An article called “Reparations fund will help Black women build houses – and wealth” written by Amy Scott, April 29, 2021, can be found https://www.marketplace.org/2021/04/29/reparations-fund-will-help-black-women-build-houses-and-wealth/.
The article contains a picture of Bryanna Vellines as she works to install a window in an old Baltimore row house. There are a plethora of buildings in various degrees of dilapidation in the city. Bryanna is part of the Black Women Build program. This program provides women of color construction skills with the end goal of homeownership. The houses mentioned in the article are in the Upton/Druid Heights neighborhood not far from the Bolton Hill neighborhood, but the proximity is the only thing these two areas have in common. Bolton Hill is a neighborhood rich in historic buildings, tree-lined streets, and affluent residents. Upton/Druid Heights, however, represents one of the several portions of the city that faced red-lining, a well-established process that limits where people of color were allowed to live. The average household income in the Upton area is $21,000, considerably below that of Bolton Hill. Memorial Episcopal Church, in Bolton Hill, has given $15,000 to Black Women Build as a partial reparations payment to “repair and restore the broken bond between this part of Baltimore and Bolton Hill…” (Rev. Grey Maggiano as referenced on Marketplace.org)
Here is a little about the Upton/Druid Heights neighborhood history. This area was the first African American community in Baltimore. It was an up-and-coming neighborhood with theatres, dance halls, and jazz clubs. This neighborhood was the homefront for the civil rights movement with residents such as Booker T Washington, W.E.B. DuBois, and Marcus Garvey. However, the city started to get crowded as more and more people left the farm for the industrial City life controlled by red-lining. Implementing the National Housing Act in Baltimore designated a large portion of public housing and created such places as McCulloh Homes, creating a demographic shift. The once prosperous community now faces poverty and crime as Upton/Druid Heights has the second hights violent crime rate in the city. Boarded-up and abandoned buildings hurt the neighborhood aesthetics and provide a convenient location for drug use and crime.
I applaud the program’s management and founder for forward-thinking to improve the neighborhood and support the community by providing job training to the most vulnerable demographic. Fixing up the housing will offer available housing and homeownership and restore the community’s beauty. Memorial Episcopal Church members are forward-thinkers with generous hearts seeking to repair what was broken by previous generations. That sentiment is reparations.