The Quaker Reparations That Helped This Black Philly Family Build Generational Wealth

For one Black family in Philadelphia, reparations didn’t come as a check or another government promise. They came as house keys, offering a tangible glimpse of what reparations can look like beyond the national debate.

Charmira and Quincy Pilgrim had spent years trying to buy their first home. They had the dream, the growing family, and the determination– but didn’t always have the money needed to get through the door, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer.

That changed when the family received a $10,000 homebuyer grant from Green Street Friends Meeting, a Quaker congregation in Germantown that is deliberately redistributing some of its wealth to Black residents as part of an ongoing reparations effort, The Inquirer also reported back in 2022.

The Pilgrims used the grant toward the purchase of a three-bedroom home in Philadelphia’s West Oak Lane neighborhood. The $315,000 house became theirs at the end of May, about a month before the birth of their fifth child, according to the outlet.

We previously told you generations of Black families have faced redlining, discriminatory lending, housing segregation and other barriers that made homeownership–and the wealth it can generate–harder to achieve. A grant that helps a Black family purchase a home therefore does more than help cover closing costs. It can help create an asset that can remain in the family long after the original money is gone.

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“It was a blessing that I ended up getting the grant because money was tight,” Charmira, a 32-year-old special-education teacher and case manager, told The Inquirer.

The congregation sees the effort as more than simply providing financial assistance. It is an intentional attempt to repair the economic harm caused by generations of racial discrimination.

We’ve also been keeping you up to date with the latest reparations efforts across the country. In some cities, like Evanston, Illinois, reparations come in the form of cash payments to the descendants of enslaved people. Philadelphia has its own Reparations Task Force, which “studies and develops reparations proposals and programs,” according to its website. But while the city waits for the task force findings, other groups like Green Street are filling in the gaps.

Green Street has committed $50,000 a year for 10 years to reparations, acknowledging how slavery, segregation and generations of discriminatory policies helped deny Black Americans the opportunity to build and transfer wealth, the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting reported.

And few assets illustrate that racial wealth gap more clearly than a home. Green Street distributed five $10,000 grants through birdSEED, a nonprofit focused on closing racial wealth gaps and helping historically disadvantaged communities become homeowners, according to the Inquirer.

The congregation has also backed efforts to prevent Black homeowners from losing inherited property because of tangled or unclear titles. Green Street says those efforts have preserved more than $11.3 million in housing wealth for more than 85 families.

For the Pilgrims, though, the significance of the grant isn’t an abstract conversation about wealth statistics. It is the yard where their children can play. It is the kitchen where Charmira can cook for her family, the basement, the bedrooms and the feeling of finally having something that belongs to them. And perhaps most importantly, it is an asset their children can inherit.

“It feels good to have ownership,” Charmira told the Inquirer. “I see this as an opportunity for my kids to have a legacy.” For a family that spent years trying to cross the threshold into homeownership, the keys represent more than a new address.

They represent a chance to build the kind of wealth Black families have so often been denied– and to pass something down that cannot be spent, lost, or forgotten in a single generation.