In 1973, the U.S. began to look at reparations for the victims of the Tuskegee Experiments, in which 600 Black men were left untreated for syphilis without their knowledge as part of a medical experiment.
The men were awarded $10 million by the federal government which promised to provide healthcare and burial services for the men. Eventually, the states ended up awarding healthcare and other services to the men’s spouses and descendants, too, History.com reported.
An apology didn’t come, however, until 1997 from President Clinton described the victims as “hundreds of men betrayed.” Cities and states, rather than the federal government, led the way in financial compensation for most other cases of brutality. Take Florida, where lawmakers passed a bill that paid $2.1 million in reparations to survivors of the Rosewood Massacre, a 1923 incident in which a majority-black Florida town was destroyed by racist mobs. Or Chicago, which created a $5.5 million reparations fund for survivors of police brutality aimed at black men during the 1970s and 1980s.
