Descendant Of Slaveowner Donates Six Figures In Reparations To Black-Led Non-Profit: ‘This Is Just The Start’

A descendant of a slaveholder donated six figures in reparations as a payment. “This is just the start.”

A Black-led nonprofit says it received a large donation from a person after learning their great-grandfather enslaved Black people in Kentucky. On Monday, the nonprofit, Change Today, Change Tomorrow opened up about the check while discussing its initiative to support Black business owners. “It is a blessing for us but also definitely owed,” the nonprofit’s founder and executive director, Taylor Ryan, said Monday afternoon.

Nannie Grace Croney said the organization’s deputy director “honestly thought we were being scammed” when they initially saw the email about the donation. But, reality set in for them, according to Yahoo! News.

“So the initial emotion was like, ‘Oh, this isn’t real,’ but once it was real, we knew that we had to act on it. We knew that as disruptors and changemakers, we have to challenge other corporations, foundations, and individuals to really pay reparations back,” Croney said, “to really redirect those dollars and redistribute wealth to begin to fix the inequalities in this country and right here in our own backyard in Louisville.”

During the press conference on Monday, the group’s leadership declined to give out the person’s name, per the donor’s request for privacy. The donor “had come into a lot of wealth on their 25th birthday,” the nonprofit announced in a news release, Yahoo! News reports. “Being aware of how hoarding wealth is a huge contributing factor of inequality in this country, they decided that they should give most of it away,” Change Today, Change Tomorrow’s release said. “Curious to find out where this wealth came from, they investigated their family history.”

The man’s great-grandfather enslaved six Black people in Bourbon County, Kentucky, according to Change Today, Change Tomorrow. However, the great-grandfather did not record their names, so the donor decided to donate the money to the nonprofit. In the donation, the descendant said their great-grandfather “inflicted the trauma and violence of slavery on six people for his own monetary gain and did not even bother to record their names.”