'Promised Land': A Historically Black California Town Honors Its Proud, Painful Past — and Fights for Its Future

In 1908, Allensworth was designed by its Black founders as a place where 'African Americans would settle upon the bare desert and cause it to blossom as a rose' — before racist policies squashed it into submission. More than a century later, the town is one of about a dozen Black communities shaping the conversation about what reparations might mean in California.

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