Claiming Reparations, Claiming the City

Historians of the African American urban experience have revived scholarly efforts to document Black communities’ “right to the city.” These explorations have focused their attention on programs of reparative justice rooted in longer traditions of political thoughts and action. As the imagining of reparations for the the descendants of African slavery becomes more influential as a trend in the field, it will be important to ground this work in an understanding of the changing historical context of the past several decades, as well as the current realities of the shifting urban landscape.