When the city came in and asked us, me and a colleague put this together in three months.”
— Morris “Dino” Robinson Jr., Shorefront Legacy Center founder, co-wrote the report “Evanston Policies and Practices Directly Affecting the African American Community” for the Reparations Committee