Russell City Was Erased 60 Years Ago. California Is Finally Paying Reparations to the Black Families Who Lost It All.

Before it was erased from the map, Russell City was the kind of place where Black people built lives when the rest of the Bay Area refused to let them in.

Families planted gardens, opened small businesses, raised children and bought homes in the unincorporated community near Hayward, California because discriminatory housing policies left them with few other options, according to the Oakland Museum of California. It wasn’t perfect. Streets flooded when it rained. Public services were scarce. County officials largely ignored the neighborhood’s needs.

It was that neglect that was used as an excuse to destroy it, according to the county website.

In the early 1960s, Alameda County declared Russell City “blighted,” seized hundreds of properties through eminent domain, and bulldozed the community in the name of redevelopment. More than 1,000 residents were forced from the place they called home, according to the county. What replaced it wasn’t affordable housing or a revitalized neighborhood–it was industrial development.

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This week, more than six decades after those families lost everything, Alameda County has approved $1.3 million in reparations for former residents and their descendants, acknowledging that the government bears responsibility for dismantling a thriving Black community, according to KQED News.

The payment won’t make anyone whole.

For decades, Russell City existed mostly as a cautionary tale shared by former residents and local historians. It became another chapter in America’s long tradition of using the language of “urban renewal” and “redevelopment” to justify the displacement of Black communities. Across the country, highways, civic centers, universities and industrial parks often rose where Black neighborhoods once stood. Progress for some was purchased by destroying the communities of others.

In the case of Russell City, officials allowed infrastructure to deteriorate, labeled the neighborhood a problem and then cited those conditions as justification for wiping it away, KQED News reported.

The decision to offer reparations doesn’t erase what was lost, but it does put money behind the county’s acknowledgment of that harm. The county authorized an initial round of payments of up to $25,000 for each eligible household.