The Fulton County Reparations Task Force held its first public meeting in Atlanta on Thursday night to discuss its work and face questions.
"Reparations means to repair. There's not one certain avenue of repair if we're talking about holistically," Task Force Vice Chair Marcus Coleman said. "All of the atrocities that our ancestors were faced with, as their heirs, it's our duty to recover every single avenue of repair."
The panel is investigating Georgia's most populated county's ties to slavery, what properties the county may have confiscated illegally from Black owners, and the use of illegal prison labor from the county's confinement facilities. To piece together the historical record, the task force is relying on documents like land leases, prison records and private citizens coming forward with family documents.
Despite calls for reparations across the country, very few attended the meeting. Coleman said many community members chose not to attend because, for them, reparations feel like "a pipe dream."
One man who attended the public comments section of the meeting said he hopes the reparations will go specifically to descendants of U.S. chattel slavery.
Seated inside the Fulton County Government Center, the task force discussed avenues for compensation to the local Black community and the impact it would have on them.
While Coleman admitted such a line item is "controversial," "eligibility" for reparations is "obviously" on the list as a potential path to funding disbursement.
"You know what's funny, when it's time to present any type of recommendation, the seats will be full and the criticism will be high. So, we encourage folks to come out before that date hits," Coleman told Channel 2 News.
Coleman noted the reparations will function to right historical wrongs that have resulted in inequity, healthcare and education disparities and stolen land, due to the Jim Crow era and even "the era after that."
BIDEN UNDER PRESSURE TO ACT ON REPARATIONS AS MOVEMENT TO MAKE AMENDS FOR SLAVERY GAINS STEAM
The advisory board will eventually provide recommendations to Fulton commissioners. They hope to have their proposal sent by October 2024.
The Task Force will meet twice a month on Thursdays. The first Thursday of the month will be in person at the Government Center, while the third Thursday meeting will be held virtually via Zoom.
Coleman and his colleagues have met virtually over the last two years.
Clark Atlanta University African American Studies Professor Doctor Daniel Black told WSB-TV that the call for reparations in the county had been decades in the making.
"The truth of the matter is, people have been talking about reparations since we got off the slave ship. Reparations is really this idea that we should get what we worked for. The truth of the matter is 40 acres and a mule would not be sufficient to pay Black people for what Black people have given in this country," he said.
The panel will also work with the Atlanta University Center to research Fulton County's ties to slavery, including possible illegal prison labor and historical properties taken from Black owners.
The measure to fund the study was passed on a 4-2 vote.
"Of all the places I've been, I've never been anywhere where the society has taken such an effort to, in blood and treasure, correct past wrongs," task force member Mike Russell told Fox News Digital in June. "And I'm very proud of that as an American."
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Reparations remain a highly divisive topic, however, with others arguing the topic is divisive and unfair to those who've committed no wrongdoing. Similar reparations panels across the country have been formed in recent years, and there's also been a federal push in the form of an eye-popping $14 trillion reparations package introduced by far-left Democratic Missouri Rep. Cori Bush.
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