It took two years of extensive research and compilation, but the Fulton County Reparations Task Force Harm Report is now public. The Fulton County Commission approved the report and allocated an additional $250,000 for its completion. The task force was required to limit its findings to harms for which the county was directly responsible during a defined period of enslavement, specifically, 1854 to 1864.
There are no universally accepted formulas for calculating an adjusted monetary figure tied to the enslavement of Africans and, later, their American-born descendants. But scholar and researcher Dr. Karcheik Sims‑Alvarado says her work with the Nobel Prize Museum in Sweden helped shape a possible framework.
“I was there during this one exhibition,” she recalled. “They had all these different formulas and scientific discoveries showing how the world can be made better through science, technology, and medicine. And I began to think, ‘How can we use science and math to solve social, economic, and environmental challenges?’”…