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Colleges pushed anew for reparations for slavery, racism

Brown University graduate Jason Carroll, a Maryland native whose ancestors were slaves in the Carolinas, stands for a portrait on the Brown campus in Providence, R.I., on Tuesday, May 4, 2021, near University Hall, background, that was constructed in part using slave labor. "There's real trauma and pain here," says Carroll. "This shouldn't just be an academic question. There are real families that have been burdened and harmed by this — and probably still are." (AP Photo/Steven Senne)
Brown University graduate Jason Carroll, a Maryland native whose ancestors were slaves in the Carolinas, stands for a portrait on the Brown campus in Providence, R.I., on Tuesday, May 4, 2021, near University Hall, background, that was constructed in part using slave labor. "There's real trauma and pain here," says Carroll. "This shouldn't just be an academic question. There are real families that have been burdened and harmed by this — and probably still are." (AP Photo/Steven Senne) Brown University graduate Jason Carroll, a Maryland native whose ancestors were slaves in the Carolinas, stands for a portrait on the Brown campus in Providence, R.I., on Tuesday, May 4, 2021, near University Hall, background, that was constructed in part using slave labor. "There's real trauma and pain here," says Carroll. "This shouldn't just be an academic question. There are real families that have been burdened and harmed by this — and probably still are." (AP Photo/Steven Senne)

By PHILIP MARCELO / Associated Press 6 min read

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) – For Brown University students, the Ivy League college’s next step in its yearslong quest to atone for its legacy of slavery is clear: Pay up.

Nearly two decades after the Providence, Rhode Island, institution launched its much-lauded reckoning, undergraduate students this spring voted overwhelmingly for the university to identify the descendants of slaves that worked on campus and begin paying them reparations.

At the University of Georgia, community activists want the school to contribute to Athens’ efforts to atone for an urban renewal project that destroyed a Black community in the 1960s to make way for college dorms.

And at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., there’s growing dissatisfaction among some slave descendants about the Catholic institution’s pioneering reparations efforts.

Nearly a year after the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police sparked the latest national reckoning on racism, student and community activists from New England to the Deep South are demanding institutions take more ambitious steps to atone for past sins – from colonial-era slavery to more recent campus expansion projects that have pushed out entire communities of color.