In the summer of 2020, the City of Asheville and Buncombe County took a historic step by passing a resolution in support of community reparations for Black Asheville residents.
At the center of the process was the formation of the Community Reparations Commission (CRC) -- a 25-member group tasked with making short- and long-term recommendations for how the nearly $4 million in allocated reparations funds from the city and county would be invested in the Black community.
Fast-forward to the present, and the commission is drawing to a close with 39 recommendations in tow as well as a final report -- including an audit outlining the harms done to the Black community, supporting data and personal stories and reflections from those directly impacted.
But how the commission's recommendations will be implemented remains uncertain.
Two days after the commission's Sept. 2 final presentation to the Buncombe County Board of Commissioners, the U.S. Department of Justice sent a letter to Buncombe County and the City of Asheville threatening to investigate the matter.
"To the extent these recommendations are formally adopted, you are now on notice that my office stands ready to investigate and enforce violations of federal civil rights laws to the fullest extent possible," wrote Harmeet K. Dhillon, assistant attorney general for civil rights at the U.S. Department of Justice.
In an email to Xpress addressing Dhillon's statement, Buncombe County's spokesperson Kassi Day noted that there are future actions related to reparations scheduled for commissioners at this time. The county, Day wrote, "has been and will always follow the letter of the law and will continue to comply with all federal anti-discrimination regulations."
She continued, "It appears no response was requested from the County, and we want the community to know that Buncombe County Government understands the oversight and monitoring of these recommendations as we strive to meet the needs of everyone in our community."
For Asheville City Attorney Brad Branham, the letter is nothing new.
"Just like with anything, we have a legal set of regulations, state statutes, federal laws that we always have to ensure that we remain compliant with. And that's the same case here. This is just a more complex subject matter, simply because it's never been done before," Branham says.
From the start, the pressure of serving as a national example -- combined with the task of retracing generations of harm through data collection and developing recommendations -- was a heavy lift for the 25-member commission.
"You get this cross-pollination of community activists and community organizers and community members who had been in Asheville for decades and were sitting down at the same table," says Dwight Mullen, CRC member and former chair.
Asheville natives, including CRC Vice Chair Bobbette Mays, witnessed firsthand impacts of urban renewal on her childhood neighborhood, Stumptown, a once-thriving Black community southwest of Montford. Much of the area's 30 acres were directly impacted by the construction of Interstate 240. Other Black community hubs, such as The Block, a vibrant residential and commercial district in downtown Asheville, were drastically transformed as well.
"When I was a little girl, my father took me up on The Block every Saturday to get a haircut," Mays recalls. "He talked to his friends, and there'd be kids there [too]. You could get things, and you felt safe. ... To see all of that gone, to see it moved away, it's hard."
According to the final report, the commission's initial project timeline was slated for 20 months, from September 2021 to April 2023, but after the initial recommendations were approved in February 2023 by the CRC, membership dropped to 13, largely due to city and county appointees leaving after recommendation work had wrapped up. The group faced several more subsequent delays -- including changes in leadership roles, challenges created by Tropical Storm Helene and the Trump administration's ongoing opposition to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.
The first hurdle in the reparations process, however, was grappling with the complex forms in which reparations can take.
According to the CRC's final report, reparations have been pursued globally to address historical injustices, particularly those rooted in slavery, colonization and genocide. Reparations took concrete form in Germany through payments to Holocaust survivors and their descendants, while post-apartheid South Africa established the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which included both financial and symbolic reparations.
On a smaller scale, U.S. cities and institutions have begun implementing reparations independently. For example, Evanston, Ill., (the first city to approve reparations back in 2019) launched a housing equity program, and universities such as Georgetown and Princeton Theological Seminary have initiated efforts to acknowledge and address their historical ties to slavery.
The CRC's final report states: "Structural racism in the United States has deep roots, beginning with the colonization of Indigenous lands and the transatlantic slave trade." Jim Crow laws, redlining and segregated education, the report continues, "perpetuated racial inequity." Furthermore, federal policies such as "the GI Bill and urban renewal disproportionately excluded Black Americans from homeownership, wealth-building, and quality education."
