FULTON COUNTY — A 600-page report released by the Fulton County Reparations Task Force lays out the damaging effects of slavery and Jim Crow on Black residents in the county.
Members say they used local and national records to help create a mathematical formula to measure that harm over time and organize the data they found through county records and the national database.
Task Force Chair Dr. Karcheik Sim-Alavado reports Black people living in Fulton County carried the highest tax burden in the state of Georgia in 1933.
“During the worst economic recession in American history, Black people carried a tax burden like 22,377%,” she said.
According to Sim-Alvado, the research points to a level of harm that needs to be addressed through direct and indirect action.
She says the task force talked to descents of people who were forced out of Bagley Park due to imminent domain. “If the community of people were undisturbed and had never been pushed out, the value for a family’s land would be minimum of $15 million today.”
She says it’s just one of many examples of displaced Black communities, and naming the park after a Black community leader isn’t enough.
Task Force Secretary Dr. Amanda Meng says the task force received a grant to build a team of data workers at Georgia Tech to digitize all the data they collected for the Convict Registry and show its racial makeup.
“Black incarcerated individuals make up at least 70% of incarcerated people,” she said.
According to Meng, the Convict Registry is meant to show key points in time that legislative changes affected the racial makeup in the system.
Commissioner Marving Arrington Jr. says the 600-page report is meant to identify and acknowledge the harm that’s been done through the years, and it is a step in the right direction.
“First identifying and measuring the harm. Adopting and acknowledging that harm. Right? And so as we get further and further down the line, we should be able to expand that,” he said.
WSB Radio’s Mary Ryan Howarth contributed to this story.