City of Atlanta Reparations Study Commission · Resolution 23-R-4351
How should
Atlanta repair?
City and county records document how Atlanta's policies took labor, land, and homes from Black Atlantans over nearly two centuries. The Reparations Study Commission is now working out how the city should study and respond to that history, and it is asking for public input on the questions that will shape its approach.
Scroll to continue
46×
White household wealth vs. Black household wealth in Atlanta today
Atlanta Wealth Building Initiative
67,000
Atlantans displaced by highways and urban renewal, 1956 to 1966. About 1 in 7 residents, roughly 95% Black
Bayor; Partnership for Southern Equity
36
Racial-terror lynchings documented in Fulton County, 1877 to 1950, the most of any Georgia county
Fulton County Harm Report; EJI
300,000
Bricks per day made by leased convict labor at Chattahoochee Brick, many used in Atlanta streets
New Georgia Encyclopedia
Sources for each figure are in the study.
A living document
A working draft of Atlanta's reparations methods.
The Commission and the public answer the same steering questions here. The results are visible to everyone, and the methods document, called the Blueprint, is rebuilt from those answers as they come in.
01 · Study
Learn what others did
Sixteen research briefs covering major commissions, funding models, legal fights, and Atlanta's own documented record. Each survey question links back here.
Open the study →02 · Speak
Answer the steering questions
Ten sections and about 35 decisions on eligibility, harms, research strategy, remedies, legal design, and funding. Every question comes with brief context and a link to the deeper research.
Take the survey →03 · Steer
Watch the Blueprint form
Answers aggregate in public. The Commission rebuilds the methods document from them, ratifies decisions section by section, and publishes every version.
Read the Blueprint →The steering questions
Ten sections.
The decisions ahead.
Each question notes where the option came from, which city tried it, and what happened. All ten sections take about twenty minutes.
The national record
Atlanta is not the first
city to do this.
More than forty American communities have opened reparations processes. Some paid, some stalled, and some were sued. This commission can draw on all of that experience, including a 636-page harm report for the county Atlanta sits in.
Fulton County, GA
A 636-page harm report drawn from the county's own records, adopted Nov. 2025. The first county task force in the nation.
Read the case study →
Evanston, IL
First funded municipal program: $25,000 housing and cash benefits, now being tested in federal court.
Read the case study →
California
A 1,000+ page state study, 115 recommendations, and a 5 to 4 vote that set lineage-based eligibility.
Read the case study →
Tulsa, OK
A $105M private Greenwood Trust, structured to operate outside city politics and litigation.
Read the case study →
Chicago, IL
The Burge package: cash, free tuition, counseling, and curriculum as redress for documented police torture.
Read the case study →
Athens, GA
The Linnentown resolution and $2.5M in redress, designed around the limits of Georgia state law.
Read the case study →
The Atlanta record · 1837 to now
The harm and the progress are both Atlanta's.
The city that raised Sweet Auburn, the AUC, and the civil rights movement also wrote racial zoning ordinances and cleared Black neighborhoods for highways. The timeline below holds both parts of that history.
1837
A railroad city founded on enslaved labor
1868
Convict leasing begins in Georgia
1906
The Atlanta Massacre: at least 25 killed
1913
Atlanta pioneers racial zoning
1938
Redlining grades Sweet Auburn 'hazardous'
1956
Highways and renewal displace 1 in 7 Atlantans
1962
The City builds the Peyton Road wall
1996
Olympic redevelopment displaces public-housing residents
Now
Displacement pressure continues in legacy neighborhoods
The survey is open.
Add your answers.
About twenty minutes and thirty-five decisions. Your answers help shape how the Commission approaches its work.
Commission members: use your member code at the start of the survey