Descendants of Enslaved People Plan Ahead Amid Trump Reparations Battle
WHO:
ABC News - N’nanba (Robin Rue Simmons), chair of Evanston’s Reparations Committee and a former city councilwoman, has worked on addressing the legacy of slavery and spreading Evanston’s municipal reparations model to more than 100 communities.
ABC News - William Darity, who co-wrote a book on reparations with A. Kirsten Mullen, said Trump speaks about reparations “with hostility.”
ABC News - Marcus Anthony Hunter, a University of California, Los Angeles sociologist in African American studies, described reparations as recognition, acknowledgment, responsibility and remedy.
ABC News - The Trump administration has opposed race-based reparations programs; the Justice Department intervened in a lawsuit challenging Evanston’s program.
ABC News - Judicial Watch initially filed the Evanston lawsuit. Plaintiff representatives, including Michael Bekesha, argue the program distributes funds based on race without identifying specific harm.
ABC News - Justice Department spokeswoman Kiersten Pels said race-based government benefit programs are unconstitutional and often violate federal civil rights laws.
ABC News - Richard Cellini previously led a Harvard project identifying descendants of people enslaved by Harvard’s past leaders. His team identified nearly 500 living descendants.
ABC News - Juan Woolfolk, 36, a descendant connected to Georgetown’s slavery history, received a $10,000 scholarship and is pursuing a museum studies degree at Southern University at New Orleans.
ABC News - Nicky Burridge, a spokeswoman for Virginia Theological Seminary, said the seminary makes annual cash reparations payments to descendants. Ebonee Davis-Hayes is the seminary’s director of reparations.
ABC News - Joe Martin, a 46-year-old Delta flight attendant and Evanston program recipient, said the program was legitimate and expressed concern about efforts to stop it.
WHAT:
ABC News - Evanston, Illinois, established a housing grant of $25,000 for Black residents whose families were harmed by discriminatory housing policies.
ABC News - The Justice Department alleges Evanston’s program violates the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause and the Fair Housing Act; a federal judge permitted the department to intervene.
ABC News - Trump said at a September speech, “They want to steal your money for reparations,” and that the country does not have that kind of money and reparations are “going nowhere.”
ABC News - Georgetown offers admission consideration to descendants of enslaved people connected to the campus and provides scholarship support through a foundation.
ABC News - Virginia Theological Seminary makes payments funded by an endowment that grew from $1.7 million to $2.8 million; payment amounts vary by lineage and continue in perpetuity.
WHERE:
ABC News - The article discusses reparations efforts in Evanston, Illinois; Georgetown University; Harvard University; Virginia Theological Seminary; and Asheville and Buncombe County, North Carolina.
ABC News - Georgetown’s descendants’ initiative concerns enslaved people sold by Jesuit priests to slaveholders in Louisiana.
WHY:
ABC News - Reparations efforts seek to address slavery’s harms, including generations’ loss of freedom and labor, and the continuing effects of Jim Crow segregation, discrimination and systemic racism on Black wealth.
ABC News - The Trump administration’s actions against DEI programs and federal support for race-based initiatives have led some institutions to reconsider or scale back reparations work.
HOW:
ABC News - The transatlantic slave trade forced an estimated 12.5 million Africans onto ships bound for the Americas; 1.8 million died during the journey. Roughly 388,000 enslaved people were taken to what is now the United States.
ABC News - The U.N. General Assembly passed a resolution calling the trafficking of enslaved Africans “the gravest crime against humanity” and calling for reparations. More than 120 countries supported it; Argentina, Israel and the United States voted against it, and 52 countries abstained.
ABC News - Harvard fired Cellini’s entire project team after Trump signed an anti-DEI order aimed at U.S. universities; outside research by American Ancestors continued, while Harvard had not provided redress to the descendants.
ABC News - A 2021 Virginia state law requires a handful of Virginia universities to take steps to provide scholarships to descendants.
(UPDATED October 24, 2026 13:06 UTC)
Evanston, Illinois, is defending a $25,000 housing grant for Black residents whose families were harmed by discriminatory housing policies, as the Justice Department challenges the program in court. The department says it violates the Constitution’s equal protection guarantee and the Fair Housing Act; a judge has allowed it to join the lawsuit. The Trump administration opposes race-based reparations, and Trump has said the idea is “going nowhere.” Across the country, institutions are pursuing other approaches to address slavery’s legacy. Georgetown offers descendants of enslaved people connected to the university admissions consideration and scholarship support, while Virginia Theological Seminary makes annual payments to descendants. Harvard researchers identified nearly 500 living descendants of people enslaved by the school’s past leaders, but the university has not provided redress. Reparations advocates say these efforts recognize lasting harms, while critics argue race-based benefits are unlawful.