By Joey Carter
The Linnentown Project is a community-led initiative located in Athens, Georgia which advocates for reparations for the historic Black community called ‘Linnentown,’ which was destroyed through urban renewal in the 1960s. Created in late 2018, it is led by five former Linnentown residents. Currently, I am the project coordinator and lead researcher. The project aims to achieve reparations for Linnentown residents through legislative action at the municipal level and to develop a method for calculating monetary redress called the ‘reparational audit.’
In this description, first I provide brief historical context for the Linnentown community and for the development of the project. Next, I outline the research methods and political organizing strategies I used to draft local legislation supporting reparations called ‘The Linnentown Resolution for Recognition and Redress.’ Lastly, I outline the scope and content for the
reparational audit as a qualitative and analytical model for determining material reparations specifically at the local level.
I. Historical context and project development
With the Housing Act of 1959, the federal government extended urban renewal funding to institutions of higher education. In 1962, the University of Georgia was awarded a $1.1 million federal contract, along with the legal and political cooperation of the City of Athens, to seize and clear land for the development of three high-rise student dormitories: Brumby, Creswell, and Russell Halls. From 1900-1966, this area was known as ‘Linnentown.’ With nearly 50 Black families by 1960, Linnentown was a burgeoning Black community with 66 percent property ownership. However, by 1966, the neighborhood was entirely razed by the University of Georgia Urban Renewal Program or ‘Project GA R-50.’ In the name of ‘slum clearance,’ the University of Georgia and the City of Athens seized properties through eminent domain, demolished homes and businesses, and forced Black families to relocate either to public housing or sporadically across Athens without the support of the city or the university. Today, a university parking lot stands atop a muted landscape once home to Linnentown.
In late 2018, I began research into Linnentown and the effects of urban renewal on the community. At that time, Linnentown was largely unknown except to elders in Athens Black communities. No record of its name or history existed. While conducting labor research into the wage and equity distribution of employees at the University of Georgia for the United Campus Workers of Georgia (CWA 3265), I looked for systemic connections between low wages at the university and the growing housing crisis in Athens. That is when I stumbled upon Linnentown. When I contacted Athens-Clarke County Commissioner (District 3) Melissa Link for her input on my labor research, she pointed me in the direction of Linnentown, whose name was unknown to both of us at the time. From October 2018 to June 2019, I gathered and analyzed extensive primary source material, interviewed over ten former Linnentown residents, and researched the role of higher education in urban renewal programs. The Linnentown Project was born.
The project is a locally focused, data-driven political movement for recognition and redress. From November 2019 to the present, the Linnentown Project has organized protests at Athens City Hall, directly lobbied elected officials and university administrators, hosted community lectures
and teach-ins, gave course presentations at the University of Georgia, and held numerous interviews with local press. The goal was simple but daunting: build a local movement to leverage the Athens-Clarke County Mayor and Commission to pass a resolution enacting reparations called ‘The Linnentown Resolution for Recognition and Redress.’ During the Summer of 2020, Athens Clarke County Mayor Kelly Girtz took a first step and established a government-funded board called the ‘Linnentown Justice and Memory Committee’ to support the work of urban renewal redress in Athens. The committee is chaired by two Linnentown residents and it is currently working on final preparations to submit the resolution to the Mayor and Commission for adoption. The resolution is expected to be submitted and adopted in February 2021. This will be the first legislative action calling for reparations in the State of Georgia. After sixty years of erasure, Linnentown finally has power.
II. The Linnentown Resolution for Recognition and Redress
Research conducted in support of the Linnentown Resolution for Recognition and Redress involved extensive utilization of primary source materials held by the Hargrett Rare Book & Manuscript Library located in the University of Georgia’s Richard B. Russell Special Collections Library, the Office of the Clerk of Commission for the Unified Government of Athens-Clarke County, the Clerk of Superior Court for Athens-Clarke County, personal documents and photos, and interviews with former Linnentown residents. Between late 2018 and mid 2019, I collated and analyzed all primary source material. Materials obtained from the University of Georgia contained a comprehensive set of urban renewal program files for Project GA R-50, extensive demographic
and microeconomic data on Linnentown residents, property value assessments, legal documents, and urban renewal planning maps. From the Athens-Clarke County government, I obtained relevant city council minutes and eminent domain court proceedings for the period between 1958-
1966. I conducted and recorded all interviews with ten Linnentown residents. To understand the historical and microeconomic data fully, I worked with a network of researchers from relevant disciplines—economics, geography, history, historic preservation, public policy, and urban planning. In addition to supporting the Linnentown Project’s goals, I have made publicly available and facilitate access to all primary source material in order to advance ArcGIS research the University of Georgia, a PhD dissertation in geography, public policy research funded by the Athens-Clarke County Mayor’s office, the Renewing Inequality project at the University of Richmond’s Digital Scholarship Lab, and broader urban renewal research at Harvard University.
