AMHERST — Jacqueline Bearce arrived in Amherst for graduate school in the 1960s with plans to live in an apartment, but upon getting to town was told her dwelling was already occupied, and that she wouldn’t be able to rent that home.
“One of my first experiences was housing racism,” Bearce said at a recent African Heritage Reparation Assembly listening session at the Hitchcock Center for the Environment.
“I get to the apartment,” Bearce said. “I’m sorry, it’s rented, and we all know it wasn’t.”
Relating the discrimination she faced was part of the feedback provided by Black residents as a plan is considered for how the town’s commitment of $2 million to a reparations fund to end structural racism and achieve racial equity might be enacted.
The opportunity to talk to members of the reparation assembly drew about 75 people who offered input to the group. It has a report due in June for how best to shape the historical reparative justice program so some past harms can be addressed and healed.
The group is also using the Engage Amherst section of the town’s website, a dedicated inclusion portal and a Black census, where members can do door-to-door outreach to Black residents.
But Michele Miller, who co-chairs the assembly and spearheaded the reparations initiative, said the work is still at its beginning stages after kicking off in September at a block party where postcards with QR codes were handed out.
“We will have to do a lot more to outreach members of the Black community in Amherst,” Miller said.
One idea is to have what she said will be mini-listening sessions that might be held in specific neighborhoods and at various apartment complexes.
Miller and Amilcar Shabazz also spoke to the student senate at Amherst College and hope to include the University of Massachusetts in future discussions.
The assembly is partnering with the UMass Donahue Institute on how to develop a feedback form. One possibility being explored is to combine a survey about sentiments Black residents have toward public safety, the police department and health with what they want out of reparations.
She said every effort is being made to ensure all Black residents and families participate.
The listening session included students from Hampshire and Amherst colleges, who told the assembly that they don’t have a sense of belonging in the larger community and are not feeling welcomed. They made observations that none of the town’s streets bear the name of a Black person, and a general lack of representation in town.
There were also strong comments about the public schools not having enough educators who look like their students, Miller said.
“Amherst needs to invest in more diversity in its school system,” said Jacqueline Faison, whose late mother taught a generation of elementary school students.
Faison said that residents have to find ways to talk to each other, though the reparations is only a start.
“As far as I’m concerned there’s not enough money in the world to make up for what happened,” Faison said.
Others talked about the challenges people will have in getting services and whether there would be a cumbersome process to access reparations money without questions.
“There is a trust issue, they don’t trust how we’re going to use the money,” said At Large Councilor Ellisha Walker. “Why is it Black people aren’t experts for what their families need?”
Miller said Shabazz is proposing a framework for getting reparations money to the community that is being discussed. His position paper include residency, lineage and identity as standards for qualifying.
Meanwhile, on Wednesday, Miller will be a panelist at “Reparations: Current Progress and Controversies” being held at The Rappaport Center for Law and Public Policy at the Boston College Law School.
The event, which will be in both virtual and in-person formats, runs from 4 to 5:30 p.m.
Moderated by Kimberly Atkins Stohr, senior opinion writer for The Boston Globe, the panel will include Thomas W. Mitchell, professor at the Boston College Law School; Kamilah Moore, an attorney who chairs the California Reparations Task Force; and Jeffery Robinson, CEO of The Who We Are Project. This program is co-sponsored by Boston College Black Law Students Association.
To register for in person, go to: tinyurl.com/Rapp-Nov9-inperson. To register virtually, go to https://tinyurl.com/Rapp-Nov9-virtual.