Study · 16 briefs
What other cities have learned.
Every survey question links back to this library: what other commissions tried, how courts and budgets responded, and what Atlanta's own record shows. Reading a few briefs first will make your survey answers more informed.
The Atlanta record
9 min read
Atlanta's Record, 1837 to Now
The documented arc of municipal harm: a railroad city built on enslaved labor, convict leasing, the 1906 massacre, racial zoning, redlining, urban renewal, and Olympic-era clearance, through displacement still underway.
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5 min read
Chattahoochee Brick: Convict Leasing and the City It Built
The brickyard where leased convicts made the bricks that paved Atlanta, the probable burial ground on its banks, and the memorial now being designed with the community.
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5 min read
Fulton County: A Harm Report Next Door
The nation's first county reparations task force spent four years and $250K producing a 636-page, quantified harm record, and Atlanta sits inside its geography. What it found, how it worked, and the options it opens for the City.
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11 min read
Georgia Rules: Gratuities, Home Rule & the Courts
Why direct payments face constitutional limits in Georgia, and the lawful structures that Athens, Tulsa, and legal settlements have used. Legal design is one of the most consequential choices Atlanta will make.
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Case studies
7 min read
Evanston: First Funded Program, Now the Test Case
How a city-commissioned history became $7M in payments to 300 people, why the cannabis tax nearly sank it, and what the DOJ's 2026 intervention means for the cities behind it.
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6 min read
California: Deepest Study, Hardest Lesson
A 1,000-page final report, 115 recommendations, and detailed damages formulas, with no direct payments six years later. What the most thorough study teaches about the gap between research and delivery.
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6 min read
Chicago's Burge Package: Repair for a Named Harm
The 2015 ordinance that paid torture survivors, added the history to school curriculum, and opened a healing center. It was never constitutionally challenged, which makes it one of the strongest legal templates in the field.
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6 min read
Tulsa's Road to Repair: A $105M Private Trust
After the courts closed and a council vote looked unreliable, Tulsa's first Black mayor structured repair as a charitable trust. Includes the mass-graves investigation that other cities now study.
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6 min read
Asheville: First Commission in the South
Five years, $4.1M committed, 39 recommendations, none funded, then a DOJ letter and dissolution. A case study in operations and durability for Southern commissions.
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12 min read
National Landscape: Major Reparations Efforts
Dozens of localities, seven states, one federal bill, and a hostile 2025-26 climate. A working brief on the efforts most relevant to Atlanta, with a link to FirstRepair's comprehensive national map.
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Frameworks & foundations
7 min read
What 'Reparations' Means, and Who Gets to Say
The five UN forms of repair, NAARC's ten points, N'COBRA's five injuries, and the Darity and Rue Simmons debate over whether cities can do reparations at all. The definition a commission chooses shapes everything after it.
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8 min read
Nine Families of Repair
Direct cash, housing, land, business, education, health, income, memory, and policy reform, each with a working American precedent, its results, and its failure modes.
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8 min read
Who Is Repair For? Eligibility Models
Lineage, documented harm, all Black residents, race-neutral proxies, and program-specific hybrids: the major eligibility models, with each one's live results and legal exposure.
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7 min read
Building the Harm Record: Methods That Held Up
How commissions turned archives into evidence and evidence into dollars: Fulton's extraction-accumulation accounting, California's per-year damages, takings audits, truth commissions, and what each requires.
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Playbook
7 min read
Community Engagement: Reaching People, Sharing Decisions
California's task force heard from 867 people out of 2.6 million. Detroit surveyed 2,339 residents and used the results. What other cities learned about reaching people, sharing decisions, paying participants, and gathering testimony with care, and where Atlanta is at.
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9 min read
Paying for Repair: What Funded, What Failed
Cannabis taxes delivered 10% of projections, transfer taxes held, land proceeds froze, and philanthropy raised $105M. The funding record for operations and remedies, with Georgia-specific design notes.
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