At first, when University of Illinois Chicago Professor Terrion Williamson was asked to lead Illinois’ first comprehensive investigation into the history of racial inequality, she declined. Williamson was too busy, and she wasn’t sure about participating in a project that could turn political.
But Williamson grew up in Peoria, and she wanted to make sure the project would represent the experiences of all Black Illinoisans.
“As somebody who is a Black person from Illinois, this has happened to me my entire life,” Williamson said. “You say Illinois and people assume Chicago. It’s as if Chicago is the only place.”
The Illinois African Descent-Citizens Reparations Commission officially released the report “Taking Account: A History of Racial Harm & Injustice Against Black Illinoisans” in late February.
State lawmakers created the commission in 2022 to look into whether it would be feasible in Illinois to provide reparations for African American descendants of slavery and what that would look like. The commission started discussions with the University of Illinois Chicago Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy in early 2024 about doing the research to inform the commission’s recommendations.
In nearly 300 pages, “Taking Account” outlines the policies and legal systems the state has used to exclude and harm African Americans since its founding.
Williamson worked with three graduate students to do the bulk of the research within a year.
“The feeling that I’ve had generally is a profound sense that there’s a history that I haven’t known, even as someone who has written about my own community and is trying to do the work of learning about my own community,” she said.
Williamson said she learned details like which Illinois fortunes were built on slavery, how close racial violence was to her childhood home and the role of Black central Illinoisans in crucial social movements.
The report also dives into racial inequality in education.
“We have never provided equitable educational opportunities in the country or in the state,” said UIC Sociology and African American Studies Professor Amanda Lewis. “We just at some point decided to have a historical amnesia about all that and just decide things are different now.”
Lewis directs UIC’s Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy and recruited Williamson to lead the project. She also edited the education section of the report.
Lewis said one example in the report is the long and incomplete efforts to desegregate schools in Peoria.
The state’s K-12 funding formula is a good start, but it does not take race into account or make up for the history of unequal funding, according to Lewis.
The reparations commission is now considering what it should recommend lawmakers do next.