Locally, the report states, "urban renewal initiatives displaced hundreds of Black families and businesses from neighborhoods like East End and Southside under the guise of modernization. These projects decimated generational wealth and fractured thriving Black communities."
These past harms to the area's Black community, notes Branham, is what the legal system is built to protect.
"If you smack somebody with your car, they've got the right to sue you," he says. "You have these abilities throughout your life, and we have the obligations to do the same. So, there's situations where we can take action to essentially remediate past harms, including past discrimination."
To thoroughly identify these past harms, the commission was divided into five impact focus areas (IFA) working groups: criminal justice, education, housing, economic development, and health and wellness. The groups analyzed information within their assigned focus areas and reported key findings -- including community feedback and data analysis -- to the full commission.
The Cease Harm Comprehensive Audit, released in April 2024, resulted in 108 recommendations. According to the final report, the purpose of the audit was to identify "how local government policies and practices have caused and continue to cause harm to Black and African American residents in Asheville and Buncombe County."
The commission ultimately reviewed and approved 39 recommendations in May 2024, ranging from specific policy changes -- such as evaluating, creating and implementing procedures that effectively address racial disparities within the criminal justice system -- to internship and mentorship programs aimed at professional development and job placement for Black youths.
Some recommendations also call for broader structural changes, with a focus on Black communities. For example, the report's health and wellness section includes a recommendation to "establish a health care subsidy fund to provide comprehensive, multigenerational direct primary care access." In the economic development section, recommendations include grants for legacy neighborhoods and public housing communities in Buncombe County.
Since the CRC launched, Branham says, the city has considered the legal frameworks established to prohibit discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex and national origin.
"It's always been the intention of the city to act within the law. It's also important to say that we've advised the commission throughout their process about what some of these applicable laws are, but we never stopped them from making recommendations they felt they wanted to make," Branham says.
Mullen says the commission debated whether to use race-neutral language, but ultimately decided against it.
"This is not just public policy. This is reparations in public policy, and they're directed by and at African Americans. And that's what we stuck with," Mullen says. "By looking at the outcomes, Black folk tend to be on the downside of every public policy area."
Branham explains that while legal protections against discrimination are firmly established, local governments still have room to apply those laws thoughtfully when making decisions about how to allocate resources. For example, if the city's decision to build a park in a neighborhood that is 90% African American is based on a reasonable, data-driven analysis -- such as identifying areas most in need of green space or underserved by city services -- then it is a legally sound action.
The key legal question, Branham notes, is whether a decision is made in a way that actively discriminates against a group or whether it is a lawful effort to address broader community needs. He contrasts this with the history of urban renewal, which, while legal at the time, disproportionately harmed Black residents in Asheville well into the 1980s.
This history illustrates how legally sanctioned policies can still result in lasting harm to specific communities. As such, Branham poses the question: If the government played a role in causing that harm, doesn't it also have a role in repairing it?
The City of Asheville invested $2.1 million in 2022, with a commitment of at least $500,000 annually going forward. Similarly, Buncombe County seeded the project with $2 million in 2022, with an additional $500,000 annually, plus 2% increases each year. However, this past fiscal year, the county cut its annual allocation due to financial constraints caused by Tropical Storm Helene. Future allocations will be assessed at the beginning of the fiscal year, says Noreal Armstrong, Buncombe County chief equity and human rights officer.
Regardless of current funding, CRC Chair Dewana Little and Branham both say, if all recommendations were implemented by the city and county, there isn't enough money to fulfill them.
"It's going to take a real investment and continued investment into the solutions," Little says.
For this reason, the CRC included in its recommendations the formation of a nonprofit that will be able to accept donations and carry out the remaining recommendations.
"It's not over," says Armstrong. "There's still more work to be done, but [the commission] completed their charge, and I think that's awesome that they can say we were charged with the task, and we got it done."
The dissolution of the CRC will take place at the Tuesday, Oct. 14, Council meeting. The final recommendations are now within the hands of city and county officials, who will review and determine future implementations.
"The City of Asheville appreciates the work of the commission. With their final recommendations made, staff will continue working closely with our legal team to identify those recommendations within the city's purview," wrote Kim Miller, city communication specialist, in a statement to Xpress.