Fultoncountyga.gov | Reparations-Task-Force | Fulton-County-Reparation-Harm-Report-Official | pdf

The report is a roughly 600-plus-page historical and economic study documenting harms that Fulton County government itself caused or helped perpetuate against Black residents, from slavery through Jim Crow and into more recent disparities. Fulton County created the task force in 2021, and the Harm Report is considered Phase One: document and quantify the harm first; recommendations for repair come later. Fulton County Government

Its central argument is that the county did not merely exist alongside racial inequality—it benefited from and administered systems that extracted wealth, labor, land, and opportunity from Black people. The report examines at least 21 categories of harm, including taxation of enslaved people as property, stolen labor, convict leasing and chain gangs, discriminatory property taxation, land dispossession and eminent domain, racial terror, segregation of county services, and unequal access to public resources. The Bag Council

One of the biggest findings concerns slavery between 1854 and 1864. The task force says enslaved people represented nearly 20% of Fulton County’s annual tax revenue, while the value of their stolen labor, when modeled with compounding economic loss, reaches roughly $903 billion in present-day terms. The task force also estimates about $1.78 billion in lost wages from Black prison labor. Commissioner Marvin Arrington has described the total documented harm as exceeding $1 trillion when the report’s different categories are considered. Fulton County Government

The report goes beyond slavery. It traces how convict leasing and chain gangs effectively continued forced Black labor after emancipation, with Black residents disproportionately convicted and used as labor. It then follows the economic effects through Jim Crow, segregation, unequal taxation, denial of public services, and other government policies. WABE

Land loss is another major theme. The research documents Black communities and families whose property was taken or disrupted, including Bagley Park/Macedonia Park, a once-thriving Black community in what became part of Buckhead. In some cases, the report traces specific families and estimates what lost property could be worth today; one example cited publicly involves land that could now be worth about $15 million. CBS News

A distinctive part of the report is its attempt to put dollar values on historical harm instead of stopping at narrative history. Task Force Chair Dr. Karcheik Sims-Alvarado developed two analytical models: the Dual Lens Hidden Disparities Theorem, used to measure inequality, and the Extraction-Accumulation Harm Theorem, used to estimate wealth extracted from Black residents and the wealth that others accumulated from that extraction over time. WABE

The report also connects historical policies to continuing disparities in areas such as wealth, housing, health, criminal justice, public services, and property ownership. Task-force presentations have cited current differences in measures including emergency-room use, infant mortality, and overdose deaths between Black and white residents, arguing that the legacy of earlier government policy did not simply disappear when discriminatory laws changed. WSB-TV Channel 2 – Atlanta

Importantly, this report does not establish a reparations program. It does not yet decide who qualifies, how much anyone would receive, or whether remedies would take the form of cash payments, housing assistance, scholarships, community investment, or policy changes. The task force has been extended through December 31, 2027 to produce a separate Repair Report containing recommendations, feasibility analysis, and potential remedies. The Fulton County Board of Commissioners would ultimately have to approve anything that is implemented. The Bag Council

So in one sentence: the Harm Report argues, using county records and economic calculations, that Fulton County government directly participated in a long chain of racial extraction—from slavery and forced labor to land loss, discriminatory taxation, segregation, and unequal services—and that those actions created measurable generational economic damage to Black residents.

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