In the days since the leak of a draft Supreme Court opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade and allow individual states to outlaw abortion, U.S. corporations have been largely silent on the issue. But experts say that behind the scenes, corporate leaders are scrambling to figure out how to respond.

The court’s opinion, written by Associate Justice Samuel Alito, would change the law in huge swaths of the United States, primarily in the South and Midwest.

If the opinion takes effect, access to abortion would be sharply curtailed or effectively eliminated in up to 26 states, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive rights research organization. Those bans will apply immediately in states that have passed “trigger” laws that take effect as soon as Roe v. Wade is struck down.

For business leaders, deciding how to react is a complex calculation, involving challenges such as how to address the concerns of employees who live in states poised to ban abortion; what sort of public stance, if any, to take on the divisive issue; and how to plan for a future in which a state’s social policies — beyond the control of corporate executives — can affect potential employees’ willingness to take a job.

Difficult subject

“I think we can kind of start off by saying that this is an issue that corporations would really, really rather not touch with a barge pole,” Alison Taylor, executive director of the business advisory organization Ethical Systems, told VOA.

Taylor said that if the ruling takes effect, she has little doubt that companies are going to have to address it through changes to their benefits packages that, for example, cover the expenses of women who have to travel to a different state to obtain an abortion.

Many companies will eventually have to take a public stand, she said, because of the increasing expectation, particularly among younger workers, that corporations ought to have positions on important social issues.

Given the current uncertainty, however, it is understandable that many companies would prefer not to take a public stance right now, she said.

“People are not really saying anything yet,” she added. “I think they are trying to get their ducks in a row. But I am not convinced that speaking up is a very advisable idea given the current context.”

Retaliation worries

A real concern is that any company response that seems implicitly critical of the court’s decision leaves that business open to the possibility of political retaliation.

On Wednesday, for example, Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida harshly criticized companies that offer to pay for employees to travel to different states for abortion care. He introduced a new bill that would make it illegal for companies to claim that spending as a business expense. Rubio’s bill also would target companies that pay for parents to take children out of state for treatment of gender-identity conditions.

In a statement, Rubio said, “Our tax code should be pro-family and promote a culture of life. Instead, too often our corporations find loopholes to subsidize the murder of unborn babies or horrific ‘medical’ treatments on kids. My bill would make sure this does not happen.”

Retaliation has also occurred at the state level. In March, Citigroup said it would pay for employees in Texas to travel out of state for an abortion, circumventing a new law in that state. In response, a state lawmaker announced he would introduce a bill that would prevent the company from underwriting municipal bonds in Texas.

Silence not total

While most major corporations have been silent on the draft opinion, social media firms appear to be an exception. While not speaking expressly for her company, Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer of Meta, formerly known as Facebook, criticized the opinion on her own Facebook page.

“This is a scary day for women all across our country,” she wrote. “If the leaked draft opinion becomes the law of the land, one of our most fundamental rights will be taken away. Every woman, no matter where she lives, must be free to choose whether and when she becomes a mother. Few things are more important to women’s health and equality.”

The social media site Yelp issued a statement that said, in part, “Overturning Roe v. Wade will jeopardize the human rights of millions of women who stand to lose the liberty to make decisions over their own bodies.”

Bumble, which owns online dating sites, issued a statement that said, “At Bumble, we believe strongly in women’s right to choose and exercise complete control over their bodies. The safety, privacy, and freedom of family planning are critical to equality for all.”

Benefit changes likely

Past actions suggest many companies will alter their benefits packages to allow employees in states that ban abortions to access services in states that do not.

Last year, when the Supreme Court allowed a controversial Texas law that bans abortions after six weeks to stand without ruling on the merits of the case, a number of companies were quick to promise support to their employees in Texas.

Apple offered to cover medical expenses for its workers who had to leave the state for abortion services. Salesforce offered to help employees relocate to a different state if they wanted to. On Monday, before the draft opinion leaked, Amazon announced that it would reimburse Texas employees up to $4,000 for travel expenses related to out-of-state abortion care.

Jen Stark, senior director for corporate strategy at the Tara Health Foundation, told VOA that in the short term, she would expect to see more of the same.

“We’ve seen examples of companies beginning to roll out programs to provide some travel support, update their paid sick leave programs and other wraparound benefits and existing policies and practices that can be adapted to meet the moment,” she said.

Stark said that corporate leaders she has spoken with are also beginning to consider how to address public policy issues such as this one in the future.

