Program from Sept. 15 featuring Episcopal City Mission, Reparations Advisory Committee and Stewards, and granted organizations.

Reparations Advisory Committee and Stewards members with co-director of Episcopal City Mission Neha Rayamajhi at St. Cyprian’s Episcopal Church on Sept. 15.

On Sept. 15, Episcopal City Mission (ECM) announced the distribution of $2.75 million in reparations to 25 statewide organizations committed to promoting racial and economic justice and equity, truth-telling, reconciliation and strengthening communities.

The landmark distribution marked a tangible effort by a local faith-backed institution to address the deep racial wealth gap rooted in centuries of stolen labor and land dispossession.

ECM unveiled the news at St. Cyprian’s Episcopal Church in Roxbury, which was built over a century ago by Boston’s Black and West Indian residents who initially had to meet in living rooms before gaining formal diocesan recognition. The location is the city’s oldest Black Episcopal church and provided a resonant backdrop for the act of historical reclamation.

Reparations Advisory Committee and Stewards (RACS) mapped 11 distinct “social justice buckets” spanning housing, land theft, health equity and criminal justice reform. Formed in summer 2025, the primary objective of RACS was to bypass major institutional players and get meaningful capital directly to frontline leaders in the Black community.

“We wanted to touch organizations that often are not touched,” Rev. Dr. Althea Smith, an ordained minister and RACS member, told the Banner. “We wanted to reach folks who would not necessarily be on other people’s agenda … those who are close to the ground doing meaningful work for the community and have significantly felt the cuts from the federal government.”

Recipients reflect that grassroots focus across a wide array of vital community initiatives, from like local farmers distributing free food, family stability programs like Brookview in Dorchester, and youth leadership initiatives like Bikes Not Bombs in Jamaica Plain and Pa’lante Restorative Justice in Holyoke. The committee also intentionally prioritized organizations dismantling the carceral system, such as Families for Justice and Healing and the Massachusetts Bail Fund.

“Through our work at Brookview House, we’ve seen that many families are carrying challenges that didn’t start with them,” said Deborah Collins, president and CEO of Brookview. “The hurdles they face today are often shaped by generations of unequal access to opportunities, resources and support.

This reparations payment is an acknowledgment that the disparities we see today did not happen by accident, and that addressing them requires intentional action.”

For Black arts and education organization Castle of our Skins, receiving reparations represents a rare shift in how institutions interact with Black creators and organizers.

“We never thought we would see the day when an institution would look honestly at the harm embedded in its history and make a meaningful commitment to repair,” Dr. Ciyadh Wells, executive director of Castle of our Skins, said in a statement.

“This investment will allow us to continue creating opportunities for cultural curiosity, bringing Black artistry and edu-tainment into classrooms, concert halls and community spaces. This is reparations, not simply philanthropy.”

While ECM — a Boston nonprofit affiliated with the Diocese of Massachusetts — has funded antipoverty initiatives since its founding in 1844, the $2.75 million is explicitly framed as an act of repair for harms tied directly to the institution’s financial inception.

Prompted by urgent calls during racial justice uprisings in 2020, ECM launched a multiyear historical audit of its endowment. Research traced a foundational grant back to William Appleton, a prominent 19th-century white Episcopalian merchant who worked in the textile industry and was connected to slave economies, including cotton in New Orleans, sugar in Cuba and maritime insurance.

“We know these insurance companies insured cargo, which were often enslaved Africans,” said Cynthia Perry, cofounder of The Black Sports Ministry Network, Inc. and lead consultant to RACS. “Thus, if money given to start ECM was connected to the exploitation of Black labor it is only right to give reparations as unrestricted funds as a form of atonement, apology and attempt of repair.”

Although the organization pivoted in the 1950s and 1960s toward being justice oriented, recognizing modern racism and examining the root causes of poverty, ECM’s historical research served as another major wake-up call to deepen its practice.

“We were intentional in using the term reparations,” Rev. Arrington Chambliss, executive director of Episcopal City Mission said. “We understand that reparations require us to give up power and not just give away money.”

The initiative led to them penning a “case statement of atonement” — a traditional term within the church for coming back into the right relationship — and handing decision-making power over to the intergenerational cohort of seven Black and Indigenous organizers, ministers and community leaders who make up the RACS team to fully design the entire funding framework. Chambliss said this would ensure the process would remain “grounded in relationship, trust and moral responsibility.”

“What was really great was that ECM immediately empowered us to do the work,” Smith added. “They did not hover to make sure we were reaching the people who they thought we should reach. They trusted us.”

For Smith, a lifelong Bostonian and product of Boston Public Schools’ prior to the city’s tumultuous busing era, called the ceremony at St. Cyprian’s a “full circle moment.” Her family also used the church’s after-school programs decades earlier.

Beyond local history, Smith viewed the committee’s work through the visionary lens of Octavia Butler’s 1993 literary pillar “Parable of the Sower” — a story centered on overcoming fear, listening deeply to others and cultivating community survival via radical change. “Being in community can be transformative,” Smith said.

ECM aims for this $2.75 million disbursement to set a blueprint for other legacy faith organizations across Massachusetts to audit their own assets. Pointing to Spike Lee’s 1989 film “Do the Right Thing,” Perry challenged white institutions sitting on capital to move beyond surface-level charity.

“White business practices are often associated with perfectionism, and in trying to find a perfect model, repair and justice are delayed,” Perry said. “It is hypocritical to say you are an example of God’s love, teach about God’s love on Sunday and then sit on resources that can have transformative systemic and institutional change. Larger faith institutions that know their wealth was built on the exploitation of Black labor and Indigenous land need to do the right thing and do it now.”

Though the $2.75 million payout is historically significant, organizers say the allocation is just an initial step toward broader healing — restitution too expensive for a price tag.

“There’s really no reconciliation without repair, so this is a step in that direction,” Chambliss said. “It doesn’t mean that everything’s reconciled in any way. It’s more of a spiritual practice than a goal. For us, this is a milestone as opposed to a finish line.”