A study of a Black community's struggle for educational justice

In 2019, Evanston made history by becoming the first city in the nation to pledge money towards a reparations initiative for Black residents. Yet the most interesting part of this story has yet to unfold. This represents a once in a lifetime opportunity to study what happens when a racially diverse city forwards a reparations project and develops policy platforms designed to financially support its Black residents in myriad ways. Specifically, what does this look like in the educational context? The study is divided into three phases. The first part of this study is a historiography of the educational trajectory of Black folks in Evanston. The second part of this study is an ethnographic exploration of how Black teachers, students, families, community members, and city officials perceive this initiative, the role of districts and schools in developing race-specific programming, and the extent to which what we might come to call educational reparations, roots itself within schools or is relegated to out of school spaces. The final part of the study employs a participatory design methodology where I will work with community partners to develop an educational reparations project informed by the insights learned from the ethnographic phase of the study.