Ever since the United States government’s unfulfilled promise of giving every newly freed Black American “40 acres and a mule” after the Civil War, descendants of the enslaved have repeatedly proposed the idea of redistributing land to redress the nation’s legacies of slavery.

Land-based reparations are also a form of redress for the territorial theft of colonialism.

Around the world, politicians tend to dismiss calls for such initiatives as wishful thinking at best and discrimination at worst. Or else, they are swatted away as too complex to implement, legally and practically.

Yet our research shows a growing number of municipalities and communities across the U.S. are quietly taking up the charge.

We are geographers who since 2021 have been documenting and analyzing over 225 examples of reparative programs underway in U.S. cities, states and regions. Notably, over half of them center land return.

These efforts show how working locally to grapple with the complexity of land-based reparations is a necessary and feasible part of the nation’s healing process.

Evanston, Illinois, launched the country’s first publicly funded housing reparations program in 2019.

In its current form, Evanston’s Restorative Housing Program has provided disbursements to more than 200 recipients. All are Black residents of Evanston or direct descendants of residents who experienced housing discrimination between 1919 and 1969. Benefits include down payment assistance and mortgage assistance as well as funds to make home repairs and improvements.

The goal is to redress the harm Evanston caused during these 50-plus years of racial discrimination in public schools, hospitals, buses and segregated residential zoning. During that same period, banks in Evanston, as in other U.S. cities, also refused to give Black residents mortgages, credit or insurance for homes in white neighborhoods.

“I always said you can keep the mule,” program beneficiary Ron Butler told........

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