According to the Rev. Dennis Hutson, people used to love the taste of Allensworth's water. "People used say things like, 'Wow, this is the best water I'.
The outdated and inefficient water infrastructure in a historically Black town in California has forced residents to create their own water out of thin air.
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.