Six years after the city of Fayetteville declared racism a public health crisis, the effort to put forward diversity and equity initiatives has faced backlash on the state and federal level. Now, one local group is asking churches to step in. Ozarks at Large’s Daniel Caruth reports.
In 2024, the Fayetteville City Council adopted a plan to pursue racial equity training and work to address harm done to the city’s African American community. The resolution, which included voluntary, in-person and virtual training sessions, was non-binding and severely stripped back from its original proposal. Still, at the time, advocates saw this as a step in the right direction.
“And so I think at this moment in our country’s history, we have the opportunity to shine the light of truth and ask who’s really been harmed locally, nationally by our churches, by the state. And I think that if we shine the light of truth, we can see that African Americans in our country have been harmed and deserve to be repaid, and that that’s not to be woke. It’s not to be—it’s just simple justice. And so that’s the truth that I think we have the opportunity to proclaim in this moment.”
That’s Lowell Taylor, co-founder of the Zacchaeus Foundation in Fayetteville, a nonprofit focused on racial equity and raising money to fund reparations efforts locally. Taylor also helped to set up those training programs with the city of Fayetteville. In 2025, though, the Arkansas Legislature signed a new law banning diversity, equity and inclusion trainings for local governments. And since then, the organization that Taylor and the city partnered with, First Repair out of Evanston, Illinois, has faced its own scrutiny from the federal government. The city of Evanston was the first place in the U.S. to carry out a local reparations initiative for Black residents. And earlier this year, the Trump administration brought a lawsuit against the city for that program.
Robin Rue Simmons is the founder of First Repair and a former Evanston city alderman who helped to set up the reparations program. Here she is explaining the federal challenge on KYES Radio in Washington, D.C.
“So in 2024, Judicial Watch, a conservative organization, filed a lawsuit against Evanston claiming essentially reverse discrimination. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So they have several non-Black plaintiffs that are suggesting that they, too, should be eligible for reparations. They don’t live in Evanston. We don’t know that they had any relatives that live in Evanston. They are not Black. They were not harmed. But that’s what they’re claiming. And we’ve been in that process now for over a year. The Trump Department of Justice has now intervened and joined in that lawsuit with them. And so what this means is the reality is there is a Trump-appointed judge. We believe very strongly in the constitutionality of this reparations legislation because it’s been thoughtfully, narrowly tailored. And that’s why it is a specific harm in Evanston, Illinois, a specific legislation that was outlawed when fair housing was passed. So that’s why it ends in 1969. And it’s a specific community. And the redress is directly correlated to that harm.”
In light of all this pressure, Taylor says government-supported reparations programs are unlikely to happen here. For now, he says, the Zacchaeus Foundation is one of about a hundred organizations across the U.S. that’s joined with First Repair to enact local reparations projects. And he says with this new pressure, they’re having to find other ways to push forward.
“One of the things that that is not as well known about Evanston, about $20 million was was raised or received from sales tax on cannabis. So that that came through the state, right, through the government. But concurrently, a group of about 19 churches and other houses of faith, interfaith folks, Jews and others, not just Christians, raised about a million dollars. And so we’re connected with folks in Evanston, Illinois, in Chicago, Illinois, who are doing this, this—what we call church-based or faith-based reparations specifically. And, and we want to, to invite other, other people of faith and Christians specifically, to follow the example of Zacchaeus, who in Luke 19 repented, repaired, and was healed. We believe that it’s central to our calling, not tangential, but central to our calling as followers of Jesus to do justice in that specific way.”
Peter Jarrett-Schell is the pastor of Calvary Episcopal, a historically Black church in Washington, D.C., and another First Repair partner. He says doing reparations projects through faith-based organizations has been a foundational part of the larger movement of racial reckoning in the U.S.
“For people of faith, we follow the leadership of a teacher who says things like, store up treasures for yourself in heaven. Who says things like, what does it profit you to gain the world but lose your soul? Who tells you things like where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. So there is built into the structure of our faith—and the story of Zacchaeus is a very clear one—the idea that giving things up in the current moment, handing over ill-gotten gains can be a path towards wholeness and health. And as we tell that story of Zacchaeus specifically, it’s really notable that it’s only after Zacchaeus commits to this act of divesting himself of this ill-gotten wealth that then Jesus says to him, today, salvation has come to your house. So I think that’s one essential piece of it is that the, the faith faith piece offers a clear motivation that that helps drive the work.”
So that’s why recently Taylor created the Zacchaeus Fellowship.
“We’re piloting a network with eight people from four places, one in Arkansas, one here in Fayetteville, Chicago and Evanston, Illinois, and Washington, D.C. So those eight folks, we’re piloting the network, we’re preparing a workbook, sharing how we’re doing local faith-based reparations in our respective places. And then we’ll get to share that workbook at First Repair’s annual conference in December.”
Jason Coulter is one of the partners in the fellowship program and senior minister of the First Congregational Church of Evanston.
“I think the network that we’re building across the nation is very exciting. We think that there is a very useful model from Evanston and our community reparations program that can be replicated in other cities and communities that have the same types of values that we do in Evanston, one that understands the history of racism in America completely, that understands the way that wealth was extrapolated and stolen and reappropriated, and the fierce urgency to repair that and to do reparations.”
And Jarrett-Schell says the increased scrutiny from the federal government has put local reparations programs like his in jeopardy. But he believes that makes the faith-based work even more vital.
“Now we hope to be a resource for other groups that are trying to do faith-based reparations in their local context, and maybe just don’t know how to start. That first hurdle of imagination of just trying to say, okay, like I understand that there is this debt, the magnitude of this debt currently harms and sabotages the Black community around me in so many different, like measurable ways. And I can see that there is some kind of act of repair that’s necessary. And I just don’t even like, how do I, how do I cross that bridge of imagination and being able to engage with other folks that, you know, can’t claim expertise because we’re all just trying to like, follow this path that like, we don’t quite know the end of yet, but can claim experience of having walked it before can provide a variety of different models of saying, okay, like these are, these are ways that you can begin the work. These are how you can begin finding collaborators and partners to help you see a way forward.”
And Taylor says since starting the Zacchaeus Foundation, he’s had some churches back out of participating as the political climate has become more hostile to these kinds of initiatives.
“You know, something happened to us collectively when we watched George Floyd die. We knew something was very, very wrong. And I think most of us wanted to to do and be better. But I think part of the the problem is that we didn’t really do the work that we needed to do. I’ll speak for for white people generally, white Christians specifically, if we’ve not been willing to, to do that work, that painful, costly work, it makes sense to me that we would say yes and then say no when it became harder or less popular to do what at one point we, many of us agreed was was the right thing. And I’m, you know, not in a position to judge those people because I’m equally in danger of, of walking away, of saying, you know, this has gotten too hard. This has gotten too costly. I don’t, I don’t have to do this anymore. I’m free to walk away. And so I’m certainly hoping that I, I won’t do that.”
Taylor says the long-term goal is to raise $1.6 million by 2035 to put in an endowment and give away $50,000 annually to Black-led nonprofits in the region. In 2025, the foundation raised $100,000 and plans to give away $50,000 of that to Black-led nonprofits this year.
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