CHICAGO — The city on Monday issued a formal apology to Black Chicagoans for the harm that slavery, Jim Crow laws and present-day policies have had on them and their descendants.

The acknowledgement is included in Executive Order 2024-1, signed by Mayor Brandon Johnson, creating a “Reparations Task Force to develop a Black Reparations Agenda” that will ultimately offer recommendations on remedies to the polices that have harmed African Americans in Chicago for generations. He previously earmarked $500,000 in the city budget to study the issues.

“Today’s Executive Order is not just a public declaration; it is a pledge to shape the future of our city by confronting the legacy of inequity that has plagued Chicago for far too long,” Johnson, the city’s fourth Black mayor, said in a statement. “We are continuing to build on the bedrock of my administration to move forward in reconciliation through targeted investments aimed at rectifying decades of deliberate disinvestment in Black neighborhoods and communities.

The order apologizes, codifies that “the legacy of chattel slavery and Jim Crow are incompatible” with present-day values and establishes a timetable and goals for the task force in looking at generational inequities in housing, health, education, policing policies and more.

“Today is a major step forward, and I am thankful to the Johnson Administration for its continued support and commitment to addressing the deep wounds inflicted by centuries of injustice against the Black community,” said Ald. Stephanie Coleman (16th Ward). “We will not be ashamed of who we are, and what we have overcome.”

A few cities around the country, including San Francisco, Detroit and Asheville, North Carolina, have launched similar efforts to study the legacy of slavery and systemic racism. Evanston in 2021 became the first U.S. city to make reparations available to its Black residents for past discrimination. A conservative activist group earlier this month filed a legal challenge to the program.