Against public opinion

The anti-abortion movement in the United States is large and well-organized. However, the elements of the movement that seek total or near-total bans of the practice represent a minority of the population.

Survey data have demonstrated again and again that a broad majority of the American public does not want Roe v. Wade overturned. Belief that access to abortion ought to be maintained is even more popular among younger workers than it is across the population in general.

This presents potential problems for businesses operating in states likely to sharply restrict access to abortion.

“Eight in 10 college-educated knowledge workers — top talent — view access to abortion and reproductive health care as part of gender equity in the workplace, no more, no less,” Stark said. “Employers that want to attract top talent into states that have social policies that don’t align with their values will have to do more to make up for this.”

In some cases, that might well involve locating operations elsewhere.

Said Taylor, of Ethical Systems: “If I had expansion plans in states that are going to be enacting these laws, I’m going to be revisiting them now because of the expense and the hassle, and because of the noise that a lot of these lawmakers are making about ‘If you put in place protections, or if you try and do something to help women, we’re going to retaliate against you.'”
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The tweeted invitation for a teach-in at Cornell University featured a photograph of “Pillar of Shame,” a sculpture that commemorates the deadly 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, which authorities removed from Hong Kong University last year.

The topic: “Academic Freedom, Global Hubs and Cornell Involvement in the People’s Republic of China.”

The speakers: Three Cornell University academics with China-related specialties and Yaqiu Wang, a senior researcher on China at Human Rights Watch.

The event was organized as a rebuke to the university’s growing involvement in China and reflected a broader trend of calls for colleges and universities to cut ties with and divest from Chinese groups linked to human rights abuses. The call echoes past demands for universities to sell off investments in fossil fuels and apartheid-era South Africa.

Since last year, Cornell administrators have pushed the development of collaborative programs with Chinese universities. Despite students’ and professors’ concerns about China’s record of clamping down on academic freedom, Cornell, famous for its hospitality courses, moved ahead with a dual-degree program in hospitality and business, the Cornell-Peking MMH/MBA program. Graduates would earn a Master of Business Administration from the Guanghua School of Management at Peking University in Beijing and a Master of Management in Hospitality (MMH) from the Nolan School of Hotel Administration at Cornell University.

The Ivy League school in Ithaca, New York, also continues to expand a recently launched research exchange network with institutions from around the world. Named Global Hubs, the network includes six schools throughout China.

At the April 29 event, Eli Friedman, an associate professor and chair of international and comparative labor at Cornell’s Industrial and Labor Relations School (ILR School), gave an overview of the history of U.S. university engagement in China, while Peidong Sun and TJ Hinrichs, both associate professors in Cornell’s history department, spoke on the state of academic freedom in China.

Richard Bensel, a Cornell professor of American politics and host of the teach-in, told VOA Mandarin that the event was intended not only “to review primarily Cornell’s involvement in the People’s Republic of China and academic freedom,” but also to convey “basic information on that involvement to the Cornell community.”

Wang spoke about censorship and self-censorship among overseas Chinese students.

She told VOA Mandarin that academic “programs in China are not the problem.” Rather she said, the problem is that they do not adhere to the same principles of academic freedom and freedom of speech that universities uphold in the U.S.

The Cornell conundrum 

In July 2021, Cornell’s Nolan School of Hotel Administration and Peking University’s Guanghua School of Managementintroduced the Cornell-Peking MMH/MBA program, targeting mid- to senior-level executives in the hospitality and service industries.

Bensel and some other members of Cornell’s Faculty Senate expressed concern about the joint program. They feared that faculty members who traveled to China could get into legal trouble because of the country’s constrained academic environment. In 2018, Cornell’s IRL School suspended two exchange programs with China’s Renmin University because of academic freedom concerns, according to The Washington Post.

The Faculty Senate continues to suspect that the program’s real goal is not academic exchange but revenue generation for Cornell, according to transcripts of the senate meetings.

The dual-degree program is expected to bring in nearly $500,000 for Cornell starting in September 2022, with the potential to increase revenue as enrollment expands.

In March 2021, the Faculty Senate voted 39-16 against the proposed partnership with Peking University, according to the school’s newspaper, The Cornell Daily Sun. However, the “sense of the senate” vote carries no legal imprimatur, so Cornell’s administration approved the project, according to a university press release dated May 28, 2021.

In fall 2021, the Cornell vice provost for international affairs, Wendy Wolford, presented another initiative to the faculty. Cornell planned to create a network, the Global Hubs, with top universities in countries that included China.

