Land reparations are possible − and over 225 US communities are already working to make amends for slavery and colonization

Ever since the United States government’s unfulfilled promise of giving every newly freed Black American “40 acres and a mule” after the Civil War, descendants of the enslaved have repeatedly proposed the idea of redistributing land to redress the nation’s legacies of slavery. Land-based reparations are also a form of redress for the territorial theft of colonialism. Around the world, politicians tend to dismiss calls for such initiatives as wishful thinking at best and discrimination at worst. Or else, they are swatted away as too complex to implement, legally and practically.Yet our research shows a growing number of municipalities and communities across the U.S. are quietly taking up the charge. We are geographers who since 2021 have been documenting and analyzing over 225 examples of reparative programs underway in U.S. cities, states and regions. Notably, over half of them center land return. These efforts show how working locally to grapple with the complexity of land-based repar...