In Fall 2019, I led discussions with Linnentown residents to develop political and legislative organizing strategies to achieve recognition and redress from both the University of Georgia and the Unified Government of Athens-Clarke County. Using our research, the goal was to lobby the Athens-Clarke County Mayor and Commission to adopt local legislation calling for the public acknowledgement of and material redress for the injustices committed against the Linnentown community—the Linnentown Resolution for Recognition and Redress. Working closely with Linnentown residents and Athens-Clarke County Commissioner (District 2) Mariah Parker, I drafted the legislative language using our research
The resolution calls for seven forms of redress: (1) an official acknowledgement and proclamation from the Athens-Clarke County government formally recognizing the existence of Linnentown and accepting responsibility for the injustices committed by City of Athens and the University of Georgia; (2) the installation of an onsite ‘Wall of Recognition’ as a visual celebration
of the history and legacy of the Linnentown community; (3) formal participatory budgeting powers enabling the Linnentown Justice and Memory Committee to make recommendations for allocations in the city budget for economic development and infrastructural support of local impoverished communities; (4) historical preservation of remaining Linnentown structures; (5) the creation of a local Center on Slavery, Jim Crow, and the Future of Athens Black Communities co
funded by the University of Georgia and Athens-Clarke County government; (6) new policies regulating property acquisitions by the University System of Georgia and additional fees in lieu of taxes for any property acquisition by public entities; and (7) formal recommendations to the Georgia General Assembly to create an Authority on Recognition and Redress to determine the appropriate forms of reparations for Black communities harmed by slavery, Jim Crow segregation, and urban renewal across the State of Georgia.
III. The Reparational Audit
A primary logistical problem with reparations is determining the appropriate scope and effective methods for equitable redress. Intergenerational trauma is inextricable from the realities of intergenerational poverty, both of which are caused by racial violence and discriminatory legal systems. Black communities face harms extending far beyond the loss of property and wealth. Many things lost will never be recovered. That is, indeed, the deepest harm. However, we can and must develop qualitative and analytical models which still provide reasonable approximations for the loss of material wealth in order to take applicable steps toward healing and repair. This is the purpose of the ‘reparational audit.’
The audit focuses on the local, municipal level and makes recommendations for repair based on the needs and desires of the particular harmed community. There is much debate about the scope and starting point of reparations. Should reparations originate from the federal level with sweeping forms of redress? Or should redress be tailored to particular community demands? Neither position is mutually exclusive. We need both. However, models should choose one or the other. This means the possibility for a network of models operating at different levels. While Congress has enacted House Resolution 40 (2019) to establish a federal commission to study the possibility of federal reparations, the Linnentown Project operates at the local level. As such, we aim to be sensitive to particular communities while observing emerging patterns between different communities which might serve as instructive models for broader reparational initiatives.
Our model incorporates relevant elements of financial and operational audits in addition to labor research methods used in strategic corporate research to assess the role of an institutional actor(s) and to calculate the acquisition of material wealth from Black communities through programs such as urban renewal. Qualitatively, the audit examines the financial and operational effectiveness of an institutional actor’s programs, decision-making infrastructures, and political relationships. In so doing, the audit shows how such effectiveness is possible precisely because laws and public policies are often already tailored to the advantage of the institution. Drawing from William Darity’s extensive assessment of racial wealth gaps in From Hear to Equality (2020) and Richard Rothstein’s analysis of redlining in the Color of Law, we call this type of institutional effectiveness ‘de jure white supremacy.’ We demonstrate the effectiveness of de jure white supremacy by compiling evidence from available records, documents, and interviews from both the institutional actor and the harmed community. From these resources, we intersect positive narratives of the harmed community with narratives of the institutional harms and exploitation of that community.
Quantitatively, the audit employs mathematical models to approximate baseline metrics for material reparations which the institutional actor owes the harmed community. It is not only about how much wealth was lost but also how much wealth institutional actors gained from that loss. Monetary compensation for reparative purposes can be based on at least two calculations—a total compensation adjustment (TRA) and an annual reparative investment (ARI). The TRA is a reparative calculation that adjusts for past and present financial losses by closing local wealth gaps created by the institutional programs. The TRA is a one-time payment to a harmed community. The ARI is an annual budget allocation for operational and capital projects supporting the harmed community. It is calculated with respect to an institutional actor’s return on investment. In other words, the ARI is a reparative calculation that adjusts for future investments in a harmed community based on the percentages of financial gains accumulated by an institutional actor over an n-period of time.
The audit’s statutory flexibility is also crucial. It assumes by default that direct payments are statutorily permissible. In places like the State of Georgia, however, there are constitutional restrictions prohibiting state sanctioned gratuities to private individuals and entities (Ga. Const. art. III, §VI, para. VI). So, in our case, the TRA and ARI needs be combined into a single calculation called a participatory expenditure (PE) which promotes participatory budgeting practices. The PE is simply the combined total of the TRA and ARI applied annually to a city budget. City governments may grant harmed communities degrees of decision-making power through participatory budgeting committees which make recommendations for where and how much of the PE should be allocated in the city’s annual budget in order to uplift local impoverished communities with concrete economic and infrastructural needs.