According to Faculty Senate records, many members worried that Cornell had not mentioned any standards or requirements regarding academic freedom and freedom of speech when selecting Global Hub partners.

In December, the Faculty Senate passed a resolution urging the administration to consult the senate before developing hubs in the future, senate records show.

The resolution in particular calls out Cornell’s continued expansion of collaboration in China.

Despite this resolution, the central administration continues to pursue the dual-enrollment project because, as Wolford said in an email to VOA Mandarin, “We at Cornell are very proud of our active international community and collaborations; these connections are particularly important at a time when some would suggest we turn inwards, building walls rather than bridges.”

Faculty members who supported the dual-degree program emphasized the importance of engaging with China, according to a Faculty Senate meeting transcript dated March 10, 2021.

“If you want to see change happen in China, engagements are the only way,” said Connie Yuan, a professor in the global development department. “Present the Chinese students alternatives, and let them decide if that’s the alternative that will work for them, and they are the person who decides which way to go.”

She also questioned whether the concerns about human rights abuses against the Uyghur minorities in China’s Xinjiang region, which were raised by professors who opposed the program, were influenced by what she called Western media bias.

“I think the Western news and Eastern news (are) biased,” she said, laying out another reason she voted for the program. “I think the truth is somewhere in the middle. And I think it’s Chinese government’s attempt to contain terrorism, but they may have gone a little bit too far.”

Push for divestment from China

Cornell faculty are not alone in their concerns about U.S. academia’s business ties with China. Since last year, faculty and students at several American universities have launched initiatives to have their schools audit China-related investments.

On April 26, Athenai Institute, a student-founded nonprofit pushing for U.S. universities to divest from China, tweeted an open letter to the presidents and governing boards of major public universities, calling for a break with China.

“We are asking you to take all possible steps to investigate your institution’s endowment, including the endowment of any institutionally related foundation, for ties to entities complicit in the genocide of Uyghurs, and to divest from any such holdings,” wrote the group.

U.S. politicians, including former undersecretary of state Keith Krach, have signed the letter.

John Metz, Athenai Institute’s executive director, said that other than moral reasons, universities should pull business ties from China for their own business interests, as investments in a country that is involved in human rights abuses could be subject to future sanctions.

Students from Georgetown University, George Washington University, the University of Virginia and the University of California, Los Angeles, are mobilizing toward divestment from China.

Metz told VOA Mandarin that “not only do (schools) have the potential to be leaders on this issue, but it also makes financial sense to avoid risk and to avoid involuntary divestment basically, and to avoid selling those investments after they’ve fallen 60 or 70%.”

In December, Catholic University of America’s administration began to independently examine its endowment for connections to the human rights abuses of Uyghurs in Xinjiang, according to the website The College Fix.

In January, Yale University’s Advisory Committee on Investor Responsibility began to investigate potential investments in Chinese companies tied to human rights abuses, according to the Yale Daily News.

Metz told VOA Mandarin that the divestment movement is still in its early stage. But, he said, “We think divestment as a tactic has a lot of potential to extend beyond universities to other institutional investors, like pension funds, and ultimately to Wall Street.”  
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Changes are underway at some local U.S. law enforcement agencies that are trying to tackle long-standing policing problems such as excessive force and racial bias.

The reforms come as minority communities demand changes on how police officers do their jobs, including more accountability for their actions.

The U.S. Department of Justice is investigating the patterns and practices of police departments in several cities including Louisville, Kentucky, and Minneapolis, Minnesota.

A report last month by the Minnesota Department of Human Rights said there was a pattern of racial discrimination at the Minneapolis Police Department. It found the law enforcement agency illegally engaged in race-based policing, resulting in different treatment for people of color.

The report was based on a nearly two-year investigation that began days after the murder of African American George Floyd by white former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin in May 2020. The incident captured on video showed officer Chauvin’s knee on Floyd’s neck and back for more than nine minutes. The incident sparked months of U.S. demonstrations and worldwide protests to end police brutality.

Since the investigation was launched, the Minneapolis police department has instituted several reforms. They include stronger disciplinary action against officers who engage in misconduct, new detailed requirements for reporting use-of-force incidents and enhanced training for implicit bias.

“Former and current Minneapolis Police Department leaders all acknowledged there was a problem with MPD’s organizational culture and that they knew it was resulting in racial disparities,” said Rebecca Lucero, commissioner of the Minnesota Human Rights Department.

