BOSTON — When this city announced earlier this year that it would consider giving reparations to its Black residents, it was heralded as another victory in a national movement to offer recompense for the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow segregation.
The city had played a key role in financing the slave trade and was the site of fierce resistance to integration. Now, advocates said, it was time to address the lingering damage.
But as the mayor started choosing members for the Boston task force, the city quickly became one of the chief battlegrounds of an adjacent fight playing out within the Black community: Should reparations programs be limited to people who trace their ancestry back to American slavery, or should they include Black immigrants who came to the country by choice?
