Racial Equity Here: A Historical Perspective

One of the hardest things about working on racial equity in American cities is the tension between urgency and deep structural entrenchment. Racial inequities weren’t created overnight, so we must plan both long- and short-term strategies. The cities participating in Racial Equity Here — Albuquerque, Philadelphia, Austin, Grand Rapids, and Louisville work urgently and believe in a growth mindset. The work requires them to reckon with the history of oppression and exclusion so that they can begin to chart a path forward that moves America’s cities to equitable transformation. The timelines they created here remind us just what we are up against, but also remind us that change is possible.

Albuquerque

Grand Rapids

For thousands of years, succeeding cultures of indigenous peoples occupied this area. More than 2,000 years ago, people associated with the Hopewell culture occupied the Grand River Valley. Around 1700, the Ottawa, who occupied territory around the Great Lakes and spoke one of the numerous Algonquian languages, moved into the area and founded several villages along the Grand River. Grand Rapids is building on a foundation of firsts. In 1953, the City appointed the first Human Rights Committee — now called the Community Relations Commission — in the State. This Commission of community members provides oversight and counsel to the Mayor and Commission and generates annual goals in line with this grant opportunity, including inclusion and racial equity within recruitment, community engagement, and policy strategies. A brief summary of the racial justice activities of the Commission are outlined below.

Louisville

Early Kentucky was built on slave labor, a central aspect of the state’s agricultural economy. Some early settlers to Kentucky brought slaves with them, and they relied on slave labor as they developed plantations in Kentucky. African Americans were also crucial in settling the frontier. Settlers needed a large, inexpensive labor force to clear land and build up communities. Slavery as a labor force proved continuously profitable even after the wilderness was settled: slaves often worked on large tobacco and hemp plantations, while others who worked on small farms, and some were hired out to neighbors or exported to the Deep South.

Philadelphia

For approximately ten thousand years, the people that came to be called “Delaware Indians” had lived and traded amongst themselves and with other distinct native groups in the Delaware and Ohio River Valleys. They called themselves Lenni Lenape, meaning “original people.” By the time European settlers arrived in the 17th century, thriving Lenape settlements were spread throughout present-day eastern Pennsylvania, western New Jersey, and New York’s lower Hudson Valley.

Austin

The Austin American Statesman recently published a great interactive feature that brings the city’s racial history story alive. Read more at http://projects.statesman.com/news/economic-mobility/.