The report found that Minneapolis officers were almost two times more likely to search and arrest Black members of the community than whites. Officials also uncovered officers who consistently used racist, misogynistic and disrespectful language.

Minnesota’s Human Rights Department blamed the discriminatory police practices in Minneapolis on deficient training along with “insufficient and ineffective” accountability systems.

Investigators reached the conclusions after reviewing hundreds of hours of police body camera footage and interviewing thousands of people. Minneapolis officials will now draft a court-enforceable agreement to prevent future discrimination.

“There’s no place in the Minneapolis police department for bias or discrimination,” said Amelia Huffman, the city’s interim police chief. “I’m confident that there are men and women in the Minneapolis police department who have the desire to meet the challenge of today and tomorrow.”

Some analysts believe the city’s focus should be on recruiting quality officers and developing more community outreach.

“When you focus on building solid relationship(s) in communities of color, things like excessive aggressiveness and implicit bias begin to diminish,” said Richard Aborn, president of the Citizens Crime Commission of New York.

“We tend not to be discriminatory against people we know well,” Aborn told VOA. “We need to encourage much greater substantive interaction between the police agency and minority communities.”

Police accountability

In other U.S. cities problematic policing is under a spotlight. The Justice Department is investigating whether police in Louisville, Kentucky, engaged in unconstitutional practices, including the use of unreasonable force and illegal searches.

The probe followed the death of Breonna Taylor in March 2020. The unarmed African American medical worker was shot by police inside her home during a botched drug raid. Her death also fueled nationwide demonstrations.

Since Taylor’s death, Louisville police have banned the use of so-called “no-knock” warrants such as was used to enter her apartment. The department also searched for other officer misconduct by reviewing dozens of use-of-force incidents, including officer-involved shootings from 2017 through 2021.

In Baton Rouge, Louisiana, the city’s police department revised its policies to prohibit discrimination by targeting, stopping or detaining people due to their race or ethnicity. Other departments have designed new officer training programs like one adopted in Baltimore, Maryland, that emphasizes the use of impartial practices when making traffic stops and arrests.

As part of an ongoing effort to address police reforms, the Justice Department has provided more assistance to law enforcement agencies seeking to improve fair policing. The program, launched in March, will focus on officer training and building positive relationships with the community.

“This program is a voluntary opportunity for a law enforcement agency that knows it needs to make changes, and wants to make changes, to do just that,” said U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland. “We will provide technical assistance so that police departments can accomplish reforms as they are identified.”

The program comes after bipartisan negotiations to craft federal police reform legislation failed in Congress last year.

“Clearly Congress did not do what they should have done to provide support around this very challenging social issue of policing in this country,” law enforcement analyst Cedric Alexander told VOA.

Some social justice groups want lawmakers to reintroduce the “George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2020.” It sought to increase accountability for law enforcement misconduct and eliminate policing practices such as racial profiling. The legislation was approved in the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives but stalled in the Senate, where Republicans can block most legislation with a filibuster.

In an effort to work around the Congressional stalemate, U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration is considering executive orders to address police misconduct while providing more federal resources to help city police departments fight against a rise in violent crimes.

The administration’s 2023 federal spending plan requests more than $8 billion in grants for states and localities to fund local law enforcement efforts to build trust with the communities they serve while implementing community-based strategies to prevent gun crime and gun violence.
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LeighAnn Ferrara is transforming her small suburban yard from grass bordered by a few shrubs into an anti-lawn — a patchwork of flower beds, vegetables and fruit trees.

It didn’t happen all at once, says the mother of two young kids. “We started smothering small sections of the lawn each year with cardboard and mulch and planting them, and by now the front yard is probably three-quarters planting beds,” she says. “Every year we do more.”

Her perennials and native plants require less upkeep and water than turf grass does. And she doesn’t need herbicides or pesticides — she’s not aiming for emerald perfection.

For generations, the lawn — that neat, green, weed-less carpet of grass — has dominated American yards. It still does. But a surge of gardeners, landscapers and homeowners worried about the environment now see it as an anachronism, even a threat.

Like Ferrara, they’re chipping away at it.

“America is unique in its fixation on the monoculture lawn,” says Dennis Liu, vice president of education at the E.O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation in Durham, North Carolina. “Our English inheritance is our own little tidy green space.”

Now, drought, crashing insect populations and other environmental problems are highlighting -– in different ways, in different places –- the need for more kinds of plants in spaces large and small.

