Reparations is a nonstarter in Congress. Not in this Southern city.

For all the funky exterior of a progressive mountain redoubt, this city has until now often looked the other way when it comes to racial inequity. 

Two months after days of intense racial justice protests, however, a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee that had stood for nearly a century is gone. And an obelisk in the honor of Confederate-era Gov. Zeb Vance is now wrapped in black plastic, as the city considers its removal.

But those symbolic changes have been followed by something that could prove more concrete. Last month, the majority-white Asheville City Council unanimously passed a reparations ordinance aimed at righting not just historic injustice against Black Americans, but more recent wrongs against Asheville’s Black population.

In the past 40 years, residents say, urban renewal and discriminatory banking practices dispossessed especially older Black residents from historic Asheville neighborhoods.

“Unscramble that egg”Building a coalitionUrban renewal in Asheville