A multigenerational fight for reparations is underway from Palm Springs to Gold Rush country
There’s a willow tree in Hayward, California, that Marian Johnson takes her mother to every year on her birthday. Johnson’s great-grandfather planted the tree decades ago, on his sprawling farm property in Russell City, an unincorporated part of Alameda county in the San Francisco Bay area that used to be predominantly Black and Latino.
Today, the tree is all that’s left of Johnson’s family’s land, which in the 1960s was seized, razed and turned into an industrial park. “It was a major loss for us,” said Johnson. “It was a lot of hurt and pain.”