Some people are experimenting with more “eco-friendly” lawns, seed mixes you can buy with native grasses that aren’t as thirsty or finicky. Others are mowing less and tolerating old foes like dandelions and clover. Still others are trying to replace lawns, entirely or bit by bit, with garden beds including pollinator-friendly and edible plants.

It all leads to a more relaxed, wilder-looking yard.

“The more you can make your little piece that you’re a steward of go with nature’s flow, the better off everyone is,” says Liu.

In states with water shortages, many homeowners long ago swapped out turf grass for less-thirsty options, including succulents and gravel.

Elsewhere, the pandemic has speeded the trend away from lawns. Gardening exploded as a hobby, and many non-gardeners spent more time at home, paying more attention to the natural world around them.

Municipalities across the country are handing out lawn signs with “healthy yard” bragging rights to homeowners who forgo lawn chemicals or mow less often. Many towns are slapping regulations on common tools like gas-powered leaf blowers and mowers, mostly because of noise.

“For people interested in gardening, a lot have come to the realization it can’t just be ornamental anymore. It has to serve some other purpose, whether food, habitat … pack in as many uses as you can,” says Alicia Holloway, a University of Georgia Extension agent in Barrow County. “It’s a shift in thought, in aesthetics.”

Monrovia, a major grower of plants for nurseries and other outlets, has seen lots of interest in a “Garden of Abundance” trend -– a more “alive-looking” yard with a variety of plants, says company trend watcher Katie Tamony. She says it’s a way of thinking about your yard “as not just being yours, but part of a more beautiful, larger world that we’re trying to create.”

Plants that attract pollinators were the category most sought-after in a survey of Monrovia’s customers, she said.

And yet. The lawn isn’t disappearing anytime soon.

Many homeowners associations still have rules about keeping yards manicured. And lawn services tend to be geared toward maintaining grassy expanses.

Andrew Bray, vice president of government relations for the National Association of Landscape Professionals, a trade group, says lawns are still the mainstream choice. People want neat outdoor spaces for relaxing, playing and entertaining.

He says his group supports the goal of making lawn care more environmentally friendly, but believes some recent ordinances, like those against gas-powered blowers and mowers, have created a “fraught political environment.” He says electric alternatives to those tools aren’t feasible yet for the big lawns that professionals handle.

The landscapers’ trade group set up a new public platform this year, Voices for Healthy Green Spaces, to present its side of things. “Whether people want to have a large yard, plant a forest of trees in their backyard, or want a meadow and unstructured plantings,” all are green options, he said.

Those concerned that grass lawns fall short in helping pollinators and other species face another problem. “A lot of people don’t want bees –- there’s fear of nature,” says Holloway, the Georgia extension agent.. “I think that’s changing, but it still has a long way to go.”

Replacing grass also takes patience. “One of the best parts of my job is site visits. I go to backyards that people have been working on for 20, 30 years, and it’s helped me get over the mindset that everything has to be done all at once. It really takes time” to create a yard that’s got plantings, rather than just lawn, Holloway says.

And it’s hard to overcome tradition and neighborhood expectations. A lawn “looks tidy, and it’s easy to keep doing what you’re doing,” Liu says. But “once you’ve established the new equilibrium, it’s easier, it pays all these benefits.”

Some neighbors might see a yard without a lawn “and think, there’s the crazy person,” he says. “But a lot of people will just think it’s so cool.”
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The United States on Friday imposed sanctions on virtual currency mixer Blender, accusing it of being involved in one of the largest cryptocurrency heists on record and of being used by North Korea, the U.S. Treasury Department said. 

The Treasury also identified new virtual currency addresses it said were used by the North Korean hacking group often dubbed “Lazarus” to launder illicit proceeds, accusing the group of carrying out the theft of hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of cryptocurrency tied to the popular online game Axie Infinity. 

“We are taking action against illicit financial activity by the DPRK (North Korea) and will not allow state-sponsored thievery and its money-laundering enablers to go unanswered,” Brian Nelson, the Treasury’s undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, said in the statement. 

The Treasury said it was the first time the U.S. imposed sanctions on a virtual currency mixer. 

North Korea has stepped up efforts to launder stolen cryptocurrency, significantly increasing its use of mixers, or software tools that pool and scramble cryptocurrencies from thousands of addresses, blockchain analytics and cybersecurity firm Chainalysis said. 

The Treasury said Blender is a virtual currency mixer that operates on the Bitcoin blockchain, accusing it of facilitating illicit transactions by obscuring their origin and destination. 

