Creating a Culture of Repair: Taking Action on the Road to Reparations

A 2024 Foreword INDIES Award Finalist

Many people are aware of the injustices Black Americans have suffered over the centuries but feel powerless when it comes to repairing the harm done.

The inequality remains even after laws and policies have been corrected. Calculating and implementing financial reparations will require large-scale government action, which can feel out of reach or overwhelming for the average person. Robert Turner provides an accessible guide for individuals and groups wanting to influence significant institutional action while also acting on their own to repair the effects of racial injustice in our communities, churches, and spheres of influence. Dividing into categories of individual, social, institutional, and spiritual repair, Turner offers the longest list of reparations currently published, with more than one hundred actions readers can begin practicing and advocating for to help balance economic injustice, undo hurtful decisions from decades past, and rally public support for bold and principled legislation.

Robert Turner is pastor of Empowerment Temple AME Church in Baltimore. He previously pastored the historic Vernon African Methodist Episcopal Church in Tulsa, the only edifice on Greenwood Avenue to survive the 1921 massacre. In college, he was influential in the campaign for the University of Alabama’s Faculty Senate apology for the school’s role in slavery. He is a commissioner for the National African American Reparations Commission (NAARC) and hosts monthly marches from Baltimore to the White House—40 miles for 40 acres.