Marchers renew calls for reparations for the 1917 massacre of Black East St. Louisans
Saturday marked one year since marchers in East St. Louis called on leaders to provide reparations for the city’s residents and to remember the victims of the 1917 massacre there.
Though the calls continue for state and federal money to be directed to East St. Louis specifically to repair past wrongdoing, elected officials have yet to act on the marchers’ requests. Only a few generations have passed since 1917, when white people killed up to 200 Black people in East St. Louis, according to an NAACP estimate from the time, and caused hundreds of thousands of dollars in property damage.
Bodies of Black victims were dumped in creeks. One woman reported seeing a baby shot in the head and thrown into a house that had been set on fire, journalist Ida B. Wells-Barnett reported at the time. Some of the lots where houses burned down remain empty, said J.D. Dixon, an activist from Belleville.
“Property was destroyed. That is property that could have been passed down generation to generation,” Dixon said as rain poured down on marchers Saturday. “There could have been Fortune 500 companies here today, but that economic development was lost for the Black community.”
Discussions about federal, state and local reparations surfaced nationwide following the murder of George Floyd in 2020 and other police killings of Black people. Reparations can specifically mean payments to victims of violence like those in East St. Louis 105 years ago, but they can also take the form of an apology, government assistance, policy changes or other efforts.
Few discussions nationwide formed into reparations programs. In the Chicago suburb Evanston, $25,000 grants have been given to Black residents to atone for years of housing discrimination by the municipal government. In California, a task force recommended providing free college tuition and establishing a state agency to create other reparations programs for Black residents to account for the far-reaching harms of slavery, the Los Angeles Times reported. The state legislature will be in charge of enacting any programs.
A violent mob formed around 10 a.m. on July 2, 1917 in downtown East St. Louis, which at the time was a mostly white city with a smaller but longstanding Black community. The violence grew throughout the day, and police and Illinois National Guard members who responded to the massacre failed to act quickly, according to Belleville News-Democrat coverage from the time. Instead, Black people were forced to try to escape across the Mississippi River.
East St. Louisans have yet to see a program that would provide reparations for the pain their ancestors suffered though the government failed to protect them adequately in 1917.
“We should have a lot more,” East St. Louis Mayor Robert Eastern III told marchers.
Larita Rice-Barnes, director of the Metro East Organizing Coalition, said reparations to her mean direct payments to descendants of 1917 massacre victims, and state and federal funding for local organizations that assist people “on the ground doing the work.”
“It’s a real struggle getting resources down here. They tend to get stuck in Chicago, and if they make it out of Chicago, then they get stuck in central Illinois,” Rice-Barnes said. “But East St. Louis is the City of Champions and I believe we desperately need resources. That looks like jobs, like access to health care, education.”
At last year’s event, marchers called for a list of possible reparations:
Creation of 100% forgivable business loans for the Black community to address the loss of revenue from the 1917 race massacre
Creation of new building grants for new businesses and homes
Creation of new home loans with zero money down
Implementation of 20 years of direct deposit installments of $5,000 to all residents of East St. Louis and the surrounding Black communities that have been affected by the 1917 massacre
New legislation to protect the Black community from violence and discrimination
Restoration of felons’ rights.