It said Blender was used in the laundering process for North Korea’s Axie Infinity heist, accusing it of processing over $20 million in illicit proceeds. 
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Terrell Osborne knows well what happens when urban renewal comes to communities of color.

As a child growing up in Providence, Rhode Island, in the 1950s and 1960s, huge swaths of his neighborhood of Lippitt Hill, a center of Black life at the foot of the stately homes of the city’s elite East Side, were taken by eminent domain for redevelopment projects.

Hundreds of Black families were forced to move and dozens of minority small businesses across some 30 acres were bulldozed. In their place rose an apartment complex catering to downtown workers and students and faculty at nearby Brown University, as well as a shopping plaza now anchored by a Whole Foods and a Starbucks.

Meanwhile, Black families like the Osbornes were scattered across the city and never compensated.

“We had stores. People owned things. Money was circulating around,” said Osborne, who now lives on Providence’s South Side. “There was a whole community there, and they just took that neighborhood and we never got anything for it. Not even as much as a thank you.”

As Providence gears up to provide reparations to Black residents for centuries of injustices, city officials are looking beyond the city’s leading role in the Colonial transatlantic slave trade.

They’re looking to atone, at least initially, for what happened during urban renewal efforts of the late 20th century, a period that saw Black and Native American communities such as Lippitt Hill razed to make way for new residential and business developments that paved the way for the city’s modern economy, anchored around its universities and hospitals.

The approach builds off the blueprint in Evanston, a Chicago suburb that became the first in the nation to begin paying reparations last year with a program providing Black residents grants for mortgage payments and home repairs, in acknowledgement of the historic discrimination Black people endured when trying to buy homes.

By making progress on such modern-day wrongs, communities can hopefully start to overcome long-standing resistance to reparations, says Justin Hansford, a professor at Howard University’s law school who spearheads the African American Redress Network, which tracks reparations efforts nationwide.

Local cities and towns, colleges and even states are increasingly taking up reparations as efforts at the federal level have gone nowhere. Harvard University announced last week it’ll spend $100 million to atone for its slave ties while California is pioneering a statewide task force on reparations.

“We know it’s a losing conversation to talk about slavery in the 1600s,” said Raymond “Two Hawks” Watson, a member of Providence’s recently formed reparations commission whose family has long lived in the Lippitt Hill area. “But we also know we don’t have to go that far back. We know what happened with urban renewal and we can see what’s happening with gentrification. We’re able to show this is just a continuation of what’s been going on for centuries.”

Providence’s efforts also notably look to use some $15 million in federal COVID-19 funds to jump-start reparations work, something other city leaders have pursued recently.

In Athens, Georgia, Mayor Kelly Girtz says his proposed budget calls for using pandemic relief money to establish a housing fund for Black residents akin to Evanston’s. Athens, like Providence, seeks to atone for the razing of the Black neighborhood of Linnentown to make way for University of Georgia dormitories and parking lots in the 1960s.

In Providence, centuries of discrimination have left communities of color far poorer than white enclaves: Median household income on the affluent, largely white East Side is nearly $180,000 a year, compared to nearly $19,000 in the city’s predominantly Black and Latino South Side.

On Lippitt Hill, families weren’t compensated but instead offered priority in claiming a unit in the new residential development, which became known as University Heights, says Osborne. But the modern apartments were financially out of reach for most.

Cheryl Taylor, whose family was forced to move and shutter their repair business on Lippitt Hill to make way for another development, hopes the reparations process can help Black residents purchase their own homes. The few like her who remain living nearby are renters in an increasingly unaffordable part of town.

“They’re all white. I don’t know these people,” Taylor says of the neighborhood’s newer residents.

Looking back, Osborne wonders if the destruction of his old neighborhood was an effort to dilute the growing power of the city’s Black community.

Osborne’s family was among a number of working class but upwardly mobile Black households on the hillside that separates the East Side from downtown.

His grandfather, Clarence “Legs” Osborne, was a trumpeter who played with Count Basie, Duke Ellington and other famous Black musical acts. His uncle, Jeffrey Osborne, went on to become a Grammy-nominated R&B singer with a string of hits in the 1980s, including On the Wings of Love.

Osborne, who heads a Providence organization that provides musical opportunities to youths, says he’d like to see the city establish a college scholarship fund or programs to help Black residents build equity, rather than making direct payouts to impacted families like his.

“The question with reparations is always, ‘Where do you start?’ Why not start with something that’s tangible?” he said. “We’re here. We’re not buried in the past, and we know something should have happened then. Maybe now is the time.”
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